Saturday, March 21, 2020
My wife tells me I got a little pompousy that last round. Pulled out the ole windbag and strapped it on. “Hey…I’m going to discourse on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs like it’s never been talked about before while I unveil my experiment and contribution in play by talking in highhanded tones about play and the necessity for play.”
Well…I was, after all, announcing…my website.
My wife and daughter last year made me a lecturn for Christmas to stand and give lectures behind now and then.
It’s pretty fun. Every year we label the year — lovefest, dreamfest, funfest — etc…I keep trying to have lecturefest and they are like fuck off pa.
That’s right. My eight year old daughter says fuck off pa. I even have a lecture voice I use when I’m really firing.
Well, whatever. It’s a fight. And sometimes you swing and miss a little bit. Just a tad. And now the image of some pompous windbag in the ring trying to swing is in my mind, so it’s all good.
Moving on. Because there are more important things to get to. Week two has arrived and the fight is still on. What do I know at this point? Fucking covid is on my green pastoral shores fucking things up big time. I want him sucking my balls and soon. But I got my brain, I’m gonna use it. I got my guts, my heart, my soul, and I’m gonna use em. I got my computer, and I’m gonna type it, I got my words, and I’m gonna say them, and I got my spirit, and I’m gonna spew it.
Click boom bust, a swing a punch, I post this to facebook and the fight is on:
This is a strange, weird, absolutely surreal world we’re living in right now. And it is an idiotic clusterfuck. I don’t know what we’re doing or where any of this is going. And strangest of all is how much fun so many people seem to be having.
Everywhere you look someone is goofing off. The whole thing has the feeling of one big giant college party. Never have people in Seattle been this nice, this friendly, this willing to engage and have a conversation, even tell a joke and goof around.
WTF. Isn’t this a pandemic?
When I was on the NICU with my daughter there was a sense of camaraderie — that where it counted most we were all connected — there was an acknowledgment of shared pain, shared hopes, shared dreams–that only the people there truly could understand each other because they shared something deeply important in common. One woman wrote on a whiteboard in the staff lounge — “god bless all the families on this floor”. Yep.
You sense that spirit here now in the city. It’s real. Its palpable. It’s a pandemic, but weirdest of all — it’s fun.
On 45th street, near a gas station, someone’s put up a giant sign that reads:
I used to cough to cover my farts, now I fart to cover my coughs.
This morning I went out to get some flonase for my wife (she has a cold, she might have covid, she might die! Shut the fuck up fear, let’s chill out and relax) and a cupcake for my daughter. We had to pre-order the cupcake because the store is closed. At the walgreens the lady behind the counter was wiping down the counter after every customer. The cupcake worker told us “to stay safe out there”, as if we were in some giant blizzard and all aware of our shared iglooness, our shared need to keep each other warm. A woman on her bike (riding a bike in the viral butthole blizzard storm you crazy fool? I like you) held the door open for us. YOU DON’T DO THIS. This violates the rules…it is about social distancing! But she did it. And she did it because it was clear she really wanted to talk to somebody. So I made a joke about not coughing on her that fell a little flat. Oh. Right. We’re trying to live now. Shut up about all of that.
My wife and daughter have been going to parks. Schools closed, what else are you going to do? All around you see parents playing with their kids, like legitimately stoked, all the way — dads out of shape running with lacrosse sticks to play with their sons, moms going down slides, kids eating cinnamon sticks and joking about how they need to make sure they are good and “social distance” while asking each other what their names are and then playing dogpile (little side story — before my wife’s school closed the kids were playing a game call Corona tag. They licked their hands and then smacked each other and whoever got smacked with the wet hand had the virus and was going to die. This is some funny shit, and reminds me that maybe one of the only things to survive from the day of the plague was ring around the rosy, the songs kids sang back then. What does this say about human beings? I don’t know but I like it.)
Everyone wants to make a friend. Everyone wants to be a friend. It’s like the governor has been taken off of life, the feeling is that anything really is possible, that we’re all on some huge road trip and who knows where it is headed, and we’re on it together, so we might as well nod in acknowledgment, say hi, and also have some fun. Maybe the barriers are just broken down. Maybe we all just realize we’re in it together. Maybe it is all just…shock…a tiny bit fun?
My wife and I joked our asses off on the nicu. One morning while our daughter was downstairs fighting for her life, unconscious, and we didn’t know what was going to happen, we were sitting in the family common room passing the time and my wife moved her butt a little bit and let out this giant fart.
She had just given birth and didn’t have control of her bladder or her butthole at all. Which is to say less control than normal, because she never really has that much control, particularly if you get her laughing. So anyway, she moves her butt and she farts really loud and other families are around, some are waiting for surgery, and I’m like, what was that, what did you just give birth or something? And she starts laughing and everyone is watching us, to see if we are laughing, and we are, and then they are laughing too.
