JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Pandemic art: The Triumph of Death by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1562. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Summer is approaching full blast, and from my window everything is glowing. I have moved my daily standing-in-the-sun to 11am because the noonday sun hurts. Indoors it’s like sitting in a turbo broiler, but outside is killer (and not just from radiation). We can only hope that this intense ultraviolet radiation vaporizes the coronavirus, as there is no evidence.

Today’s viral story was about a trans woman who was catfished. The virtual lynch mob came for the perps, but whether they desist from their assholery remains to be seen. This terrible story took social media’s mind off the pandemic for half an hour.

My friend and I got to talking via text about cases of LGBT being murdered by their prospective sex partners. (Warning: Gore) She had a friend who’d been bludgeoned to death with the edge of a DVD player by a man he picked up. In the 90s a well-known designer was killed in his apartment. A wealthy florist was killed by his masseur. My friend recalled someone who barely escaped death when a Midnight Cowboy (cinematic and generational reference) set fire to his apartment in New York. A very rich man was almost drowned in his toilet bowl (not a kink) during a one-night-stand.

I thought, optimistically, that since most dating today is done via app, there would be way less murder. Catfishing, yes, but one can survive that. People can screen their dates before they go out to meet them (unless they are clever), arrange to see them in a public place, and tell their friends where they’re going. Evan corrected me. A lot of people, LGBTQI+ and straight (Don’t even start with that divine punishment crap), are murdered by their dating-app matches. He sent me a Washington Post story about a cannibal who found his victims on a dating app. However you find your partners, you take your life into your hands. As Evan put it: Your libido, or your life?

538 new coronavirus cases reported this morning for a total of 2084, with 88 dead.

Following the broadcast in which we learned the official position on our brave medical frontliners—that we should envy them the honor of dying for their country—there was a leaked summary of a Zoom meeting between finance officials, economic advisers and private business. I don’t know how true the information is—likely it was floated to gauge public reaction—but a modified version of quarantine after the April 12 end of lockdown, one allowing for some public transportation and some reopening of business, seems sensible. The leak quotes data scientists who see infection rates peaking from mid-May to mid-June.

We don’t need leaks to tell us that social distancing is our way of life now, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Remember when we assumed that the future would arrive and it was foreseeable?