Love in the Time of Covid

“Love, exciting and neeewwwww . . .

Come aboard, we’re expecting yooouuuu!

Love, life’s sweetest reward . . .

Let it flow, it floats back to yooouuu!”

Ahhh, love. We all love love, don’t we? Gotta have it. Can’t live without it. Love really is life’s sweetest reward. If modern dating apps are any guide, we’re all looking for “my person,” a “partner in crime,” our “ride or die”; and/or someone with whom we can “Netflix and chill“. Life is a real bitch most of the time, and it’s hard to go it alone, especially during a pandemic with a civil rights protest chaser. Which is why, deep down, even the most solitary, introverted, lone wolf like me prefers to have a special someone around to make this life slog more tolerable. At least until the inevitable monogamy issues kick in.

The Love Boat made it look easy. 1. Buy a ticket. 2. Get on board. 3. Wave to the people on the dock. 4. Greet Julie McCoy. 5. Proceed to your cabin on the Lido, Fiesta, or Aloha Deck. 5. Wait for romance. And oh, was there romance! Kisses in the moonlight, flirty glances at dinner, double-entendres a flyin’, and flings that lasted approximately one (1) cruise to Mazatlan or Puerto Vallarta.

Sidenote: I’m not here to do a deep dive on all The Love Boat characters, but looking back, it’s astonishing that no one got laid more on this show than Dr. Adam Bricker. Very difficult to understand in this #MeToo era, since on his best day Bricker was a leering pig who openly sexually harassed female passengers. The fact that he never got fired or prosecuted or had his medical license revoked can only be attributed to the fact that his character existed during the 1970s/80s. His unrepentant, unpunished ass would never see a writer’s draft today. Relatedly, how did Bernie Kopell ever get cast as the show’s Lothario? I mean, look at him:

The shag-parted hair over his ears, oversized 70s glasses, white socks up to his knees, Dilbert short-sleeved dress shirt with a huge collar… He looked like a shifty stockbroker. The kind who forges your name and steals your money. But a DOCTOR? Even back then, what self-respecting woman would ever let this smarmy horndog within 10 feet of them?

Of course, this entire show was a fantasy. It was so formulaic in fact that I can’t remember the plot of a single episode. Three decades later, all I remember is Captain Stubing’s goofy grin and Isaac’s finger point on the intro, my schoolboy crush on Lauren Tewes, and a bunch of 70s guest stars, most of whom are no longer with us: Charo, Tom Bosley, John Ritter, Florence Henderson, Jimmie Walker, Sherman Hemsley, Ernest Borgnine, Scatman Crothers, to name a few. They all boarded the Pacific Princess at the Port of Los Angeles, sailed to the aforementioned Puerto Vallarta or Mazatlan, found love, and then returned to L.A. with a new lease on life and a rekindled relationship. At the end of each episode, everything was wrapped up in a nice, tight, little bow. No herpes souvenirs. No psycho stalkers. No yelling and tears upon disembarking. Just LOOOOOVVVVVVEEEEE, EXCITING AND NEW! Happy endings, and… Smiles, everyone, smiles! Oh wait, that was Fantasy Island.

I should sue the producers of this show for negligent infliction of emotional distress because they totally misled Tweener Tim about how easy it was going to be to find and sustain everlasting love in real life. For a brief time, this fucking show elevated my romantic expectations to unrealistic heights. It was cruel. Fortunately for me, I learned at a young age that real life was closer to my parents’ turbulent marriage than it was to any Love Boat fantasy. Indeed, one might say that my parents’ marital misery was the ultimate Love Recalibrator. I was in no hurry to have what they were having, no fucking way. Their constant arguing and sniping is the main reason why I’ve never been a wide-eyed romantic. How could I be, when I grew up amid the ugly reality of their mutual unhappiness and disappointment?