Yeah…it feels like that. Fun.
And then there is me. From the start I’ve said fuck the bullshit, fuck the hysteria, fuck the madness. I have laughed at covid, laughed at the hysteria, and told that virus to suck my balls. And I mean it.
I have caught myself the last week wondering if i am fucking crazy. Who tells a virus to suck their balls? Is that nuts?
Is it?
I read about what happened in italy and I read about spain and I was like, dude, what are you thinking, questioning the conventional wisdom? what are you thinking saying the whole thing can suck your nuts? what were you thinking a week ago?
But I wake up this morning, I see people playing in the sun, laughing, goofing, and I remember what i thought when this all began — That the truth is you can’t stop life. And you shouldn’t try. What you should do is embrace it. You should unleash it. You just might surprise yourself. And even if you don’t, at least you’re alive. The first thing I said when I saw all of this was…covid? Covid can suck my balls. Add I meant it. I said I was going to build that, I was going to follow it, I was going to grow it, and meanwhile, while I was doing it, damn it if it wasn’t a little bit fun. Shoot me. I’m alive. What else do you want? And I’m not the only one.
People are alive. And they are living now. Everywhere. There are parties springing up in peoples backyards. Nobody gives a shit about the governor’s urge to keep us separated. People want to play and goof and they are. Alki beach was packed yesterday. Greenlake has never been more crowded. Yoga classes held outside, people working out and lifting weights, the skatepark jammed…it is on. The spirit, the spirit of life is in all of us and we want to use it while we can.
You go to a park today, you see families playing, you see lovers holding hands, you see bikers and rollerbladers, old people watching the sun rise up over the sound…
And what do you see? Do you see someone breaking social distancing laws? Or do you see what makes life worth living?
The chant going up, in many hearts, and souls now — is live, live!
You can hear the critics, standing on the sidelines saying “Well very inspiring, you self-absorbed twats. And meanwhile your policies would have old people and those with pre-existing conditions die.”
Yeah. Well. About that. Do you see what is happening to the economy right now? Have you read history? Do you know what the great depression was like? Are you fucking crazy? For every person with a pre-existing condition who doesn’t get coronavirus RIGHT NOW but six months from now, there are god knows how many jobs, how many livelihoods, being flushed down the drain. And everyone knows it. And knows one way or another life is going to get a hell of a lot harder. And so, while they can, while this whole thing is still sort of novel and goofy — can you really blame them for having fun?
Speaking of economic numbers — its a mistake to think of them as some cold, unfeeling calculus — that is LIFE! Those are dreams, those are goals, those are hobbies and passions and loves, honeymoons and bar mitzvahs and graduations and one night stands and book readings and dinners that suck and are overpriced and waiters snobbily talking about the wine list and a pa standing in front of a podium and pontificating about safe camping practices to two girls who pretend to listen before they get on their flight!
Fuck all who cares!
Because now it’s a sunny Saturday and the surreal nature of going against all the instincts of human beings — who move, who breathe, who live, who create, who build — to shut things down hangs in the air like a fart that does not belong.
Shut down for what? To achieve what? to end up where, exactly?
In the sun on a nice Saturday like this, if you stare out at the ocean and life keeps beating, normal, and free, you feel your blood get up, you feel the strength in your back, and you start to ask other questions…
We have a shitty health care system and we’re understaffed. Great. Invest in it now. Call Elon musk on his bluff and build ventilators like crazy. Fix the fucking problem. Now. get in the game. Don’t blow up the economy. Get people back to work and unleash all that can be done. Now.
You get nowhere telling everyone to sit at home with their thumbs in their butts while you try to tamp life down and a virus does what it does — continues to spread, continue to infect — anyway.
It’s retarded, you shout at the sunshine and the kids playing in the sand and the guy hawking ice cream despite the ban. Literally. Not as a perjorative. Literally. Retarded. We are retarding ourselves, retarding ourselves where it counts most — in our creative, imaginative, life spirit-building explosion capabilities.
And it won’t work.
Yeah, a few less people might die. But fuck a duck what is life about anyway? Is life about living as long as you can, or about living as much as you can while you can?
This is the point!
Goddamn it’s a beautiful day and the sun is shining and isn’t this just, still, a fucking cold virus? Didn’t you say this a week ago and didn’t that feel right?
What do you really mean when you say covid can suck my balls? Don’t you mean, quite literally, that that fucker can’t take your life? So live. So scoff at it. Scoff at the whole thing. Live. Live. Live!
And then I’m back in the ring. And I don’t care. It’s me and covid and sure I’m a guy who’s got his ass kicked all over the place the last week trying to get this non-nucleus asshole to suck my balls…but fuck it…
Shut down my theater, fuck with my family, tell me to be serious and not create and be afraid.
