Panpocalypse Week Three: Ruin Porn
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, a queer disabled woman takes to biking through a shutdown New York City in search for the ex-girlfriend who broke her heart.
Lex Ad with Hail
As if I knew Gina would say no. As if she almost always says no. As if no is the only option and maybe it is. What can I expect from casual? What can I ask for?
It’s not like I didn’t plan ahead. Before the lockdown I made two possible bubbles for myself—one with Gina, one with Guapo and his girlfriend. I take my solitude hard, like I’m at a middle school dance and left alone against the padded gym wall, unworthy—not quarantine material.
Gina and I text fight.
“It’s fine she said no, but I don’t even get to be part of the conversation. Your ex has all the power and I have none. You have a straight relationship and still think straight.”
“We’re not ready. I told you my family comes first.”
“You always say that like I don’t know, like I’m an idiot, like I’m not a parent too.”
She ignores me for big chunks of times. My texts hang in the ether.
Perhaps I’m being unreasonable.
I push, she digs in. It feels hopeless.
I type, type, type this chapter. My dean says they will buy me dictation software. Last year I tried to register my disability with the Office of Equal Opportunity. I am told there is no mechanism for employees to register, but I can ask for the things I need. Last year I asked for my classes to be closer together on campus because it’s hard for me to walk longer distances in short periods of time. Instead the office offered me a wheelchair. I was so angry I wrote something nasty back, and deleted the whole thread. I should have accepted the wheelchair so I could have given it to someone who needed it.
This time, they say I can have the dictation software. I have to buy it myself, but I’ll be reimbursed. It’s a victory.
There’s a second message on Lex from the Germ Bubbler. I take a look. He’s a very cute trans man named Beemer. He writes, “What did you figure out about pods and risk and such? My pod is my kid’s mother and her bf. It’s an okay situation but not great for the long haul.”
“I haven’t figured out much and I am lonely.”
“I want to go toward energy, toward yes, not no. Negotiation, not hierarchy. Queer, not straight ideology. ”
We get off Lex and text and text. I want to go toward energy, toward yes, not no. Negotiation, not hierarchy. Queer, not straight ideology. Gina and I have been fighting about availability for most of our relationship. I love her, but like all my relationships since I came out, something is off. What I want, she cannot give me: Partnership. Commitment. A willingness to bend and shift with me.
Beemer asks for a socially distanced walk, and rides into Manhattan to see me. He is just as cute in person as he is in his photos, and he’s smart too, older than me, and established.
We are cold on a bench, but the conversation is easy. We show our lips and nose once as a tease, but we are well-behaved, we keep our distance and our masks on. Skaters clack clack clack nearby.
Later I ride Lana to a far away, nicer grocery store on A and Houston. I wear mittens it’s so cold.
Inside I wander the aisles, marveling at the fresh produce and gluten-free cookies I haven’t seen in weeks. There’s beef that’s not about to expire, and everyone is fully masked. The cashiers are behind two layers of plexiglass. I find shampoo and conditioner, which I’ve been out of for a couple days. I don’t buy much, but enough to make me feel better, to feel fed. Raspberries for my kid, a treat now. We haven’t had raspberries in almost two months.
When I get outside, it’s hailing. Late spring and little white balls hit the pavement. My seat is wet, just like the street. Little flurries around my eyes. I’m afraid to ride in the hail, but I need to get home. It’s my first time buying groceries with Lana. I talk to her because who else is there but me and my bike in this hailpocalypse?
“We can do this. This is why we’re together.”
I fiddle for a long time with the lock, basket, and bag of groceries, trying to arrange everything for optimum balance, and then I push off and into the bike lane. Lana is steady and strong. I go slow and brake gently. I turn onto A and eventually into the bike lane on Third. The sky is pearly white, like the inside of an oyster shell, and I wonder if there will be a rainbow.
On a corner, taped to a street lamp, I see a sign, wet from melting hail. “Le Monocle,” it reads, like the disappearing Lex ad. There are black-and-white photos from the era. Brassaï took these so many years ago. An underground, forbidden world of butches in beautiful suits and tuxes, femmes in elegant dresses and stacked heels. Dancing cheek to cheek, lined up at the bar, staring into the camera. A dare. I pull the sign off the pole, and it rips in my hands. Too wet. My hands are freezing. Whatever writing was at the bottom is no longer legible, washed out by the hail.
