The last time I “went out”
On March 11, my friend Gaby and I decided to get a spontaneous drink at Burnside, a bar where I’ve had drinks maybe 276 times since I moved to New York. Burnside has many great qualities, but in particular I like its emptiness. I dislike crowds in general (unless it’s the Pitchfork Music Festival), and especially when I’m trying to catch up with someone in relative quiet.Â
I got there around 5:30, and as anticipated, nobody was there. All day we’d been reading about COVID-19, and talking about COVID-19, so what we did was talk about it some more. I had learned a friend of mine was waiting to hear if she’d been diagnosed; Gaby was thinking about going to the grocery store that evening to pick up food. I had gone earlier that day, because I live across the street from one. I remember that we discussed it as a potentially very bad situation, but not one that would morph into disaster for at least a few weeks, or longer. We really believed that. We also talked about her work, as well as my work, and the bar was surprisingly full by the time we left. (I could recall more of what we talked about but I’m particularly hungover at the moment, hence why I’m blogging.)Â
Anyways, I got home, and sat down to watch television in my semi-drunk state, when that barrage of news occurred — the NBA being suspended because a player got sick, and Tom Hanks announcing he’d caught it — within 10 minutes of each other. I do not think I’m alone in saying that this is when it became suddenly “real” for me — not that I hadn’t taken it seriously before, but this was a tipping point where it became very clear how society was going to be impacted. All of a sudden, all our measured predictions seemed completely inane, and I had the drunken instinct to run back out to my grocery store to pick up some more nonperishables, including a (still unopened) bag of frozen chicken nuggets. The next day I learned my friend had indeed been diagnosed, and because of the steadily worsening news my dinner plans were canceled that Friday, as well as a birthday party I was going to on Sunday. From what I’ve learned about my friends who’ve had COVID-19, there’s a 100% certainty I would’ve been exposed at that birthday party.Â
Now it’s a month later, I’ve been at my girlfriend’s for all but a couple of days, and the sheltering in New York is going to last until at least May 15. Every now and then Gaby and I text each other with some variation of “remember when we got drinks?” We’re mostly kidding, and trying to stay positive, but yes, all of the time.Â
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