Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

My 365 Day Anniversary: March 10 2021

365 days ago I understood that I needed to shut my door against Covid-19. But first I had to make some stops. I went to Trader Joe’s and stocked up with multiples of everything that seemed crucial. I bought liquid dispenser soaps, bars of soap, shampoo, cleaning products, toilet paper, tissues, paper towels, hand cream, and food galore. I went to Walgreens and snagged medical gloves, Clorox spray, wipes, Vitamin C, and candy. At the bank, I got hundreds of dollars of cash, not the least $1 and $5 bills for tips I anticipated giving. I stopped by the post office and loaded up on local and overseas stamps, before gassing up the car, although I did not foresee that it would not be touched by human hands for the next 50 days.

I’m not sure how I knew so clearly what to get and what to do to prepare for a pandemic and to weather a shut-down, but I attribute my prescience to a life-long Holocaust mentality. I suspect that this is the result of a genetic propensity, in a metaphorical sense.

My mother had infinite cheap plastic handbags to match her every outfit. I went through them when she died. (I found over $700 hidden around her place among her things and I bet I missed plenty.) Each purse had a $5 bill, one of those fold-up plastic rainhats women of the 1950s depended on, a comb, and a disposable razor blade with which she scraped at the old-lady whiskers she grew. This is my heritage: a strong streak of just-in-case-ism.

I have squirrelled away $5 bills in the pocket of every coat and jacket I own – just in case. Likewise, I have food in every bag, in every room, and in the glove compartment of my car, just in case. I’ve been saving money all my life even when I scarcely made enough to live on – just in case things got worse. And “just in case” has come true for us all this year.

I live alone in an apartment that has one large room and then a little bedroom in which I can do nothing but sleep and dress. There’s not even a place for a chair. In short, I’m living and writing and eating and entertaining myself and reading and phoning and exercising and Zooming in this one room. But I’m lucky to have a fine view of a pond and a balcony on which to sit and watch the sunset, weather permitting.

After years of begging, I had succeeded a couple of months earlier in convincing my landlords to change my scuzzy wall-to-wall carpet to lovely new grey carpeting. I also found just the perfect credenza (a long sideboard) in February following a couple of years of searching. My friend Debi, who can do it all, came over and spent an entire day putting it together. I disposed of the heavy oak Art Deco pieces that came over to the States with me from London in 2000 – pieces that were too big for my one room. I hung the original collage paintings of Sandy Oppenheimer - a self-portrait and a portrait of Chadwick Boseman -- over my marble sculpture by Jaya Schuerch. In short, my home was much improved and comfy for settling in.

From the start, all the fatality stats were showing that hypertension was a top complicating and deadly factor when it came to Covid. My Dr and I had been struggling since the November before Covid to get a grip on my high and erratic blood pressure. I was determined to survive, that is, to avoid Covid, and I set myself restrictions far beyond those of many other friends. I was inside for the long haul.

In that first week or so I negotiated an arrangement with my bestie, Barry. He also lives alone. He is also a very cautious person. We decided to weather the lock-down together/apart, to speak daily, to provide support. Neither of us would see any other friends in person so that eventually we would actually meet safely. Barry was the first to buy good commercial masks, and he mailed them to me. But I was a bit stuck and could not go out – because of the elevator.

My building was built in the early 1970s and the single elevator – like the rest of building – has never been updated. Few workers today know anything about this elevator’s ancient technology and parts have long since ceased to be available. A maintenance company finds substitutions and comes to tinker whenever it gets stuck. Fifty apartments use this elevator and there is no obvious ventilation. I did not feel that I could use the elevator to go down to my mail (7 stories) or my car (8 stories). I was afraid it would be full of cooties and I’m sure I was right.

My mailman, always a sweetie, started bringing my mail up to the 7th floor and leaving it outside my door whenever my little mailbox became crowded. A young dance friend picked up my prescriptions from the pharmacy when they were refilled. A volunteer did my first shopping, arranged by a mutual aid group in my town, before I found an indie professional shopper, a single mother whom I tip 35% because she is doing something for me that I won’t do myself.

