Pandemic Greetings

I realized I haven’t communicated for a while. Publish or parish. I gotta write something. I gotta communicate. My fans are dying to hear from me. Fields of dying bodies, eclectic readers and tie-dye aficionados, buzzards readying their beaks. This is my fault. This blood will be on my hands. Isn’t that just how the year has been? Here I am, sitting around in my underwear on the couch shotgunning Coke Zeros with a ball point pen, scrunched atop a blanket of indeterminate color, and I’ve got to produce something. I gotta write.

This brings up the rather testy problem of figuring out what to write. If I could think of what to write don’t you think I’d be writing? I’m a writer, you know. Writing is what I do. I tell people I’m writing when I’m writing and sometimes when I’m thinking of writing and when I have to explain why I’m in my underwear at 5:00 p.m. and have to invent reasons why the blanket is that color.

But I’m a professional. I can do this. Here it is. I’ll write something. Here it comes. I’m inspired.

Recently, I celebrated Thanksgiving and there’s something about that holiday that encourages me to give thanks, or at least count a couple blessings. A countdown. That’s a kind of writing. I can do it in words. Write them down. Writing!

I have a lot of blessings. I can work from home in my underwear with Coke Zero in my chest hair. This isn’t a Covid thing. I was doing this before, so it’s a big blessing my lifestyle hasn’t been unduly altered. I can write, when I want to. Really. It’s happened. That’s a good thing. That’s important to me. Blessed. Like Brian Blessed - FLASH!

Locked away from my sane friends, barring the door to my insane ones, I’ve come to appreciate friends. And sanity. It’s nice to know you’re not alone when you’re alone. Zoom has been a lifesaver and I’ve learned that if you hold the computer just right, underwear is just fine.

I’ve come to understand what it is I actually need to survive. Food. Lots of food. More food than I used to need apparently. Food is important. Heat is nice. Blankets help when you don’t dress for the cooling temperatures. Liquids are good. Coke Zero is a liquid. So is bourbon. I checked. Wikipedia is very wise. Thanks internet knowledge core.

Hobbies are vital for survival in these days of American decline. All work and no play makes for a creepy lodge vacation. I have lots of hobbies and I’ve even found a few new ones as I keep myself within this house all day, and yard at night; pants optional. Among my new hobbies are:

    Day drinking. 

    Sleeping.

    Slurring.

    Beard braiding.

    Eating. (That’s an old one, but I’ve been taking it to new levels.)

    Judging.

The last one is really a time taker. Getting on the internet, watching numbers rise and open hospital beds dwindle I’ve tried to find an easy way to judge my fellow pandemic travelers. Mostly, because my friends are sane, the judging goes out to creepy family members, strangers, and people who make the news for getting kicked off airplanes. The metric is: how much are you willing to be inconvenienced to keep other people from dying? If the answer is, "I won’t wear a mask and I won’t believe in science," you score very low on my judgment chart and I send evil waves of malevolence your way hoping you’ll lose your car keys or discover the wonders of Giardia-infused intestinal squirts. I can be mean. Don’t cross me.

I’ve also come to judge people by fashion. Tube tops after Labor Day is a privilege not a right. Crocs. Just Crocs.

I wonder if I’m not being judged too. I’m pretty sure I am. Waves of disorder waft over the domicile like whispered inside jokes. Strange things have been happening. The most alarming is that someone has cursed my washing machine. It is shrinking all my clothes, particularly my pants. A sublime spell. There’s a wizard out to get me. I must atone.

It hasn’t been a complete waste, these many months hiding from disease which is out to get me. I have found a new job. It’s a work at home gig, something I never considered to be full-time employment, but has surely risen to that, particularly in the cold weather. I am a professional door opener for cats. Yep. It’s going on my CV. There are doormen at all the nice buildings in New York (I read about them), well now at Casa Worthen, there is me. I’m not as nicely dressed, or even actually dressed sometimes. I don’t wear a hat all the time, but sometimes I do. I wait by the back sliding door ready to oblige our two cats who test the limits of their control over me by a dozen passings each day. They look at me and smile in their cat ways. I think they’d tip if they had money, but I know better than to let my cats have money. I shiver to think of the mischief they could do on Etsy alone.

So I go on with the cats and couch and the drinks and the food and the blanket whose original color is a mystery lost to time. I get by. I think. I plan. I wait for the vaccine and a return to sanity. I count my blessings. I write.

Gotta go. Roy’s at the door.

Merry Christmas 2020

—Johnny