So…. when it comes to lurrrve, I’ve always been a realist. I don’t live in a world of perfumed foo-foo illusion, Hollywood rom-coms, or idealistic fantasies of finding my “soul-mate.” That’s total horseshit. I live in reality. I believe people are flawed creatures. I believe I am a flawed creature. Thanks to Mom and Dad, I believe that how you show affection and how you handle conflict is where the rubber meets the road in a relationship, not flowers and candy on Valentine’s Day. This doesn’t mean I don’t buy flowers, birthday gifts, etc. when I’m in a relationship. I do all of that; I’m not a barbarian, for goodness sake. What I mean is I don’t get carried away by romantic feelings. No one will ever mistake me for Romeo. I’m not a “grand romantic gesture” type of guy. I’m not Toby on This Is Us. When I feel myself starting to get carried away, there’s this ever-present voice in my head that reminds me that the warm fuzzies I’m feeling are just temporary dopamine hits that will eventually wear off. Yeah, it’s a total buzzkill.

What do I mean by “reality”? Well… reality can’t be found on The Love Boat, but it can be found in this book I read in my 20s:

Since I read this book over 30 years ago, I’m a bit sketchy on the details, but the gist of it is this: the protagonist, Florentino Ariza, falls in love with the other main character, Fermina, when they’re both very young. For whatever reason, something to do with her father’s disapproval as I recall, they get separated by distance for a very long time. They stay in touch by letters or telegraph, but ultimately, Fermina breaks it off with poor Florentino and marries a wealthy doctor that her daddy likes. Unlike Florentino, but quite like myself, this doctor is very organized and pragmatic and devotes himself to promoting the public interest, which includes the eradication of cholera.

So… fast forward in time. Florentino somehow never loses his love for Fermina. Even after she gets married, he swears to stay faithful to her and wait for her for however long it takes. Having seriously underestimated how long he’d have to wait for this woman, however, he finds that he can’t hold himself to this promise and proceeds to bed his share of women. I don’t think he ever marries, and despite his amorous adventures, he always remains loyal to Fermina in spirit, if that makes sense. No matter who he’s with, Fermina is the one he always thinks about, the one he pines for, the one he can’t live without. On the other side of this equation, Fermina’s marriage to the doctor has its ups and downs. The doctor cheats on her, but she doesn’t find out until well into the marriage. They all grow old. The doctor falls off a ladder and dies. Not long after the funeral, Florentino, who has waited long enough, makes his move, and asks Fermina to be with him. Fermina gets pissed at his lack of manners for pursuing her so quickly after her husband’s funeral (Can you IMAGINE??? The poor bastard waits his entire life for her, takes his shot, and she’s like “How disrespectful!” Jesus Christ, the gall), but Florentino and Fermina eventually end up together as a loving, and really old couple.

Now let’s tally up the bill. A romantic would view Love in the Time of Cholera as a beautiful and touching love story. A young man falls in love, gets separated from his beloved, waits for her nearly his entire life, and is rewarded at the end when the stars align and they can finally be together. But a realist like me views this story as an absolute tragedy. Florentino spends his entire life pining for this woman he can’t have. No matter who he’s with, he can’t get her out of his head. He waits and waits and waits for her, growing older by the day while she’s busy living out the best years of her life with another man. Yes, he ends up with her at the end of the story, but at that point they’re both old and their best years are behind them. What are they going to do, play cribbage? Rock in their chairs with a glass of lemonade? Old people sex ain’t as good as young people or midlife sex. I know this wonderful reunion of theirs isn’t just about sex, it’s about soul fulfillment, but c’mon. He wasted his life! He expended years of emotion on someone who was totally unavailable and unattainable. Are we supposed to be impressed with the fact that his “reward” was a few years with her at the end of his life? Seriously? No, I’m sorry. To me, this story is a tragedy. It’s a cautionary tale about what happens when you let your feelings take control of the wheel and drive you off a cliff. It’s confirmation that true love is rare, beautiful, bittersweet, elusive, and full of pitfalls, and it usually ends in tears.

Yes, that sounds really negative, I know. But let me be clear. Despite my realism in matters of the heart, I do possess an adventurous streak. There have been times in my life when I’ve been a rut, and I’ve felt the need to shake things up by taking an uncharacteristic, delusional, ill-advised, leading-with-my-chin, overly ambitious romantic flier on someone. During the late 90s and early 2000s in particular, I was seriously stressed out while working my ass off at a white shoe law firm 6-7 days a week. I was in my 30s, single, overworked, and really strung out. AOL came on the scene just around that time, and suddenly I was able to communicate with random strangers across the country at any hour of the day from the comfort of my tiny apartment on the Upper West Side. As ridiculous as that interminable dial-up may seem now, for an overworked introvert craving social interaction more than sleep, AOL was a godsend to me back then. It was new and exciting, and I had the complete freedom to find a chatroom and connect with someone at whatever ungodly time I got home from work.

