"Gazing at the written world, seeing the elegant self-restraint that guards an inner decomposition, a biological decay until the last moment from the prying eyes of the world; that bilious, sensually disadvantaged ugliness that is able to kindle its smoldering fire into a pure flame and to even usurp the throne in the kingdom of beauty."
Death in Venice
Thomas Mann
"Really?" asked Lo as I mixed the gin in with the tonic and sliced up a sliver of lime.
"What?" I asked.
"It's not even noon."
"What is time in a global pandemic anyway?"
We were two weeks into lockdown. We were stranded in paradise. Far away from our everyday hustle and bustle, cold weather, friends and family, we followed the dire warnings about travel a week into our winter vacation to the beachside resort town. The sun was shining, the sea breeze gently moderating the temperature, the inviting golden sand beckoning us to walk through it barefoot. But all the amenities of this place were off-limits. One-by-one each pleasurable pastime was shut down, cordoned off, closed -- first the bars and restaurants, then the beach itself, and finally the boardwalk. We were allowed to walk on the sidewalks, but that was it. There was nowhere to go anyhow. We could take our lives in our hands and go to the supermarket to get necessities (if we could find them on the bare shelves), but we didn't want to do that and we made as infrequent visits there as possible.
News of sickness, disease, and death were filtering into every media channel. It seemed that even if we didn't watch the news, we still couldn't escape it -- it was in the air. The stock market was tumbling down off a cliff, unemployment was spiking, and anxiety was everywhere. We couldn't hug our neighbors for comfort, for they may be the vicious vector conveying the virus within their sincere attempt at reassurance.
Lola and I were utterly alone on the 25th floor of a resort hotel overlooking the vacant beaches and streets with nothing but the brilliant yellow, blue, and whisps of white for company. On the horizon we could make out three giant cruise ships forbidden from docking for fear of their deadly cargo. We were informed that the virus was rampant and people dropping with asphyxiation on the decks, desperately looking to the shore for some sort of assistance, in vain.
Death surrounded us. So why not have a gin-and-tonic after breakfast? I had plunged into nihilism.
Yes, I still had Lola as my companion, but there was little for me to write about regarding "my sexlife with Lola." Her trysts, flirtations, and dogging down by the pool area were prohibited by the pandemic. Yes, she still masturbated three, four, five times a day, but I've written about that in such detail and with such frequency that there is hardly anything new I could bring to the topic. Our lives beat on with the same monotony as the repetitive waves upon the shore.
