Those of us born between 1965 and 1980 prepared our entire lives for The Apocalypse. Whether from zombies or Captain Trips, alien invasion or Cyberdyne Systems, we Gen Xers have been ready and looking forward to car chases with Mel Gibson and Will Smith. For me, however, the COVID-19 quarantine did not bring the confidence, excitement, and success I had forever-envisioned. No zombie battles or racing through the street with my loyal canine companion. No alien ships emerging from the clouds. No armor-covered Dodge Chargers. Just silence. And uncomfortable masks.
I submit my diary as my confession of my failure.
DAY 1: Digest news of the spread of COVID-19 and the CDC recommendations. Live the definition of irony since my life is now in order but, in pursuing my peace, I moved away from my entire family at the inception of what will probably be an apocalypse. Decide to remain happy. Examine possibilities: During the Great Plague of London, student Isaac Newton, quarantined after Cambridge University closed, began his motion and gravity studies. When quarantined during the plague of 1564, William Shakespeare wrote King Lear, Macbeth and Anthony and Cleopatra. And Milton completed Paradise Lost while practicing social distancing during the Great Plague of London in 1665. Consider what I could accomplish.
DAY 2: Complete and edit two or three of my unreleased novels. Tweak short stories. Research publishing houses. The possibilities for success are endless. A wave of inspiration fills me. I write all day and forget to eat. But I don’t forget to have sex. Twice. This lockdown thing is a version of fun. Hum REM’s It’s the End of the World as We Know It.
DAY 3: Learn they will hold all my university classes online. Read hundreds of directives from each university, field student inquiries, hope the faculty union can negotiate a stipend while I recreate all my classes from scratch. Read numerous journal articles about online learning. Adapt. Realize I am forced to train on tech I already understand because others are still using overhead projectors and typewriters. Have some resentment. Spend the entire day learning about online synchronous meeting options and responding to frantic student emails. Shift gears that evening while cooking shrimp risotto primavera: Rekindle my determination to make significant accomplishments while forced to shelter in place.
DAY 4: Make a list of projects: Clean out closet. Restructure the laundry room. Organize computer files. Discard old files and papers. Read the seventeen books on my nightstand. And the fifteen in Audible. And the six in Kindle. And if memory serves, a few in my file cabinet. Decide I’m tired and play computer games as a break from making lists. Distract myself with more sex.
DAY 5: Hear from a military friend they activated the National Guard and martial law is inevitable. Sit silently as my husband calls his family. Wonder what I will do if I am alone. With the cat. And no food. Wonder how cat tastes. Gag a little. Decide I need provisions. Wonder if the government has created this situation to reduce civil rights. Feel powerless. Make cookies. Ignore cookies and choose sex.
DAY 6: Call my parents. Insist my father stop going to the filthy convenience store to get his newspaper and his lottery ticket. Suffer his resistance knowing he will survive the inevitable but be unable to live with the guilt of bringing the disease to my mother who will not survive. I envision dueling caskets. Call my brother and ask him to talk to them. We laugh because our parents will listen to him.
DAY 7: Shop for provisions. Discover the store has no toilet paper, alcohol, and hydrogen peroxide, Lysol or gluten-free bread. Lose faith, once again, in homo sapiens. Write my will. Wonder about toilet paper substitutes. Discover salons are closed. Wonder how I can prolong my hair color. Wonder if I can shave with a kitchen knife should I run out of razor blades and hair remover. Wonder how badly a steak knife will hurt on my lady-parts. Decide suicide is the only answer. Decide my first-world problems are too embarassing to admit. Paint my toenails a garish beach-summer orange to renew my will to live. Make a mess. Remember, I’m out of nail polish remover. Scour the house for turpentine, which I use to remove the polish overspill. Burn the skin around my toenails. Admire my toenail polish and realize I removed all the polish from my fingernails. Wonder about the most painless manner to commit suicide.
DAY 8: Hear the President is considering quarantining New York, New Jersey and parts of Connecticut. Diary my first apocalypse failures. Post on social media how glorious my life is.
DAY 9: Start studying and practicing Italian again. Annoy my husband by speaking only Italian for several hours. Receive news how Italy is not faring well during the lockdown. Consider studying German. Have sex. Alone. Only speak Italian during the solo act. Believe, at some point, I cried out: “Do you want to eat fish?”
DAY 10: Purchase all the alcohol in the liquor store while practicing angry social distancing. Make peanut butter truffles. Decide truffles and Jack Daniels are a perfect pairing as I ennumerate the list of personal medical conditions making me more susceptible to dying from Covid. I really must get my 10000 daily steps. Promise to speak English and have sex several times.
DAY 11: Cancel my trip to Iceland. Cry for several minutes. Ingest more truffles and Jack Daniels. Insist we buy some lovely fish for our new aquarium. We find a lovely assortment at the third pet store and we fill the tank with beautiful color and life. I name only the three angel fish before the tragedy about to befall us.
DAY 12: Surf the net. Fight nausea at the attempts at uplifting posts on Facebook. Rant aloud to no one: Jesus is an absentee landlord and doesn’t care. Satan did not release the virus. Consider the virus might be bioterrorism. Start calling the plight Captain Trips. Hope the real-life version is better than the movie. Except for Gary Sinise. He’s delicious. Briefly wish I had moved to Alaska. That state is the definition of social distancing.