And connect I did. Indeed, I went a little cray. I had two or three short-term relationships with people I met on AOL, as well as a few, uh… *shorter* term experiences. One time, when I was still stupid and inexperienced in the ways of online connection, I flew all the way to San Francisco to meet someone I’d only seen in two mailed photos. There were no cell phone cameras or JPEGs back then. The only way to see someone was to send a scanned picture on a floppy disk, which most people weren’t able to do very easily, or to mail a real one. And I actually made this trip to San Francisco over Thanksgiving! I think it was the first Thanksgiving I’d ever missed with my family. (I remember my mother asking me “You’re going where? To meet who? Are you crazy?”) They must have thought I was nuts. I think I was nuts. The second I got off the plane and saw her, my heart sank into my stomach because I instantly knew I wasn’t physically attracted to this person. The pictures she had sent me were taken from a significant distance, so I wasn’t totally sure what she looked like up close, and I had stupidly bought my nonrefundable plane ticket before I got her pictures. I was such a dumb motherfucker back then. So yeah, it was an awkward as hell four days when we realized there were no sparks between us. We tried to make the most of it, and she was incredibly gracious by showing me around and not sending me to a hotel, but now it’s just a memory I keep in my Cringe File.

But this wasn’t the worst of my AOL encounters. After the aforementioned two relationships and trip to San Francisco, I became enmeshed in a long catfish mindfuck of a long distance “relationship” with a woman (who said she was from) from North Carolina. The whole experience is the closest I’ve ever come to being brainwashed, which is why I believe Fox News viewers are to be seriously pitied right now. Looking back, she revealed so little of herself that I’m sure I made up 70% of her appeal by filling in the gaps in my head. For years, she totally controlled the scope of our interaction and I inexplicably allowed it to happen because I’m a sucker for mystery and goal attainment. At some point I got fed up with her unwillingness to meet in person, and I told her that I was going to cut off contact unless we made firm plans to meet. Finally she agreed, and I bought a plane ticket to Wilmington, North Carolina, where she supposedly lived. I flew down, drove to my hotel at Wrightsville Beach, and quite predictably to everyone except my stupid ass, she stood me up. Womp. Womp. Womp. Fortunately, I like the beach, and I ended up meeting some cool locals and having a decent time down there, but it was a massive disappointment. Totally embarrassing. In retrospect, it’s pretty obvious that she was married, and I was an idiot for believing her lies for so long. She was the ultimate catfish. That show should have been mine, damnit.

After this awful experience, I put in safeguards so it wouldn’t happen again. Dating websites were born, and I focused on them instead of chatrooms. Yes, I rolled an ankle in an occasional dating pothole, like in 2007, when I did this with someone I barely knew, but for the most part, I began to prioritize more realistic and geographically desirable prospects. Eventually I got married, and we all know how great that turned out. [Eyeroll emoji]

So… what I’m saying is that even though I’m a hard-core realist in the romance department, there are definitely times when I’ve taken my romantic shots. Even though love has never come easy for me, this hasn’t stopped me from looking for a lasting special connection because I know what real chemistry feels like. There have been times in my life, fleeting moments, an hour here, a day there when I have felt it, that chemistry, that special sauce, that under your skin feeling, and let me tell you, it’s really fucking addictive. When it’s right, when the banter’s there and you’re both feeling it, it’s a dopamine overload. So as unsuccessful as I’ve been, I’m still searching for that Watermelon Sugar high, baby! The problem is that the harder I look for it, the more I swipe, the greater the intensity of my search, the more useless it is. There is absolutely no correlation between the intensity of my effort and actually finding someone compatible. In fact, the opposite is true. And it’s fucking exxxhaaaauuuussting.