Laundry was the biggest problem. No way was I going into the shared laundry room – shabby enough in the best of times. My friend, Bren, came to visit by standing down in the parking lot as I leaned over the balcony. The distance is so far that we used our phones like walkie-talkies in order to hear each other. She insisted on taking my laundry. I stuffed everything into a big black plastic bag and heaved it over my balcony guard rail. It landed with a dramatic explosion that brought people running out of their homes up and down the block.

Bren and her friend took my car for a drive around the block at some point, but it was only on May 1st, 50 days after I had gone inside, that I got to experience the outside world via my phone. Barry came over to drive my car around. I wrapped the keys in a padded envelope which I put into another padded envelope that I tossed off my balcony. It fluttered down to him as gracefully as Pavlova’s arabesque. He got in my car and FaceTimed me. As he drove my car around my neighborhood and then further into my little town, he pointed his iPhone camera towards the road. I could see what he saw. I was visually riding shotgun. Flowers were blooming, bushes were verdant, there was a world out there. I sobbed – for all I had missed, for all who were dying, for all who were struggling. To celebrate my tour, I ordered some pasta from a local restaurant that not only came out and put it in the trunk – now known as curbside – but also donated a meal for a hungry local elder for every meal that was bought. Barry put the food in its bag inside the elevator and sent it up to me. It was the first food I would taste that I hadn’t cooked myself. I wrote my first pandemic blog.

Only on May 22, after 73 days inside, did Barry find face shields for sale online. With good masks and the protective shields, we felt sufficiently safe to go up and down the elevator. It meant meeting a human in person for the first time in over two months. It meant driving my car. I decided to “go away” and drove myself to the town where Barry lives and entered his apartment. I was inside other four walls and it was as exotic as my trips to Machu Picchu or Pusan.

Now we get together for 20 hours each week – from Friday dinner to Saturday lunch – and each Saturday, if it isn’t raining or snowing, we take walks in parks and woodlands and at lakes we never before knew existed. I’ll Google a nearby town – say Carlisle, near Concord – and inevitably there will be somewhere magic to visit and stroll. We have been amazed at how little we knew about nature spots right in our own towns and the surrounds.

Everyday I say to my bestie Sandy, who lives in Northern California, but with whom I talk daily: We are among the lucky ones. We have a roof, heat, the interwebz, food, safety, cars. We have art to work on with passion. I know I’ve had it significantly easier than most people: I’m retired so I did not lose my job or my income. I’ve lived alone since 1977, so nothing new there. I’m a writer and used to sitting at this desk many hours a day. And the biggest bonus: I’m going to get out of here in time to see the Spring this time.

My biggest complaint (to myself) is how busy I am. I have a minimum of four Zooms per day. Two are permanent weekday commitments. I have a Silent Zoom writing session each morning at 9:15 with my esteemed London writing buddy Liz: throughout this pandemic, it’s consistently been one of the most productive hours of my day; I have a Zoom workout with Barry at 11:00 or 11:30: I’m doing some Tae Kwon Do again to spice up the exercising. I teach writing every Wednesday for Rainbow Lifelong Learning Institute. And then I might have a board meeting or an LGBTQ elders get together or the job of running a panel for a huge online lesbian literary festival or a Zoom/phone call with Sue in London or Schweid in Barcelona or Jaya in Italy or Kaz in Bristol or Sarah in Dublin or Yael in Israel or Verandah in Vermont or Vicki in New York or Melsen in Hudson or or or.

Today marks a full year since I met any human other than Barry unmasked and undistanced. The only other four walls I’ve been inside have been those of doctors’ offices. I will be fully vaccinated on April 12th. I do not know what life will look like in a world with ever-evolving viral mutations.

