Author: Mark Alexander

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Death Becomes Them

Seriously?!

KENNETH IN THE 212: Why are so many people, and gay men included, behaving so irresponsibly now that COVID-19 is actually at its worst? Most people are not yet vaccinated, and the hospitals are packed, yet I have friends boasting about weddings they’re hosting, trips to Puerto Rico, Puerto Vallarta, Tulum, Hawaii — and few or no masks in sight. Kenneth calls out White Party promoter Jeffrey Sanker, who is holding bashes for NYE in Puerto Vallarta with zero mention of safety. People also pointed out that Shangela is in P.V., hanging on people without a mask.

Two not unrelated notes: That gay male nurse who nearly died of COVID-19 after attending a circuit party in March, the one who wasted away to nothing and collected $20K in GoFundMe cash, is currently partying in Mexico. He disabled his social media to escape the condemnation. Also, how many IG influences and OnlyFans accounts do you follow that are nothing but gay men having anonymous hookups in a pandemic?

Nobody is perfect, and many who are doing all the right things are still getting sick—but why are so many people this willfully, proudly oblivious? I guess because they think their chances of getting desperately ill or dying are low, and they couldn’t give a fuck about the people they infect whose chances are high?

And we can’t even say we’ll hold them accountable when this is all over because … who is the we? It feels like most people are sliding into a giant shrug.

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Yesterday…

…was the first time in nine months Ben and I were able to enjoy a [appropriately socially distanced from the rest of humanity] afternoon at Starbucks. It was wonderful.

We have to be out of the hotel room every Saturday for housekeeping to perform what they cal a “deep clean.” This requires finding someplace to sequester the dogs while we’re out of the room. Thankfully Ben’s grandfather is more than willing to watch the little pee buckets at his place while we run errands, do laundry, and yesterday—grab a little respite from all the insanity of the last month.

After grabbing coffee and breakfast, we did our week’s laundry and then we hit Best Buy to look at televisions. We didn’t buy anything, because we have nowhere to store it, but we have a much better idea of what we want when we settled into our new place in a week’s time.

Finished there, we hit Starbucks, grabbed some lunch, and enjoyed the balmy December weather sitting outside for a few hours before picking up the dogs an heading back to the room.

Today we left the dogs in the room (they were amazingly well-behaved) and hit IKEA, where we picked up a few necessities that were going to be needed at our new home before we get the remainder of our belongings returned.

All in all, it was a good weekend.

Next weekend, however, is going to be crazy.

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If the Last Month Has Shown Me Anything…

…it’s that we have absolutely no control over our lives. And our sense of security and…consistency in our affairs…is an illusion. It can all come crashing down at any moment.

I would normally use this day-before-Christmas post to wish everyone a very happy holiday tomorrow, but frankly my dear readers, I have no Christmas sprit at all this year.

This photo perfectly sums up my mood at the moment.

Despite the fact we’ve secured a new place to live and will be taking possession on January 1st and a slew of new furniture will be delivered on the 2nd, we still have no idea when all our other possessions and the rest of our clothing will be cleaned and returned to us. The logistics of all this has been a nightmare. And we won’t even discuss the four of us living in his hotel room. Ben’s stressed. I’m stressed. The dogs are stressed. I’ve been on the verge of tears all day.

My friend Cindy—who went through this herself many years ago—has told me that shopping for new things will be fun, and to some degree it is, but more than anything it’s just making me angry. We’re being forced to replace things we never would have had to if our landlord had taken the simplest of safety precautions when installing that fucking water heater.

Fuck James.