“I could have been skating here just a couple of weeks ago,” The Kid said Sunday as we walked past the quiet Prospect Park rink, its ice smooth with potential.
“That’s right,” I said. “There was a school outing here. I think it was three weeks. As I recall, you didn’t want to go.”
“I can’t ice skate, Dad. But it’s weird to think that’s only been three weeks. It feels like a hundred years.”
On Friday The Girlfriend and I walk to the bagel store on Vanderbilt. It’s the strongest she’s felt in two weeks; our pace is almost normal. She waits outside; I don gloves, pull a scarf over nose and mouth, enter. I like these bagels but usually buy elsewhere: two stores are closer — you know it’s Brooklyn; I can walk to three bagel shops in 10 minutes — and then this place is always jammed. Three weeks ago, waiting 7 minutes for a half-dozen bagels seemed intolerable. Now I’m the lone customer. They’ve added a 2-foot high plastic shield on the cashier’s two customer-facing sides, with rectangular holes covered by clear plastic strips through which to hand bagels, salads, schmears, bills (cash only). I buy a dozen everything bagels, thank the gloved-and-masked cashier for helping them stay open. “Happy to be working,” she says.
We walk north on Washington. On the corner with Atlantic a massive billboard still advertises the Atlantic 10 Conference basketball tournament (March 11-15, at Barclays Center down the street). For a golden moment My High School Friend Who Lives In Connecticut and I thought we could see Big East games at Madison Square Garden one afternoon, Atlantic 10 games at Barclays Center the same night. That was three weeks ago, too.
Sharp lines demarcate the Before and After of CoronaWorld. Lines are different for different families, different societies; some Americans seem yet to have drawn one. My extended group of Brooklyn families drew ours, shakily, on Friday, March 13. (Gov. Andrew Cuomo didn’t order a “pause” for New York until March 20, a day after California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave the country’s first “shelter in place” order.)
The previous day was The Girlfriend’s birthday. We had play tickets and restaurant reservations for us and her children; that morning we called it all off. I canceled Friday dinner reservations for the two of us. A prospective job meeting got changed from in-person to online. My book group postponed discussing William Gibson’s “The Peripheral.” I missed the closing of a BAM artist’s show about vinyl records.
In my “at a glance” calendar on March 12 I scrawled the words “Postpone unneeded socializing.” Begging the question: What socializing is essential?
For the sufficiently wealthy in New York City, culture is the air we breathe. (Since losing my job I’ve realized how much culture I can imbibe for cheap or free.) My calendar lists activities from the 10 days before CoronaWorld descended:
— My Connecticut Friend took me to see the Knicks upset the Rockets at Madison Square Garden (the game where Spike Lee couldn’t use his normal entrance).
— The Girlfriend’s child had their college senior-year art show opening (“Fable,” a variety of lovely prints on paper they fabricated, on a game-playing theme I didn’t quite track).
— The Kid and I saw the musical “Six” at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, her big birthday present from last fall. (Fun! She couldn’t have loved it more.)
— I got deeply discounted tickets to see “The Lehman Trilogy” at Nederlander Theatre. (There’s an essay to be written — not by me — on Sam Mendes, “1917,” “The Lehman Trilogy,” bravura directing/camera work/blocking, terrific acting, solid yet unilluminating scripts, popular entertainment, and art.) (Lots of senior citizens with me in the nosebleed seats: “Sarah! Down here, Sarah!” “Give me a minute, Marjorie. My God! Nobody told me there’d be a hundred stairs!” “Did you know this play is more than three hours?” “I had no idea!” “The usher told me.” “My God. That means I shouldn’t wait to use the bathroom.”)
— I probably saw a movie or two in there; I often walk a half-mile, use my BAM cinema discount card. Come to think of it I think I saw “1917” for a second time, this time with The Girlfriend, at The Nitehawk Cinema Prospect Park.
— I’m sure I went to the library two or three times.
— I’ve stopped dining out much (to save money), but The Kid and I probably got a slice at some point.
— I took My Connecticut Friend to see the band Destroyer at Brooklyn Steel.