But I do know that my first excursion will be to the Dollar Store. The next day I’ll go to the podiatrist. The day after that I’ll be off with Barry for two days to a hotel on the Cape. Two whole days seems bold enough for a first outing. I cannot yet see past that moment.

I should have posted this yesterday, but I seem to be running on "pandemic time."

Uncle Frank: Film Review in 110 Words

A perfect Pandemic film, Uncle Frank propels us away from our present stress and drops us into 1973. Innocent Beth goes north to attend NYU where her Uncle Frank teaches. She discovers that he lives with his life-partner Wally. Via a road trip, they all end up back in the South for the funeral of Frank’s nasty-assed father (Beth’s grandfather) and the site of Frank’s devastatingly traumatic first teenage love. It is sometimes tough to watch, especially if you grew up with a vicious parent, and the joyful ending is excessive. The acting is superb, the film is often funny, and I highly recommend its bittersweet portrayal of loving support.

The trailer:

Pig Rock Sausages

I admit it. I’ve only used pre-cooked sausages in my kitchen. And sausage only became part of my menu when I found them at Trader Joe’s. Little did I suspect that sausage – a word that in my house growing up implied non-Kosher sawdust swept up from the dirty factory floor stuffed into old pig intestines - came in such varied and delish forms.

This weekend I had a high-level Sausage 101 tutorial. At a neighborhood store that does curbside, I bought some Pig Rock Sausages with chicken, real maple syrup, and garlic. Yum. But they arrived all squishy and plump, i.e. completely uncooked, unlike the ones I get from Trader Joe’s. I started to sauté them but quickly realized that in truth I had not a clue what to do. I Googled and searched and finally called the company – their number was readily available – and left a message at the impossible hour of 6:00 Friday night: “Help! The sausages are cooking in a stovetop pan in medium heat. Is that right? How long should I cook them?” I also posted a message on their Facebook page.

A man called me back minutes later and talked me through (about 7 minutes on each side) while giving me the basic 411 on fresh, pure sausages. Pig Rock Sausages turns out to be a Boston-based company formed by Art Welch, a very special executive chef. The person who called me was none other than Art Welch himself. He also responded to my FB message.

The meat turned out scrumptious. It transpires that there are many types of additive- and preservative-free Pig Rock Sausages to be had – from Bratwurst to Sweet & Hot Italian and more.

Congratulations Art Welch on your amazing products, but even more on your willingness to spend some of your weekend explaining to a woman in her 70s who has never much learned to cook how to pamper her taste buds.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom in 117 words - Film Review

How do you make a profound film? Take one of our greatest playwrights, August Wilson (Pulitzer Prize); add the tortured, nuanced final performance of the late Chadwick Boseman as ambitious cornet player Levee; and anchor it with Viola Davis’ uncompromising seething portrait of the “Mother of the Blues” Ma Rainey. Let Levee seduce Ma Rainey’s pretty girlfriend (Taylour Paige) downstairs, while Ma is upstairs demanding her due from the white music men who want to exploit her prodigious talents. Highlight the scars of unendurable racism and how the different coping strategies divide the band members, and you have the elements of passionate truth-telling. Play-like in its staging, this is a film that must be seen and felt.

Here is the trailer:

 

RIP: LOIS JOHNSON, leading light of Daughters of Bilitis

This tribute was adapted from a brief portrait of Lois Johnson that I wrote when she and her life partner Sheri Barden were among the honorees at an event I MC'd held by Rally, a Boston area group for older lesbians. Lois died yesterday. Sheri and Lois (in pink) are seated in front.

Lois Johnson was a local girl: she was born in Stoneham in 1931 but raised in Everett by a loving extended working class family. She was always a straight-A student in high school. At Boston University, she studied English and childhood education, planning to be a school teacher like her older sister. Lois was very active in the Christian Science church, teaching Sunday school and conducting services, but, she told me, “I wasn’t Miss Goody-Twoshoes.” Immediately I heard Sheri in the background yelling, “Yes you were!”

