I’m Not Going Back Inside

Life is short — live dangerously.

Photo by davide ragusa on Unsplash

[*lights cigarette*]

Some of you will find what I’m about to say offensive — bordering on reckless. But there’s something I want to say because it’s something that I feel viscerally, and I wanna get it off my chest and on the record, and what better way to say what’s on your mind than to press a green “Publish” button on a blog to a few fistfuls of strangers? Beats tweeting. (What doesn’t?)

Alright, here goes: I’m done with the pandemic. I’m done staying inside, staying home, standing six feet apart from you … all of it. I’m finished. I just wrapped up attending a 300-human indoor wedding in New York without a mask, riding the 7 to all corners of Queens and the G through Brooklyn and the LIRR everywhere else. Covid was with me on the train, in bed with me at the hotel, in every hug and kiss. It even made the trip back to Austin with me and spent over a week in my home. It did nothing; I felt nothing. And that wedding was fucking awesome.

It’s not the first time I’d been so obviously exposed: In August 2021 when I shared a hotel room, a brewery tour bus, several plates of food, and an even greater quantity of beers and cocktails with it while at a bachelor party in Vermont.

In both cases, I found out after the fact. Nothing. Squadoosh. Zip. Cero. That doesn’t count the dozens of other folks who meandered into my six-foot safety circle or closer, who would off-hand mention they got it.

This disease ain’t catching me, or I ain’t catching it, and maybe if I do it won’t be so bad, and maybe even if it is I’ll “deserve” it the way people who smoke — and boy, howdy, how I’ve smoked — “deserve” lung cancer. However the calculus nets out, I’m kissing masks and distancing and quarantining and isolation goodbye, and kissing all of you hello. Lemme tell you why.

The Past 26 Months: A Brief Overview

When the virus made its deadly inroads en route to killing over 1,000,000 Americans — what a staggering fucking number and indictment of our competence as a body public and a body politik — I was among the first inside and the first to wrap up my mouth. I didn’t wanna catch this thing, but I also naively hoped maybe if enough of us…