Displaced by Covid for Six Months and … How Much Longer?
On the Road with Covid as my Co-Pilot
On the Road with Covid as my Co-Pilot
Imagine the world’s biggest game of musical chairs, but with Trump speeches for the soundtrack, you have to wear a face mask and … there are no chairs.
That’s what it feels like to be on the run from Covid, six months into the pandemic and with no known ETA. I’m a single Jewish guy in his early late 40s who fled Manhattan when Covid crushed the city in March. Most of the time I feel like a soloist without his pants on in an empty concert hall, but I know there are millions like me who left their houses, rentals, RV parks, luxury condos, you name it, and who are still on the run. In September already.
We’re a confused army of isolationists, probably more often kidless than not but in a nation of 330 million, there are all kinds of us, obsessing over online real estate listings and hoping our hosts don’t notice how often we use the laundry. Hey, we packed in a hurry in March. There’s only so much underwear you can carry. And I needed all of those still unread books.
It makes sense why so many people left home in the early spring. Covid was super scary; getting groceries felt like going into combat in only a bikini, regardless of gender. Because of Trump and his minions’ denials, because of good or bad personal decisions about being single or married or with children or without, because of upended housing markets where small scruffy towns are harder to get into than Stanford, we have yet to settle down. A few of us have managed to nest into new homes, I’m awed by them. The rest of us wonder: how to land on shifting ground?
We’re staying in short term rental apartments that expire as soon as we find the clean towels. (Hint, check the sink cabinet.) We’re regressing with our parents. We’re crashed out with friends who seem to tolerate us as we wander their homes in pajamas and eat their peanut butter. I hope we’re not in a tent, but there’s that, too. We’re in a holding pattern, planes without runways.
But we’re getting used to it, right? By now, we’ve stored memories of being on the run. Not everything is always new.
Spring was absolutely terrifying, especially in the northeast. Then the summer came and paused the panic. Patios and parks and stoops swapped places for the living rooms and the religious and dining and entertainment venues that make up our lives. It was relaxing, we were outside the whole time and we were like, oh, we don’t have to spend our life savings on food and drink to enjoy time with friends? We can just sit on a blanket?
We could have done it forever, but unless you’re in a few choice regions that aren’t currently on fire, our lives are now determined by Jim Morrison lyrics from an overly eventful 1968: “When summer’s gone, where will we be? Where will we be? Where will we be?”
I’ll tell you where, Jim. Where we will be is huddled in the dark, feeling cold and lonely. We will be finding new empathy for the Free Folk North of the Wall. No, not Texas — Game of Thrones. We’ll be miserable and huddled. Darn. No huddling.
In an era of Republican mendacity, let’s be honest. It’s scary to be on the run and lack a plan no longer than a few weeks forward, even by now, in early fall, when more prudent people bought south-facing farms or had the insight to have rich parents. For those of us who got used to saying we’ll be unsettled until Labor Day, now what holiday do we cite? New Year’s Eve? No not Rosh Hashanah, that’s way too soon — and NYE is always a disappointment.
Here’s my suggestion for those on the run. In a few months when you’re at an outdoor BBQ in a parka and snow boots and a home owner asks when you’ll sign a lease, say:
“I’m kind of improvising until a Labor Day.” If they have questions, fill your mouth with frozen potato chips.
And if Trump wins, no problem. We’ll spell it Labour Day while making small talk in Toronto with a way better parka. Oh wait, border’s closed.
You see what I’m saying? This is hard.
I’m luckier than most. I’ve been working remotely for a decade at my small digital agency (need a website, let’s talk!) and while I’ve lost income, I still have clients. In a year where even white people are realizing American racism is embedded in our national foundation, which will require a massive effort to repair and rebuild, I’m aware that I benefit from racist privilege. My complaints, after all, are made in safety, which is a luxury in a country of massive income and racial inequality. I don’t worry about police killing me while I drive from friend’s homes to Airbnbs to God forbid my mother’s basement. I will most likely never be turned down by a mortgage broker. Which takes me back to Zillow. Which takes me back to my extended vagrancy.
So I’m counting my relative blessings. Don’t feel incensed or outraged on my behalf, but please have rachmomes, compassion, for our country people on the road, hopping from place to place like frogs who talk like Jack Kerouac.
I would call us all comrades, but in the fun house mirror of 21st century politics, now it’s Republicans who root for Mother Russia while Democrats are pro… being healthy? Caring about others? Hmmm…
For my friends on the run, if we’ve lasted six months wearing the same ten pairs of underwear and now vintage t-shirts, if we get misty eyed about our friends’ hospitality each time we do laundry, if we’ve learned more than we ever wanted to about fast food and watched too many of those tiny TVs at gas station pumps, then let me be the first to tell, you got this. Keep going.
We can keep washing undergarments and perverting ourselves with real estate porn for six or ten or twenty more months. That’s what I tell myself as the sun dwindles, and the leaves turn the color of my least favorite official’s hair color.
Labor Day is just around the corner. Just don’t ask me what year.