Lois worked in education for a couple of years, but she wasn’t that comfortable with it. So she got another a degree from BU: this time in journalism. She moved to California where she was a success in the field of advertising and journalism and worked for the Presidio army base newspaper, while living at the YWCA.

When her father became ill, she returned to Boston where she continued to be active in the Christian Science church. She met her first girlfriend and lived together in secret for five years. When in 1964 that woman foolishly dumped our Lois, some gay men fixed her up with Sheri Barden who moved in with her in Brookline.

When they rented and restored a 19th C house near the MFA, they decided they liked that kind of thing. Because banks would not then give mortgages to women, a gay male friend helped them to get a fixer-upper in the South End. When Lois’s long-time job as a producer at WGBH evaporated, she decided to go into real estate, where she spent 40 years. She missed that work after retiring.

About five years ago Lois fell and broke her hip so she and Sheri had to move out of their house with many stairs. The were welcomed with great enthusiasm by Springhouse, an elegant assisted living facility. Like in any such institution, the women ran into homophobic staff occasionally. They had their strategy for dealing with it, however. Said Sheri, "I'm so nice to them, they can't help but love us."

In fact, the very evening they moved in, the Springhouse administration wanted to screen "Gen Silent" (dir: Stu Maddux), a powerful, historic film about the intersection of queer and elder, which kicked off a vibrant movement around the rights of old LGBTQ people. Lois and Sheri were two of the stars of the film (and of the movement), and their wit and candor and obvious love won the hearts of all who saw it. Sheri insists that their role was to be "comic relief," and the women sighed over having to see the film dozens and dozens of times when they appeared at sell-out screenings.

For 15 years Lois was President of Boston’s DOB – Daughters of Bilitis – perhaps the first lesbian organization with chapters across the country. Sheri and Lois welcomed hundreds of otherwise isolated lesbians to their rap sessions. They embraced women who needed someone to talk to, someone to assure them that their feelings were legitimate. Sheri told me: “Lois was a wonderful leader because she didn’t judge anyone – never put anyone down, everyone was welcome.”

The death of Lois Johnson leaves a rip in the fabric of the Boston queer community. On a personal note, I was always gratified by Lois' close readings and gracious comments about my books. The couple never missed a reading when I was introducing a new book. Lois' generosity, dry wit, and loving presence will be profoundly missed.

This is the trailer for "Gen Silent." If you haven't seen it, you haven't seen one of the best documentaries evah!

Secret Love: Film Review

Prepare your hanky and your deepest thoughts about the future when you watch the poignant Netflix documentary Secret Love. Director Chris Bolan traces his great-aunt, Terry Donahue, and her life partner, Pat Henschel, from their love-at-first-sight romance in the 40s through their struggle as ailing elders. Bolan’s mother Diana is the third major figure of the film, as she struggles with Pat over the best way to support Aunt Terry in her decline.

The lovers met the year I was born, 1947, while Terry was a Canadian star of the Peoria Redwings – a team in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (which inspired A League of Their Own.) They only came out to Terry’s beloved family in 2009, living in a sometimes brutal, if love-filled closet, all that time. With remarkable footage and stills from back in the day, we see how they constructed a life in Chicago of fierce devotion, building friendships with other queers. The film shorts us on what this life was: we see only one dinner shared with a couple of gay men who are clearly central to their community, but we are given no sense of how the advent of gay liberation, with its new institutions and cultural opportunities, affected them – as it surely did.

The ways in which homophobia impacted them is encapsulated by Diane’s discovery of Pat’s love letters to Terry, from which the bottom signature has been ripped off to protect their identity. Pat is alienated from her own family, but unfortunately not entirely embraced by Terry’s. The reasons why they came out so late to Terry’s family remain under-explored, but we get a hint when one niece is outraged at having been deprived of this information (it’s all about her) while she is scandalized that they are living in sin. Pat is only too aware that in this family she is mainly seen as an impediment to Terry’s return to Canada, and not always as the solicitous life-partner she has been.