DAY 13: Work on my novel. Realize no one will be around to read it. Laugh because no one would read it before the virus, so now my failure is excused. Feel triumphant. Wonder if I should buy leather pants and a crossbow. Imagine Washington DC overgrown with trees and overrun with wandering zoo animals. Decide it would be an improvement. Run a few miles on the treadmill. Feel triumphant.
DAY 14: Observe a customer at the food store not bag her own groceries as the cashier slowly bags everything while seventy people stand in line and groan. Listen to the man behind me proselytize about the second-coming. Consider feigning a hacking cough and wallow in my apt opinion of humanity. Return home and begin suffering from cabin fever.
DAY 15: Ask hubby if he wants to play manhunt: Turn off all the lights and play hide and seek? He hesitates. Our two flights of stairs total thirty-two. I envision one or both of us falling down the stairs and breaking bones. I mention that Google Home will call 9–11 should we need. He says: “Hey Google, call 9–11.” It does. He frantically disconnects the call. Emergency services calls back and he respectfully explains how we were testing our Google Home while I laugh so hard I fall off my chair and unsuccessfully stifle snorting.
DAY 16: Need something to rekindle my desire to live. Try to learn to play pool. Realize my old glasses do not permit me to see the balls and angles. Realize I should have filled my new eyeglass prescription. Work on my will. Demand sex. Get it.
DAY 17: Hubby looks feverish. Listen to him coughing. Wonder if he’s faking it. Consider what I will do if he has COVID-19. Join his malaise with my own cold and not enjoy my feverish sleep interrupted by nightmares of zombies followed by anxiety attacks.
DAY 19: Lose two days. Feel better. Make a pie. Visit the eye doctor to be told they are closed. Because they can’t get close enough to test a prescription and fit. Am told they are not an essential business. As I drive home, I find every fast-food joint is open and serving endless car-trapped people in drive-through lines. The liquor stores are open. But I will be crashing my car because I can’t get glasses. Oh, okay.
DAY 20: Watch Contagion. Understand, truly, the meaning of regret. Wish I had, instead, chosen Lord of the Rings. Shop for 9 mm ammunition. Discover every brick and mortar store is sold out. Search online ammo distributors. Find these retailers also sold out. Call prepper friends. Suffer their laughter that I am late to the prep party. Make a pie.
DAY 21: Venture out to find toilet paper on a tip from Facebook friend. Find it. Buy one package. Not telling anyone where I found it. Fuck you. That stash is mine. Also shop for provisions. Visited four stores to find ricotta. And gluten-free breadcrumbs. Scream at a maskless woman who repeatedly came into my space: “Fucking bitch with your bleached fake blond hair. Stay away from me. I swear I will punch you.” Agree with hubby that I should not go out again. Wish I had ammo. Decide to never leave my house again. Arrive at home and meditate for an hour. Do yoga. Worry my excess weight will kill me when I get COVID-19. Make another pie.
DAY 22: Go for a run. Shop on Amazon. Weed the garden. Remove the brambles in the copse of trees at the back of our yard. Win the battle with several thousand cuts, stab wounds and scratches. Tell others I tackled a hoard of zombies. Run a fever. Make brownies.
DAY 23: Go into mourning when several of my students report either having the virus or being quarantined with a family member who has the virus. Find out an acquaintance has died. Make a cake. Don’t eat it. Get tested for Covid and wish I were dead after having my brain punctured through my sinus cavity. Have to pull over because I cannot see to drive through my tears. Not that I can see through my glasses anyway.
DAY 24: Practice deep breathing to control my fury at the whiny shitbags on Facebook crying about having to stay home. Oh no, you have to stay home with your kids! And your spouse! Oh, the inhumanity. Ugh. I’ll tell you about what to worry: When the banks freeze the cash and you have no food. Or when the government imposes martial law and gangs roam the streets looking for food. Or when the mortgage company forecloses on your house because you’ve earned no income for four months. Or when they are body-bagging your mother because of this stupid virus and lack of testing and fat bitches with fake lips and fake blond hair who won’t stay home and keep social distance. I’ll give you something to whine about.
DAY 25: In an effort to raise my spirits, I take a long bath and list my blessings. Only count enough blessings to last half-way through the bubble disintegration. Decide I need to get out more. Realize I can’t. Play video games on my phone. Find a new interior design game. Become obsessed and spend $30. Berate myself. Skip making pie and just hit the Jack.
DAY 26: Hubby makes a fire in our new fire pit. We curl up on the settee and stare at the canopy stars. We see a satellite zoom past. Perhaps we should reconsider gas-fueled vehicles? If this is the clarity in the sky after only a month, what could be accomplished in a year? Make love.
DAY 27: Give hubby an acceptable haircut. Decide I need to color my hair. Make a mess as I my highlights disappear under an orange-rust haze. Wonder why salons are not essential. Isn’t the concept of essential subjective? Wonder why the aquarium and liquor stores are essential, but my dentist is not. Decide the virus is not good enough for the end of the world. We need a nice alien invasion to wipe us out. Have sex.