Which is why it’s so perfectly ironic that it took a pandemic, a three-month quarantine, and literally no effort on my part to cross paths with a woman that I’m now completely smitten with. After what…. a good 6 years in an unhappy marriage and another 2 dating in nuclear fallout? After a total of 8 years, and with no searching at all on my part, my Grinch heart has finally shown signs of life:

I’m not joking. I didn’t have to do a goddamn thing to find this person. Okay, I did one thing. I wrote this, and after second-guessing myself three or four times, I posted it on Facebook for my friends to read. Whereupon a high school friend of mine who lives on the other side of the planet read it and liked it enough that she sent it to a good friend of hers (let’s call her “E.” for now) who was in a troubled marriage and contemplating a divorce. My high school friend (let’s call her “J.”) thought my words might somehow be helpful to her. This was totally fine with me, since I’m all about expanding my online fan base and becoming a social media influencer like Kylie Jenner, but for middle-aged and existentially troubled people like myself.

Anyway, through some otherworldly sensibility, some sixth sense, some hidden fucking Cupid superpower, J. Facebook messaged me that she wanted me and E. to meet, but only if E. ended up getting a divorce. (Much like Jiminy Cricket, J. has her ethical standards.) All of this seemed reasonable, and I was happy to be of service. Having been through a divorce myself, I know how awful it is. Plenty of friends, both real and virtual, helped me get through my shitty process, so I was more than happy to pay it forward to her friend when the time came, if it ever did.

This was in late January. Then I forgot all about it because there was an all-consuming impeachment going on, politics to rant about, work to do, and then in March, a pandemic, quarantine, and homeschooling to deal with. Then in early April I received another message from J.: “Remember my friend from a few months ago? Well, a divorce is definitely happening, and I’d like to connect the two of you. She could use someone who’s been through it to talk to. A pen pal.” (I’m paraphrasing).

I passed on my contact information, and the same day, E. sent me a friendly opener on WhatsApp, and we started corresponding about her marriage, divorce, and everything she was dealing with. I tried to give her some feedback on my experience without sounding like a know it all. For a few weeks, our correspondence was fluid, easy-peasy, and limited to the misery that is separation and divorce. But even in some of her early messages I saw healthy self-deprecation, a dark sense of humor that I could relate to, and an inner strength, all of which I found appealing in a “This person in Chicago sounds pretty cool, it’s too bad she’s in the middle of this mess,” kind of way. What was interesting though, was how open and honest we both were with each other from the get-go, when we didn’t even know each other. We even seemed to write in a similar way. It was weird.

Still, I was more reserved than normal because this was a friend of a friend who was in the middle of a major life change. I viewed myself as a friendly facilitator, a Misery Advisor if you will, into post-divorce life. I wasn’t looking for anything more (and neither was she), and I certainly had no ulterior motives. I mean, she lives in Chicago, for fuck’s sake. That’s 1200 miles away, so what was the point in stirring up my Power Mojo and trying to start something? My long distance track records sucks, and she’s a Sagittarius. Everyone knows that Virgos and Sagittarians don’t mix. Those were red flags. So I was strictly business: available when needed; respond when spoken to; reach out to check in; try to be helpful without being overbearing, just like a good Misery Advisor.

Well, because life does what it wants and doesn’t give a fuck about what I think, my track record, my aversion to romantic fantasy, my desire to not lead with my chin in yet another ill-advised situation, or anything else, it’s fair to say that things between E. and myself have…. uh…. escalated over the past two months in a way that is fairly unbelievable. I mean, it’s downright comical how much life contradicts me just when I think I have my shit leveled out, and I know what I’m doing. The Fates are perpetually giving me the finger.

In the three years since my separation and divorce, people would ask me Well, what are you looking for in someone? I’d always respond the same way: I’m looking for a real connection and chemistry. I know when they’re there because I can feel the buzz in my frontal lobe, the electricity in my body, the desire for more, the spark, the angst, the tug. I know it when they’re not there too, because all I feel is apathy and indifference, no matter how objectively “great” the other person is, or what they can offer me. This whole area is one of life’s mysteries, and it’s really hard to describe or quantify in words.