If gay people had made this film, it might have looked very different. The years of their Chicago life together and the social fabric they wove would have had more primacy. Their relationship may have remained a secret to the family – and there must have been good reason for that – but surely they were more open within the life they built for themselves.

On a personal level, the film reminded me of how our worlds shrink if we make it to old age, with our peers dead or ailing or retired in Florida or returned to distant home towns. Those with younger family members who give a shit have a lifeline, but those of us without close bio families are too often thrown onto the trash-heap of impersonal if not homophobic social services. We pioneers have failed to build any solid intergenerational network. The LGBTQ movement seems to have more cross-generational disdain, in both directions, than connection.

I wept throughout this film, most especially at the barriers to their love, prior to the 70s, and then at what ill health does to this couple’s independence. Sufficient hard-earned savings and Terry’s family’s concern allow them safe solutions in which to thrive. But I wept for those without money or loyal young people to shepherd them to the end.

The trailer:

Do You Name Your Cantaloupes?

I don’t go indoors. Since March 11, I have not gone inside a store or salon or dance club or restaurant or, even more amazing, if you know me, a dollar store. I’m extremely cautious. I pay a shopper to get my groceries. She’s a sweetheart and shops for about 25 customers each week. She calls us, “My shut-ins.”

She’s been a shopper for several years. Before the pandemic it was just one of four jobs she had to support herself and her children. She lost the other three jobs as soon as everything shut down and has since beefed up her shopping business. She knows exactly where everything is stocked in every type of grocery store, so she’s incredibly quick. She is happy to add on other stops as well: she has picked up my prescriptions from the pharmacy twice already.

One has to learn how to be a shopee as well. Once I asked for two Dole cups of cut-up peaches (before peach season) and she bought me two packages of six cups each. I had to donate all of it, after tasting one cup. One must be very explicit. If I order broccoli, I have to write a note to specify that it be fresh, not bagged. A shopee learns slowly but surely.

And because she is shopping here, there, and everywhere all day, when she spies something that is hard to get, she grabs supplies for all her shut-ins. Early on, when disinfecting wipes were unavailable, she was in Costco when a big shipment came in and, voila!, she gifted me a box of wipes.

She’s efficient, flexible, reliable, and conscientious, but we don’t really see eye to eye on fruit and veg. It feels quite hit and miss. Last week I asked for a mini-watermelon and a cantaloupe. That was my first mistake. I should have said: small melon. Because I like all melons. She texted from the store that there were no mini-watermelons, but she could get me a pre-wrapped slice of watermelon. I asked for a photo of my choices, and she sent me one and I picked. I did not, though, think to question its size. That quarter of a watermelon was so big that it did not fit in my fridge: it was longer than the fridge is deep. I had to cut it into cubes immediately.

But it was nothing compared to the cantaloupe! The size, easily, of a basketball. The minute I saw it and struggled to lift the thing out of the bag, I texted her: “What?! I live alone. This cantaloupe could feed an affinity group for a week.” Later I sent her a photo and she LOL’d me back.

Too much cantaloupe is a problem. I’ve never heard of cantaloupe pie or cantaloupe sauce or even cantaloupe juice – not that I’ve ever baked a pie or own a juicer. One friend suggested, since I live alone and only see one person, that I make a friend out of my melon ala Tom Hanks in Cast Away with his volleyball friend Wilson. I tried developing a relationship, but the cantaloupe is insufficiently warm and fuzzy. Every name seemed insulting, from Big Head to Bulbous to Melonia. Particularly Melonia.

It is now 11 days later and I’m still consuming the cantaloupe. See the photo for the amount still remaining. I had to finish up the watermelon first – as it quickly turns to mush. But the cantaloupe just continues to hold up – bowl after bowl, mouthful after mouthful. I believe 2020 will be remembered as the year I had had enough.