I fold it carefully into fours and slide it into the cup of my bra—the safest place for anything really, next to a hot, beating, wanting heart. The paper is cold next to my boob. I pedal on.
We make it home safely. Me and Lana. We don’t fall, so we don’t have to get up.
I cuddle under a blanket on the couch with my cat, take the paper out of my bra, and spread it out on a couch cushion. The sexy photos of Parisian queer nightlife are smeared into a rainbow. I can make out just one word, “Flatbush,” and so I write that down in my notebook so I don’t forget. I haven’t ridden my bike on Flatbush yet, but it’s a street I know well.
I remember the Lex promise, “We’ll find you,” and I say, “Yeah right,” into the empty living room.
At some point Beemer texts me, “You’re the pretty one here. The hot one. Also, I like that you’re super smart and cute. You’re a catch.”
I feel so stunned by this text, so much that I don’t really know what to text back. So far we’ve just shared research on germ bubbles, how other countries are doing them, “double bubbling” in Canada, and how we might try to see each other again.
“Lol, I haven’t felt like a catch in some time,” I text back and go to bed.
To feel like a treasure, to be valued, to be called cute and hot, a catch. I haven’t really heard any of that language since I came out. Or it hasn’t registered as real when I’ve heard it a couple of times.
The next morning I text back, “I like that you think I’m a catch.”
“It’s true.”
Ruin Porn
After a day of terrible heartburn, I take Lana out for a ride. I push off from Fourth Street and head east. It’s colder than I thought it would be, and my hands start to ache. No matter, I keep pedaling.
It’s almost seven p.m. and the streets are empty. The clapping starts when I’m on Delancey, which is mostly businesses, so I don’t hear much and I don’t stop to clap. Lately I’ve noticed extra graffiti and tagging, like the city is returning to ruin or to some earlier version of itself that I never saw. Seventies and eighties New York, ablaze, abandoned by all but the most devoted and those of us with nowhere else to go. As I bike deeper into the Lower East Side and Chinatown, I remember the movie Downtown 81 that I watched at Metrograph with Guapo last summer. It stars Jean-Michel Basquiat, who plays a wandering graffiti artist, the flaneur of rubble, music, and the lost New York of another favorite movie of mine, Desperately Seeking Susan.
My hands freeze and my chest burns with acid. Earlier that day I read about the relationship between IBS and COVID-19. I am trying to pedal away from my body, away from my pain, and maybe I am yet another artist trying to chronicle love among the ruins.
I push past Metrograph and wish I could go in. I want a cocktail and steak tartar and then I want to watch a movie in the dark with strangers. I’m getting better at stopping and starting and perching on my toes when I stop. I even play a little balancing game when I’m stopped at a light. I lift my feet and dangle them. I don’t panic and I’m not afraid.
Later at home, I make a list of the places I don’t want to lose. In all my conversations with my artist friends and lovers, we talk about what we’re afraid of losing. We worry that this is the final step in the long gentrification of New York City.
All the art house theaters like Metrograph, Angelika, and Film Forum
Kiki’s cheap Greek food
The cat café on Rivington where I take my students
Pieces gay bar
Henrietta Hudson lesbian bar
Cubbyhole lesbian bar
McNally Jackson bookstore
Codex bookstore
A café called Little Canal
All the Chinatown light shops
The hardware store on Great Jones where I buy my bungee cords
Whiskers pet shop
Westville Bakery with its amazing gluten-free carrot cake
Tile Bar
When I get to the grocery store, it’s closed so I keep riding all the way from Avenue A to Hudson, where the other grocery store I love is also closed. It’s okay. I am so worried about these workers, I’d rather not buy groceries today.
I text Eurydice and get no response. I’m too mad to text Gina. I’m planning a dinner with Beemer. The literature on bubbles say it’s okay if there are no leaks.
Wedding Tent Morgue
I’m not not writing about death. Most days when I ride, there are ambulances idling on at least five or six streets. I avoid these streets out of respect for the dead or because of my own fear of seeing something I don’t want to see.
When I first meet Eurydice, we watch a movie about one of the first lesbian feminist porn makers and then walk through Chinatown. After a while, holding hands, I can’t help myself.