Fuck you son, I’m making fun of all of this and playing my ass off on you. Suck it. Covid.
Tell me no, you must support the party line and not ask questions and if you do you are a heartless tool. Fuck you and your orthodoxy that put a shitload of kids in seattle out of school with nowhere to go.
After all, what is invisible right now, other than covid that bitch ass coward, are the numbers of kids with no future, with no chance to learn and grow. And that, to me, is unconscionable. That to me brings to mind a society that truly is comprised of nothing but a bunch of pussies. Who would sell the hopes and dreams of their children, the potential in their kids, so that they all might have better odds at living just a little bit longer?
So the sun is shining and this is fun and weird and surreal and I’m on the beach saying fuck you to all of it and I don’t care, and in a few days we might be fucked. It’s true. Without a doubt. This might just be the calm before the storm. This might be the beat in the horror movie where the monster has circled once, killed someone, and now everyone’s having a beach party anyway and I might be the guy saying hey who wants to go swimming naked while drunk?
Sue me.
I recommend living. Living is good. I recommend risk. risk is good. I recommend failure. Failure is good. I recommend acknowledging problems and fixing them instead of trying to hide them and cover them up by blowing up everything else around them.
I stand at golden gardens, swarming with families having fun, a place that is supposed to be closed, and I say fuck it. And it’s like, I can feel it, yes, this is covid, sucking my nuts. Because I’m alive and I’m still living and devil be damned if I don’t give a fuck.
Suddenly everything that has happened, again, feels so totally stupid:
Hey, we don’t have enough hospital beds. I know, let’s destroy our economy!
Good thinking! No backlash there!
Hey, covid is still spreading. Because it is a virus. It will keep spreading.
I know! Kick kids out of school! Forever!
Good thinking!
Hey, we need to protect those who are sick and old.
I know! Make everyone else basically live as if they too were sick or old. Because hey, they can always get these days back anyway can’t they. I mean, you can go back in time, you did it a few rounds ago. Right! John Connor will come back and show us how.
Hey wasn’t that just a movie!
Good thinking!
It’s stupid. It’s a cluster fuck.
And it’s fun.
It is fucking fun.
Life is fun.
Even when it is dumb.
And the more fun it is, the more covid is licking my balls. Right now. Today he’s licking them hard. Right? Right? Right? Isn’t that how it all goes? Isn’t that it?
After all, I went out with my daughter this morning and nobody was on the road and I don’t know what it was, but it was just in me, i start shouting “the town is ours, all of it, it is ours rabber, it belongs to us!” and swerved back and forth all over the place honking the horn and goofing off. My daughter laughed. Suck it. covid. You’re sucking now, and you know it.
Everyone is waiting for the governor to “ground us”. He put out this press conference and he sounded just like a disappointed dad. Look at it, listen to him. It’s like we all came home late and smelled a little bit of booze and are trying to hide a hickey. “I am so disappointed in you…you’ve been…living!”
So what do you do when you’re in this suck it covid place, when it is sunny, and it’s spring and you know your daughter is a little bit afraid. She’s nervous. She’s thinking ahead. She’s wondering about whether all the stores will close and if we’ll be able to have easter and collect eggs. We got some at walgreens today. Any kid who is thinking weeks ahead and wondering about whether or not she can have easter eggs is a little big wigged out.
What do you do? You keep on living, that’s what. We’re going to alki and we’re buying some fish and chips and we’re walking along the beach and we’re making friends and I am even going to take a shower and shave my beard a bit to be a bit more presentable to all who might want to talk and goof and laugh about how life is fun and covid is nothing more than a ballsucking asshole.
And my daughter will carry with her forever the image of her father who said we’re here in the shit but who gives a shit we’re together and it matters to me that both of us go have some fun. That day on the beach will live in her mind. Even after I am gone.
The governor is probably going to ground us soon. And we’ll do as we’re told, as much as we can. We’ll keep living. Covid..I’ll find another way for him to suck my balls then. and the clusterfuck control bullshit will continue in some form or another. And maybe, somewhere…the shit will click in others’ minds —
Hey…is it important for a young daughter to have that kind of day? Do I want to live in a world where a father is allowed to give his daughter that kind of day? I’m betting on the goodness of people that they’ll understand.
Yes. this it. That’s all. It’s just this simple. I say suck my balls covid. And I have fun. And I live for the moment. And it’s done. I mean, fuck a duck, aren’t we out at the beach enjoying the sun and just keeping the goddamn party rolling? Isn’t that all? Didn’t you start this a week ago saying fuck you to the hysteria, I’m not going to wig? Well then fa di dah bud, looks like you’ve got it all sorted out…go get some.