Rating the Democratic National Convention: Highlights & Bummers

I watched the entire Democratic National Convention – all four nights, start to finish. Electoral politics has never been my gig but, like Angela Davis says, we all must vote for the Democrats this time. Absolutely must. I voted for Al Gore in 2000, literally 10 days after I returned from 24 years abroad. And was mortified to see the Democrats politely submit to Repug manipulations because they were just too genteel for a street fight. I remember friends from Europe writing to ask if America needed them to send an independent body to manage the USA’s chaotic and inconclusive elections.

I write this piece as someone who identified as a revolutionary as long as that was a relevant title in the USA: the 60s and 70s. Those were the days when one would introduce herself as an anarcho-socialist queer feminist anti-racist class-conscious activist. Now, in my dotage, under a proto-fascist administration during a pandemic, I find myself forced into dependency on an opposition Democratic Party that is Wall Street and Big Pharm funded, and that is impotent and weak, stuck with worn out leadership and resistant to the energy of the women (and men) of color who are unseating their friends. I write this as someone who is going to vote for the Democratic ticket and is going to encourage everyone else to do all we can to get rid of tRump.

Here are my Highlights and Bummers in no particular order

HIGHLIGHT
The music was often wonderful. Billy Porter wrapped up the first night in dazzling style. Billie Eilish accompanied the premiere of her new song with an incisive speech. John Legend is, I believe, the Frank Sinatra of our times. His performance of “Glory” with Common was strong and gripping. Prince Royce was spectacular as he strolled that long wall of graffiti. If I have to listen to the national anthem, then at least The Chicks did an interesting version.

BUMMER
What don’t the Democrats understand about the separation of Church and State? All four nights we had wrap-up religious benedictions that mentioned Jesus. Jesus! And the Trinity! The final night they threw in a Rabbi and an Imam, but piled on the God Blesses at the end of speeches. Jews were present throughout, but not named. However, Muslims had been absent, except for a couple of seconds of Khizr Khan, the father of a fallen soldier viciously attacked by tRump. The whole emphasis on Biden’s “faith” was, if not pandering to tRump’s audience, massively inappropriate to the ears of this non-Christian.

HIGHLIGHT
I was transfixed the second I saw elevator operator Jacquelyn Asbie, who wore her tie proudly as she delivered the first nomination of Joe Biden. Check her out here:

BUMMER
I hated the inclusion of anti-choice campaigner John R. Kasich, and Colin Powell, a military general whose public lies to the United Nations in 2003 cost untold lives, both American and Iraqi. All this emphasis on “traditional” Repuglicans was irritating and unlikely to move many people. Absolutely worst of all was the prominent spot given to Michael Bloomberg. This oinker, who failed to buy the presidency, seems unable to recover from his disappointment in not being the arrogant narcissist who gets to replace the present arrogant narcissist.

HIGHLIGHT
Bernie’s speech on the first evening was the most practical, policy-based presentation of the Convention, in contrast to the usual patriotic pablum and platitudes.

BUMMER
While we were forced to listen to too many Repugs, Julian Castro – the only Latinx candidate in the primaries – seems to be the only former candidate (other than Marianne Williamson who surely has more fans than Kasich) who was not invited to speak. Why? And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had 90 seconds in which to nominate Bernie – and then no other mention. This was a grave mistake. With well over 3 million social media followers, with stunning primary victories over Wall Street-funded establishment Democrats, she is the voice of the present many of us are listening to and the star of the future. Snubbing her was a slap in the face to her many constituencies: progressives, young people, Latinx voters, anti-capitalists, etc.

HIGHLIGHT
Michelle and Barak are clearly aghast at what is going on under tRump. I just wish they hadn’t waited till now to be speaking out and getting involved – although some say their timing is just right for strongest impact. I don’t see the point of elegance and restraint in their non-response to all these years of public abuse by tRump.