I think of Destroyer as my last cultural hurrah. This was on the last Saturday BCW (Before CoronaWorld). I bonded in high school with My Connecticut Friend (along with Our Friend Who Lives In The Central Valley) over sports and bands: Talking Heads, Kraftwerk, The Pretenders, The Police, The Tubes, Gary Numan, Joe Jackson, XTC, The Boomtown Rats, Elvis Costello. Four decades later, we’re still going to games and shows.
Outside of The Girlfriend, My Connecticut Friend is the most culturally connected person I know. Once or twice a month he and his husband drive into the city, get a cheap hotel, eat in a couple of restaurants, see a show Friday night, two shows Saturday, maybe a Sunday matinee. They’ve got a smart, lively, sociable crew with whom they see theatre; I’m on the fringes, go when someone cancels. None likes sports or rock music as much as My Connecticut Friend and I.
When he reminds me that we saw Destroyer at this same club a few years ago I say, “Really? Are you sure it was me?” He snorts. “Do I know anyone else who’d want to see Destroyer?”
At Brooklyn Steel we like to stand on a platform about halfway back, just behind the sound crew. If we get on the rail no one’s in front of us; the sound is impeccable. Despite the name, Destroyer — really just Dan Bejar — falls somewhere amid glam-, folk-, and art-rock. I heard of him through the Canadian supergroup The New Pornographers; My Connecticut Friend introduced me to “Rubies” (2006), still our favorite, and since then we’ve tracked him faithfully if not fanatically. We get a beer and a spot on the rail just as the opening act finishes: perfect.
Twenty minutes later two friendly women in their 20s get our attention, ask if we can hold their places behind us as they head to the bar. (Folks can get a little pushy near the rail.) Sure, we say, just as Bejar’s six-piece band walks on. They scuttle the bar visit, settle in for the show. Now we’re all friends.
A couple of songs in, one of the women holds out a fat joint. “Fair warning,” she says. “We’re in the middle of a global pandemic. But I don’t think we’re sick.” (This is on March 7.) “Nor I,” says My Connecticut Friend. “I never leave the house,” I say. We all toke, then have a second round. Which might be a mistake — whatever strain they’re packing is potent. Bejar’s new album is a minor gem; he also plays several of our older favorites. All songs start soft, build to crescendoes, the trumpeter playing soaring solos, the keyboardist complex counter-melodies all fine tunes in their own right. Behar’s profligate pop gifts are belied by his demeanor: he sings looking at the floor, curly black hair flopped over his face; as the band cranks up he crouches, one hand on the mic stand, gaze at ankle level. Like most bands I’ve come to later in life I neither know nor much care what the songs are about; I’ve read enough to know he’s not a cretin. The songs are strong; the band rocks.
Afterward we bid farewell to our new friends, have a drink at a Williamsburg bar My Connecticut Friend has read about: it’s noisy, trendy, not our scene. I head to the subway, he to his hotel. A fine evening. As it happens, a final evening.
As the CoronaWorld curtain descends, My Connecticut Friend seems more reticent than anyone I know about the public shutdown. He sends an article that says the panic may be worse than the disease. I’m confused. Shouldn’t he be more protective than anyone? He’s a gay man who lived through the 1980s and ‘90s, lost a lover to HIV-AIDS. Shouldn’t we take all reasonable measures to curb this virus?
Of course we should, he texts. (This is March 13 — Day 1 of my family’s CoronaWorld.) For starters his husband is immunocompromised; they’ve gone to their vacation house for safety.
“This is just a suck-y way to live,” he texts. “And why? Because we didn’t do ‘this' the right way.” He cites Hong Kong’s handling of SARS: massive early testing, isolating the infected, quarantining the exposed. “Only as a last resort did they use widespread quarantine and shut down social structures in certain communities when the contagion got out of hand. Here, we are already at the last resort.”
He adds: “I’m so sad at the state of our country. Laid to waste by this contagion which may or may not be epically dangerous because we don’t have data because we don’t have testing because we don’t have a decent public health system because of the state of our country.”
I hear you, I text. Even those of us in relative safety have too much to grieve.
(New York state numbers as of Friday: 102,863 diagnosed with Covid-19, up 11.3 percent [a higher percentage jump than Wednesday or Thursday]; 2,935 dead, up 24 percent. Overall U.S. deaths: 7,007, up 20 percent.)
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