Coronavirus Dispatch NYC #2

Our new normal but not the one that will last

We’ve gone from “oh, let’s not get too worked up about this thing” to having our hair on fire in under a week. It’s disorienting AF (update at 11 pm EDT: The Mayor is warning of an imminent shelter in place order and the Governor is saying the state won’t allow it. More damned fun).

As of March 17, 2020, all schools, restaurants, bars, and gyms in New York City are closed. Gatherings of over 50 people are banned. There’s talk of instituting a curfew which is driving my friend, Ramona, completely batty. “This is New York City! You can’t tell me I can’t go out of my apartment at night! This isn’t a prison!!” Ramona is on the business side of 80, weighs around 90 pounds, bikes everywhere and I’d put my money on her against any of New York’s Finest who might try to enforce their fucking stupid curfew.

We began quietly picking up a few extra things here and there at the grocery and drugstores over the past week or so. Just in case. It wouldn’t be fun but, yes, we could ride out two weeks of total quarantine if we had to.

However, last Wednesday, before too much hair had begun to burn, we decided it was time to play tourist because soon it was going to be too late (and now it is).

Expedition to Jackson Heights

Jackson Heights in Queens is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the poster child city for diversity in this hemisphere with over half the people having been born in other countries. You want Indian, Pakistani, Korean, Colombian, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, Tibetan, Mexican, or Nepalese anything? This is where you’ll find it.

We gloved up, grabbed our books (I’m reading Sigrid Nunez’ “The Last of Her Kind” and AleXander’s reading James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” both of which are curiously well-suited for our current situation) and headed for the subway.

I should note that suddenly the subway is being spoken of in hushed tones and to some it’s an echoing petri dish just waiting to infect the unwary. The reality is that many of us are still using the subway because how else are you going to get around this city? I’m not seeing the hordes of two weeks ago, but there are enough of us that one is hard-pressed to observe the six-foot social distancing barrier we’re told is necessary.

Our first stop was Butala Emporium where we stocked up on incense, Frankincense, and AleXander bought me a wee bottle of amber essential oil.

After that, we headed over to the architectural wonders of The Chateau and The Tower on 80th Street, two dazzling examples of 1920s garden apartments. Where I grew up garden apartments were low-level blocks of uninspiring brick and drywall, housing the working poor. But not to noted, self-taught architect Andrew Thomas who was interested in incorporating actual gardens into the enormous courtyards of his elegant garden apartments in Jackson Heights.

Then it was back to the main drag to check out the markets and find lunch. There might be some emptier shelves at Patel Brothers Market this week but that wasn’t the case last Wednesday.

There were a few people wearing masks but the streets were crowded and life was just being life last week in Jackson Heights. That was holding true once we were back in Manhattan for the most part.

New normal

By Friday all that was changing rapidly and over the weekend we suddenly found ourselves in an alternate universe. We were still going out and about in the city and, after a long walk Saturday enjoyed dinner out and then did that again on Sunday. Under ordinary circumstances, we wouldn’t have indulged in dinner out two nights in a row but the ban of restaurants serving meals inhouse went into effect at 9 am today. So that called for one last dinner at V&T Pizzeria.

A trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond was another lesson in our new normal. When we stopped at a store where they had a communal hand sanitizer on the counter, I made sure to avail myself of that.

I have a confession to make and I hope you won’t think less of me (but don’t really care if you do). I’ve never been much of a hand-washer. Just because I went to the bathroom never meant I had to wash my hands afterward. That went double for public restrooms with those basically useless, noisy forced air hand-dyers. Hate those.

I even snarked back at a former co-worker who called me on that with “I didn’t touch anything dirty”.

That was then, this is now

I’m doing laundry this morning (thank the gods for washers and dryers in the basement of our building) and after each trip down I wash my hands. It’s not coming to me easily but I’m learning to not touch my face. I still find my hand halfway to my face when this new warning light flashes in my amygdala and I stop.

All my usual social gatherings are now online. I got together with my Monday night crew via Zoom last night which wasn’t great as the video kept cutting out but we all could hear each other. That’s when Ramona shared her disgust with our new restrictions. In spirit, I can agree with her but in actual practice, I’m more cautious. That said, I don’t know how the city thinks it can enforce a curfew when thousands of people are sleeping on the street nightly. Will the police force them to find cardboard boxes and stay in those?

The current thinking is that for each confirmed case of the virus another five to ten cases are silently shopping, working, sitting on the subway next to us and who knows how many people they are in turn infecting? That said, we’ve got prescriptions to pick up later.

Because we live two blocks from Central Park, I’m hoping we’ll be able to at least get over there daily (as long as we’re healthy, knock wood).

When I think about being ordered to stay in the apartment 24/7 I develop an immediate case of the heebie-jeebies. And yet that is the new normal for much of Italy and other parts of Europe. Our new reality is jarring and it has the annoying habit of abruptly changing from hour to hour. Nuisance aside, under the gritted teeth and behind the rolling eyes is the certainty that this is going to get worse. Widespread testing still isn’t available ensuring that most of those silently infected people continue infecting others.

Our “government” (aka The Dear Leader) is throwing kajillions of dollars at the stock market in order to save rich people’s investments. I’m curious to see how long it takes them to start bailing out the rest of us. If they bother.

When I lost my job back in October I was pissed and worried. Now, bizarrely enough, having at least another two months of unemployment benefits with the prospect of a pandemic-induced extension allows me to go back to sleep after waking in anxiety sweat at 3 am. I don’t expect that my video interview with Springer Nature last week is going to magically produce a job but here I am, still sending out resumes and dutifully recording that on the Dept. of Labor’s website.

Anyone ready for universal health care yet?

Do we really have to start seeing dead bodies in the street before we can agree that this country can easily afford to implement universal health care (and should have decades ago)? Apparently we do because even now every politician but one is yammering away about what has to be done while doing none of it. One esteemed butthead who keeps sticking his foot in his mouth shouted over and over during the debate the other night that people “will be able to be tested and treated for free” and that they would be “made whole” (not sure what his definition of “whole” is, but I digress), making it sound as if this is our current reality.

It’s not.

A friend is coughing and running a bit of a fever but can’t get tested because her temperature isn’t 100.4. She also received an email that her regular doctor is no longer accepting her insurance. Are you kidding me?

My strategy, for the time being, is to shove my (well-washed) fingers into my ears and yell LA LA LA LALALALALALALA as loudly as I can while wearing gloves every time I leave the apartment. I’ll keep checking on friends whose health is precarious to begin with and make sure they have what they need. I’ll watch my stats, views, and reads continue to go into the toilet and know that this is our new normal.

And, yes, I will keep writing. And reading (so you, reading this now, get busy)!

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