HIGHLIGHT & BUMMER
Three out of four of the moderators hit just the right note, staying in their role as MCs and moving things along: Eva Longoria, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Kerry Washington, all women of color. Only on the final (and arguably most important night) did moderator Julia Louis-Dreyfus display her tin ear to give us a discordant “jokey” tone. It was an odd decision by the convention organizers.

HIGHLIGHT
The many clips of everyday people talking about their lives were powerful, not the least Mexican-American Kristin Urquiza, who lost her dad to Covid. She said, “His only preexisting condition was trusting Donald Trump.” Here’s the clip:

 

There were also stories of Joe Biden’s compassion – many many many stories – including the special speech by 13-year-old Brayden Harrington, a kid who stutters and who was encouraged by Biden, a former stutterer himself.

BUMMER
Three themes became excruciatingly repetitive:
1. Biden listens and cares
2. Biden is a man of “faith”
3. Beau Biden was a saint who continues to guide Joe Biden “from above” in all he does and thinks. The ghoulish focus on his dead son, over and over and over and then some more, became fetishistic. I was squirming. Biden’s other two children, themselves forced to speak about Beau when we finally saw them, must feel a certain way.

HIGHLIGHT
I had been complaining over the first days about the absence of spokespeople with disabilities – even in the midst of a strong commitment to diverse images – at least in the first days. So I welcomed the piece about Ady Barkan’s struggle for health care around his ALS. It was odd, though, that as a fierce campaigner for Medicare-For-All, that phrase was not included in his presentation.

HIGHLIGHT
It is widely agreed that the roll call (on night two) was the most brilliant chunk of the Convention. I was absolutely captivated at seeing so many different kinds of presentations from the States and territories, not the least Native people in their own clothes and settings. Let me finish on a high note by posting it here.

Collective Action on Hull Beach

I noticed that as soon as people left their area on the white sand beach of Hull, as soon as they went off to swim, the seagulls would circle around their chairs and sniff their bags. These seagulls were clearly regulars, used to humans and their accouterments. Some seagulls just planted their feet in an open spot and waited for a message to reach them.

All of a sudden I heard a screech. Someone had abandoned their blanket, but left their food bag open. This seagull grabbed a bag of chips which it ripped right open. But before that bag was even open, seagulls came flying in from every direction. Not two or three, but ten, then fifteen, then twenty, and perhaps more.

As more and more arrived and the bag was grabbed by one bill after another, the noise level elevated, and my questions multiplied. How could one bag of chips be shared around such a large posse? How did they know of the bounty, coming as they did from every direction and distance? Was it their sense of smell? Did the discoverer communicate to all in secret bird lingo? Are they born generous, with a tendency toward collective action and mutual aid? What happens to their digestive system when they eat greasy salty food? Can they distinguish between classic chips and those with salt and vinegar?

If you know the South Shore, you might have a different question. How did I get to go to the Hull seaside? A generous friend offered to arrange for my pandemic partner Barry and I to park in front of her parents’ home, less than a block from the bay on the left and about three blocks to the sea on the right. Each residential street running perpendicular between the bay and the sea on this peninsular town seemed to have its own path through dunes bordered by those thin wood and wire fences. If you don’t belong to the neighborhood, you don’t park.

For the first time this summer I got to play in the waves and splash in the salt water, especially as the tide started to come in and the waves became more energetic. The sea also, frankly, solves my won’t-pee-in-public-toilets dilemma – which has kept me close to home. I’m not a frequent beach goer, so I don’t have the right toys. I was jealous of a gaggle of straight teenagers who brought a boat-like blown-up rainbow unicorn to ride on the waves – and I knew they had no idea that they had mounted a gay icon. So goes cooptation.

Being an urban creature myself, I had to wonder how city-slicker seagulls get their dose of chips.