But fuuuuuuck are they both here right now. This is the best chemistry I’ve felt with someone in a very long time. I’m stunned, because I didn’t think I was capable of feeling this way any more. That’s what years of a bad marriage can do to you. That’s what a demoralizing divorce can do to you. That’s what a series of mismatched dates can do to you. Even if nothing comes of this, it’s been a gift to realize that I’m capable of feeling this way again about someone and that my instincts are RIGHT, even if my impatience is my biggest failing. So I may not be totally lost. I may not be alone for the rest of my life. There is still hope for me.

I may need to send J. a fruit basket.

So here we are, with Ms. E. ticking off so many of my sapiophile boxes. First off, she is funny as hell. She makes me laugh like no one else I’ve ever been involved with. (Are we “involved”? What is this? I don’t know.) I don’t mean like “Hee hee hee. You’re so funny!” with the occasional joke or one liner. I mean consistent, mutual, dark-humored laughs at life’s insanity; sarcastic shots at each other’s ridiculous idiosyncrasies; her purported need for “services” to reopen so she can get her hair, eyebrows and nails did and clean herself up; the potential sexual benefits of having meth mouth; sophomoric plays on the word “Uranus”; the serious risk that if this doesn’t work out with me, she’ll become an old maid who does cat puzzles in an assisted living facility for emotional sustenance; and other “you had to be there” shit that’s too absurd or perverted to mention here.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this on point with someone else’s sense of humor, apart from a select few friends, and I never realized how important it is to me. The banter between us is like this big fucking magnet, and it’s the main reason things have intensified so quickly. As any sapiophile knows, good banter requires intelligence and a quick wit, which she has in spades. This, and she has a potty mouth like me, without overdoing it.

All of those things are great and by themselves they might be enough to propel a good connection into something more. But when we got on the phone and started talking and all of it was still there; when I heard her warm voice with its accented touch of Louisiana and her laugh — the kind of laugh that tells you this person knows how to be happy and doesn’t spend her life looking for rainclouds, the kind of laugh that comes from the soul, the kind of laugh that I heard maybe twice in 10 years from Ex. — well…. these are the things that make me want to go all Florentino on this shit and stick my chin out for some heavy duty whacking. Again.

Have I mentioned that she’s very easy on the eyes, with a smile that forces me to smile myself whenever I see it? She doesn’t floss every night like me, but she still has great teeth. We talk about literally everything, much of it serious life shit, happy and sad, and there are no judgments (so far). Incredibly, her first awareness of my existence was my monogamy rant from January, and she’s still here. Her judgment may be even worse than mine. She’ll read this too, and I haven’t even had to hedge it too much.

This whole thing is NUTS. We’ve sent each other playlists, for goodness’ sake. It’s basically the 21st Century version of making someone a cassette tape. I haven’t done that since the late 80s. She sent me one full of songs that are so filthy, they’d make a sailor blush. So fucking funny. She taught me that I can use my earbuds without holding my phone in my hand because they already have a built in microphone. Nobody embarrasses me like that, god damn it!

This building connection is happening during a pandemic when not a single restaurant in my town has been open for three months, when I couldn’t meet someone for a drink if I wanted to, and when she’s in the middle of picking up the pieces after her own life grenade. And did I mention she lives in FUCKING CHICAGO with 3 young kids of her own who will continue to be raised there, so the prospect of us living in the same place anytime soon is impossible? Yeah, there’s that. So none of this really makes any sense. It’s irrational. It’s inconvenient. It’s foolish. She could totally be rebounding from the worst experience of her life, and I may be repeating some pretty stupid behavioral patterns that I should have learned from a long time ago. I mean let’s be honest, that’s probably what’s really happening here.

But… As Patton Oswalt said on his new Netflix special I Love Everything:

“If you find love, run toward it.”

Patton lost his wife suddenly a few years ago, and he was consumed by grief after he had to explain to his young daughter that she was never going to see her mother again. To his surprise, after a couple of years, he met someone new and found happiness again. He has since remarried. And he says: “If you find love, run toward it.”

If Patton can do it after having endured so much pain and misery, why can’t I? Life is short. I don’t give a fuck. This could be something big, or this could be something temporary. But no matter what happens, it’s been a welcome gift and a ray of light because it woke me up and crystallized what I need and want in someone. So explore it I will.

We’re meeting in person in 3 weeks. In North Carolina. The same state I flew to 19 years ago and got stood up.

I’ll let you know how it goes. Or maybe I won’t.