DAY 28: Realize all our new fish are infected with ick. Panic create a quarantine tank and despair at they die one-by-one. Three out of 30 survive. As I peer into the quarantine tank, the irony does not escape me.
DAY 29: Mourn my reappearing gray hair. Curse Loreal. Shop for hair color for most of the day. Decide gray looks good with most of my clothes. Wish I could wear some leather corset and carry a crossbow like I would be in a respectable apocalypse. Shop for cross bows. Shop for leather corsets. Hubby appreciates my shopping. Have sex. Make cookies.
DAY 30: Surf Facebook. Notice three people who post almost hourly. Note all three are morbidly obese and hoarder-types. Wonder how they define time. Rekindle my belief that humanity is doomed. Go for a run, clean the bathrooms, and refuse to post on Facebook. Have sex.
DAY 31: Appreciate the wonderful side of lockdown: Musicians offering free concerts–including a musician friend offering a weekly live performance. Photographers offering free courses. Fun new apps like making a Facebook avatar. The fresh air. The crystal blue sky. The recognition of medical professionals. People are honorable. Strife is opportunity to excel. To connect. To express compassion. Everything is okay. Make salmon and salad. Make a cheesecake from a recipe on Facebook.
DAY 32: Discover the cheesecake recipe smells like warm dog shit and tastes like cough syrup. I know not to use gelatin. Why, oh why, do I not trust myself? All that cream cheese lost to the apocalypse. Beg hubby to flush the pie down the toilet. Deal with the Association Nazis who inspect the repairs to our deck and threaten fines because we did not ask them first. Discover through negative fake news that the Facebook avatar is a tracking device–but confirm I cannot get the “care” emoji. No one can explain why. Read critical and complaining posts on the photography course site. People complaining their photos were not critiqued or chosen as best. Listen to actors giving medical advice alongside Bill Gates. Daydream how Dr. Who is coming for me. Stare out the window and lose track of time.
DAY 33: Daydream this crisis is only a dream. Daydream about dreams. Get caught in the multiverse. Make brownies.
DAY 34: Overdose on CBD oil. Might have had sex. Not sure. Definitely ate pie.
DAY 35: Confirm the gift I bought my mother in mid-February is yet to be delivered and is trapped in New York Customs. Spend the day harassing people about the delay. Because, well, I have nothing left to do. And I can’t spend one more minute watching the wear-masks and social distancing people debate the constitutional rights conspiracy people. Go for a run. Drink Jack. Have sex. In that order.
DAY 36: Spot a hawk perched in the woods behind our yard. Reconsider the koi pond. We killed enough fish for this lifetime. Wonder if a higher being is suffering a similar ethical crisis. Go for a run. Celebrate yet another birthday / holiday via Zoom Meeting. Decide Zoom Meeting is the third ring of hell. Eat chicken for dinner solely to avoid taking the lives of more fish.
DAY 37: Make fruit salad and pork roast. Need ingredients. Suffer some brain-trust NASCAR want-to-be tailgating my ass while driving to the grocery store. As he passes, I notice he is alone in his car, with his window open, but wearing his mask. I pull alongside of him and begin coughing loudly, hacking and sputtering and making all the noise I can. Enjoy the moment as he frantically closes his window. Realize I am going to hell. Conclude I am already there.
DAY 38: Realize I posted a video on my website taken while still sporting face-mask pressure indents on my cheeks. My, my aren’t I puffy. Commit to use only online shopping. Spend forty minutes carefully selecting the items on my list using the shop-from-home app. Select review cart. Am told, only then, that all the items I selected but cayenne pepper are on back-order. Delete the list and the app. Wonder if becoming a Buddhist ascetic is my only route.
DAY 39: Run on the treadmill. Twice. Get several texts and messages from friends asking how I am. Realize how lucky I am that I have so many people to love–and that so many people love me. Do yoga. Make love. Sit in the dark in front of the aquarium and admire the three tenacious fish. Feel alive. Know that it will be better tomorrow.
DAY 40: The beaches are open and a friend’s video shows everyone on the beach is walking the boardwalk without masks. According to Genesis 7:24, the Great Flood lasted 150 days. Here we are at day 40. We are so fucked. Check my portfolio. Research the number of times one can file Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Day 41: Milton completed Paradise Lost while social distancing. Inspired, I write all day and forget to eat. But I don’t forget to have sex. Twice.
Day 47: Hope the faculty union negotiates a stipend while I again recreate my university classes for on-line delivery, master synchronous meeting options and respond to frantic student inquiries. Make shrimp risotto primavera and rekindle my determination for significant accomplishment while sheltering in place. Celebrate marathon binge of Grace and Frankie.
Day 48: Await murder hornets.
Day 63: Bawl crouched in my closet while storm-eating homemade truffles.
Day No Idea: Review my portfolio statement. Research bankruptcy. Refuse to make salmon.
Day Whatever: Overdose on CBD. Might have had sex. Definitely ate pie. All the fish are dead. Toilet is clogged with old holiday napkins after we used the last roll of toilet paper. Fuck journaling.