A Typical Pandemic Day: Except for the Fire Alarm

It’s around 90’ as it seems to have been for weeks and promises to continue to be in the near future. Or was that 90% humidity? In any event, I am wearing a nightshirt and crocs and nothing else. It’s a typical, if congested, pandemic day for me: I’ve done my 9:30 Silent Zoom writing session with my UK writing buddy Liz. I’ve done my 11:30 Zoom workout with my pandemic partner Barry. My weekly shopper has brought me my groceries. In a while, I have a video-appointment with my doctor followed by a Zoom gathering with a posse of friends in England and Ireland.

As I bake some chicken thighs using my friend Gilbert’s recipe, I think of the millions and millions of people – in this country and so many others – who are hungry. The lines of cars awaiting a food distribution would be ever more miles long except that people don’t have money for the gas. Everything sucks.

And then the fire alarm goes off! I open the front door – itself an action I rarely perform – and yes, the building alarm is screeching. I close the front door. What to do? It's covid-cooties vs flames. I text my landlord: The fire alarm’s going off. Is this for real? But there’s no immediate reply.

I need to dress. I throw on my workout pants, skipping the underpants. I put on a bra and the t-shirt I worked out in. Then I realize that if I have to walk down the seven floors, I need real shoes. So I sit down and put on shoes and socks. I'm dragging out the time - hoping it'll be turned off before I have to venture out. I used to worry about just this kind of situation when my neighbor across the way was still living. She used a wheelchair and was a decent-sized woman. I discussed with my landlords what would happen in case of a fire – how could I get her downstairs? They had already talked to her and instructed her to go out to her balcony from which the professionals would pluck her.

I open the front door again for a quick look. There’s a neighbor down the front end of the hall. He opens the double doors that lead to both the elevator and the stairwell, and yells to me, “I smell smoke.” I wave him towards me in the back of the building where I live. “Use the back stairs here,” and then quickly close my door.

What next? A mask, of course. Should I wear my face shield as well? What do I carry? I need to choose between my backpack with my credit cards and ID and other essentials, and my computer, with my life’s work. I pay for one of those cloud back-up services – plus I have most stuff on a thumb-drive, so I choose the backpack. What about a charger for my phone? Already I’m anxious about how I’ll get back up the steps with my dodgy feet.

And I’m worried about people who are isolating like I am but have nowhere else to go. I’m among the lucky ones – but I have been all along. I am in a pandemic pod with Barry and as discombobulating as it would be for both of us, I could find shelter there. And I think of all the people who have no shelter at all – and how many more there will be when the moratorium on evictions ends. I remember how the persistent problem of homelessness in Ireland was solved in ten days when the shut-down began: every single homeless person was housed, mostly in hotels.

The alarm stops. What to do? The alarm starts again. I head out.

Should I lock the door? I know the fire company is here – I’ve heard their sirens. In other instances, they’ve wanted to check every apartment – but I lock it anyway and start down the steps. The alarm stops. Just then a couple comes up the steps. I back up onto the landing so that I can keep my distance from them. “It’s okay,” they say. “The fireman said we can go back to our apartments.”

Inside, the phone rings. My landlord is on the line: “I’m nearly there.”

“It’s apparently okay, I tell him. Or so some neighbors told me.”

Back inside, I reverse my actions, peeling off the clothes I no longer feel comfortable lounging around in, not the least my bra. For the duration, I have unearthed old stretchy sports bras that do nothing but vaguely embrace my tits – no lifting, no squeezing. They are my pandemic bras for the rare Zoom meetings with strangers (seminars, arts gatherings, etc) or even rarer outings to the dangerous outdoors where other humans circulate. My perky bras are relegated to the back of the drawer awaiting a mystical time when my partner dancing life might resume.

“Have an emergency bag packed and ready to go,” my bestie Sandy said when I told her the story. “Copies of your passport and whatnot, a hunk of cash, your meds.” My meds! I hadn’t even thought of my prescriptions. Good thing this was just the alarm stretching its vocal chords when it smelled some food burning on the stove on the 5th floor.