Have a nice day, go home, have a nice night, maybe write some more jokey shit tomorrow, after all, who doesn’t want to hear and read jokey shit right now? I know I do. And if I do then…well there you go.
And as I’m dreaming up the next thing, as my brain is getting ready to go click boom bust again…and as I’m remembering the soothing statistics of this disease — 80 percent fine, what a bunch of bullshit this all is…as I’m staring out at the sun and thinking you know what, it’s dumb, but covid is sucking your balls right now and soon it will be done…
A guy walks toward us while we were running around near golden garden’s swings. He has a mask on and looks a little shaken. He stumbles through a hello and then asks us if we have any hand sanitizer. We say no. He has a little bottle with him. He is emotional. His hands are shaking. I have to ask him if he is offering us some. Because he just holds it in his hand, standing there, staring at us but not really seeming to see us, or even see exactly where we all are. He says yes and then offers it to each of us, telling us that the virus survives on steel for 72 hours and that it is no joke, and then he opens up to us… and it all comes spilling out…about how he has three family members in the hospital right now, that his 61 year old mother almost died on Sunday, that she’s intubated and has been on a ventilator all week, that his dad is in quarantine, and his grandma is also in quarantine, that he hasn’t been able to see any of them, hasn’t been to the hospital, and that it is no joke and he doesn’t want anyone to go through what his family is going through right now. He saw us playing and thought if we didn’t have any sanitizer, maybe this would help.
What else can I say but thanks.
Then he tells us how the virus…it seemed cathartic for him to talk about it — the virus lives on steel for three days, that it is going to take off, that a lot of people are going to be sick and the hospitals are going to be overwhelmed, I prod him with questions because he seems to want to keep talking…and so he keeps talking…telling us that providence hospital is already full, that hospitals are designed to operate at capacity, that there are only 160,000 ventilators in the u.s., nowhere near enough, that the park should be closed, nobody should be here — i ask him what he thought we should do — he repeats himself…that the park should be closed, no one should be here, that Everett is locked down and he hopes everything else would lock down too…he keeps repeating that the virus is no joke. He also says that Italy’s curve is like ours, but ours is worse, although we caught it earlier, so maybe it won’t be as bad, and that he doesn’t want to see people hurt like he is hurting, like his family is hurting, and he says all of this in front of my daughter, and as my daughter turned away, upset, he kept going, not realizing he was upsetting her, which I found strange and also…well…real. This was someone who was in it, and was living it, had apparently come to a very busy park to try to do some good such as he could, that maybe he set for himself some kind of goal of approaching and helping one family, that maybe he felt he was lucky to have a chance to share things…and to vent…and so he was taking that chance. He would have talked to us all afternoon, I think.
I ask him his name and he says Paul — it comes tumbling out. There is a touch of gratitude in his eyes…
I thank him and tell him I wish his family the best and he says yeah thanks…and sort of stumbles off, holding his bottle of sanitizer in his two hands, like a compass, or a pot of gold, or the slimmest of lines to hold onto amidst the wind and waves and tempest of his life.
As he went, I observed that his hair was combed, short, black, he had a little bit of stubble, was wearing a microsoft sweatshirt, a black t-shirt underneath, and some of those hipster type jeans, green, and some old soccer shoes. Little things like this are sometimes interesting, help me see his world more clearly…how he got up this morning, found a way to comb his hair, found a way to put on a shirt, found a shirt from work…the day he started work at microsoft must have been a big thing. Now it hangs on him loose and flowing, something picked up off the floor, an ornament to a life that he is not living, a life that doesn’t matter at all, because he is living through hell and possibly losing his family.
Paul was two feet from me but a million miles away, living on a completely different planet, experiencing completely different things. Later it reminded me of a short story Mark Twain once wrote about war. Churchgoers are raising hell, ready to go fight, and an old man…as if from their future…walks in and sits among them and tells them what they are about to bring. I’m reminded of leaving the NICU, where my daughter was barely alive, and going out into the world, and looking at everyone laughing and playing and partying, and thinking, you people have no clue. You have no clue how precious and fragile and beautiful and rare and delicate life is. And you have no clue because you are not thinking, you are thinking about your day to day and what’s for lunch and this and that and the other and you have no clue. I pitied them. Because in that place I was in, that rarefied air, what mattered was absolutely crystal clear.
Paul disappears into the crowd, his mask still on, and I lose sight of him, he’s gone.
In a world that is surreal, and strange, and getting weirder every day…things just went bump again. The more my wife and I thought about it, the more we agreed maybe it was just that we had absolutely no experience with a conversation like that, happening like that, while at a park with our kid in the NW, where around us the shores are still green, the water is still blue, and the sun is shining.