“I love you,” I say. Maybe it’s too soon to say, but I do.
“I love you too. You’re easy to love, why not?” she says and the “why not?” gives me a moment’s pause, but we’re interrupted by sirens.
Flashing lights; a fire truck sprays water into a building totally consumed by flames. The police haven’t had time to block off the street and so there are gawkers, people who can’t look away. I’m always afraid of seeing too much, of having an image seared into my memory. I regret most horror movies I’ve watched because certain images haunt me: Carol Anne gets yanked under the bed by the evil clown doll, her brother is swallowed by a tree, the Indigenous people’s cemetery deservedly swallows their house whole, a dripping woman with black eyes crawls along a wooden floor, there’s something wrong with her neck, your father is a zombie now, destined to chase you through London, into the tube, into the countryside.
We scurry across the street. The firemen can’t control the flames and the street is hot. Because I’m Orpheus, I look back and see a charred body on a gurney and then we run. When we get back to my place, we fuck and then cry as if we can erase what we saw with tearful orgasms.
“To live in the city now is to bear witness to bodies, not people so much as corpses.”
To live in the city now is to bear witness to bodies, not people so much as corpses. Guapo says one in four hundred New Yorkers have died, and he’s right. Every hospital now has a makeshift morgue in the form of a white wedding tent next to it. Refrigerated trucks are full of bodies, and funeral homes can’t keep up. Some people know ten people who have died, while I know two.
Am I hunting for the corpse of my first relationship with a woman, whatever that magical time once was that I can’t get over? Am I forever looking back and trying to reanimate what we once had?
Queers Disappear
Disappearing queers.
Can I have some tears for your fears?
Queers equal tears.
The CityMD isn’t crowded. There are three people ahead of me. Two young men behind me loudly discuss the futility of online dating now. One has an amazing ass and a red bandana.
“I have so many matches.”
“Right?”
“But I’m like, what’s the point?”
Inside I get both the antibody and the COVID-19 tests. They are free. I’m in New York City. I’m lucky. The only thing that stresses me out is the iPad login. I should have wiped it down. The ID scanner is dirty.
I keep my bike helmet and mask on the whole time. The doctor has full PPE, with a mask and shield.
“We have to use a vein in your wrist,” she says because my veins suck.
“Sit on your hands while I do the nasal swab.” I do. I am always a good patient.
“Three to five days,” she says, and puts a Band-Aid on me. “Be safe on your bike!”
Kid Interlude
Mostly I write when I don’t have my kid, when she’s with her dad, Guapo, and his wonderful girlfriend, Pauline. Pauline and I are close now, but it took a while. It’s my fault. I was jealous of their relationship in the beginning and I didn’t ask her enough about her life. Now we talk about her dreams and dissertation, tease Guapo about his dad jokes, and make him drive us places for fried chicken, which feels perfect to me. I love her now and she loves my kid and my kid loves her.
You might hear me mention my kid and not write about her and think I’m some kind of mom, but I like to give her space. You know? Only moms get asked why they do or don’t write about their kids.
People ask sometimes during this pandemic, mostly nonparents, “How is she? How is she coping?”
I say, “She has an online gaming world that helps her so much. She can finally sleep according to her sleep cycle, but she misses her friends.”
I don’t talk as much about her anxiety. Her fears for the future. The world we’re in, that nobody imagined 2020 would be so bad.
There are sirens every night. First for death, and then for protests for cops murdering Black people.
I can tell you that the online world of Roblox where my kid and her friends meet up is both magical and mundane. Sometimes when I look over her shoulder, her avatar is wearing a pride jumpsuit and a bouffant purple wig while flying around with giant black eagle wings that span a building that she herself has built. Other times, she’s just a pixelated, bigger-thighed version of herself delivering pizza on a scooter to make more money for the game. Read Roland Barthes essay “Toys” now if you feel like it and do some freewriting about a toy that prepared you for capitalism and a toy that taught you to resist it.
I can also tell you that, like so many of the kids I know and teach today, she’s a sweet radical. When she finds out I’ve been protesting the murder of George Floyd and for Black Lives Matter, she sends me a TikTok for how to treat myself and anyone else if we get teargassed.
“I’m being careful,” I text back.
“Everyone needs to know.” And she’s right.
