Mott the Hoople and the Game of Life
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Andy Kaufman in the wrestling match
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Monopoly, twenty-one, checkers and chess
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Fred Blassie in a breakfast mess
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Clutching my lunch—two slices of pizza and a cola bottle—I stand patiently in a line which seems much longer than it really is because of social distancing. The Fresh Thyme is busier than normal and I feel a certain edginess. I’m constantly on the lookout for signs of panic. That way I’ll know when to panic too. There are a lot more people wearing masks now, maybe a third of the customers. Last week when they closed the salad bars and encased everything in plastic, I saw only one person wearing a mask in the store—a burly construction worker who seemed outright terrified. He wore gloves and insisted on bagging his own groceries. I hope he wasn’t sick. I remember him taking one last look at all of us unmasked fools before he left, like we were all gonna die soon.
Let’s play Twister, let’s play Risk
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
See you in heaven if you make the list
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
President Trump suggested today that if people had masks, they should wear them. Prior to this, the U.S. Surgeon General had recommended against the public buying or wearing masks; the hospitals needed them and that the masks made you touch your face. Don’t touch your face. Remain calm and wash your hands , I tell myself. I’m coming off a week-long quarantine caused by a minor cold and lack of testing. The time at home benefited my mental health enormously. I’d been getting emotional about elderly customers on my postal route. Crying actually. In my head, I say goodbye to them and then continue down streets that seem lifeless, dead, depopulated. So much so that I feel like a ghost myself. I’ve been experiencing the stages of grief (denial, anger and depression), struggling to accept the fact that one morning my sons woke up to a world that was different. Children’s play had been criminalized and their schools closed with signage on the playground equipment telling them to stay away.
Now Andy did you hear about this one?
Tell me, are you locked in the punch?
Andy are you goofing on Elvis?
Hey, baby? Are we losing touch?
Everyone I talk to says the same thing: “It’s like a movie. It doesn’t seem real.” I’ve analyzed the numbers, selfishly hoping that this encroaching viral wave will only take out the aged and the sick. Not me. Not my kids. I’ve vacillated between believing the WHO’s dire predictions and dismissing it all as mass hysteria. I’m at a point where I place my faith in God (a word I rarely capitalize) and laugh into the abyss because it’s the only way for an essential worker without hand sanitizer to stay sane.
The line isn’t moving and I just want to bail, get the fuck out of there. The clock is ticking on my mandated half-hour lunch. Finally, I break away from my mental static enough to recognize Michel Stipe’s ethereal voice over the grocery store’s intercom system.
If you believed they put a man on the moon
Man on the moon
If you believe there’s nothing up his sleeve
Then nothing is cool
I snicker because the popular R.E.M. song is funny and this situation is absurd. I purchased Automatic for the People on cassette tape back in college. I seem to be the only one in on the joke. Yes, we’re all gonna die. We were always going to die. The people around me have these blank, bored looks. We’re waiting in line to check out.
How do we know they put a man on the moon? It’s like the world was round and television made it flat again. Now we’ve encountered a plague and we’re all falling off the edge of science.
Moses went walking with the staff of wood
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Newton got beaned by the apple good
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Egypt was troubled by the horrible asp
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Charles Darwin had the gall to ask
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
I make it to the cashier, a man in his sixties with a tremor in one hand. The guy ahead of me—a college kid in need of a haircut—turns before leaving and thanks him for his service.
“You as well,” he says to me.
Attired in my blue uniform, I smile and nod graciously. My Discover card works. The falcon can still hear the falconer. It’s April Fool’s Day and all day long, music plays in my head like an end of days soundtrack.
Now, Andy did you hear about this one?
Tell me, are you locked in the punch?
Hey, Andy are you goofing on Elvis?
Hey, Baby! Are we having fun?”
*
Later in the day, as I sort letters into the boxes of a cramped apartment vestibule, I observe a man slowly progress up the concrete steps toward me. It’s painful to watch. His mouth and nose are swaddled by a bandanna, almost like a gag as he plods along with the assistance of a cane. I hold the door open for him so he can come inside. Thanking me, he immediately takes a rest on the carpeted stairs.
“You don’t mind if I wait here?” he asks politely. His face is ruddy, drenched in sweat.
“No, not at all.” I answer. “I should be done in just a moment. Are you waiting on a package?”
He shakes his head. “Someone is coming by with some food.” He consults his phone with a look of annoyance. The gentleman appears to be in his fifties. He is someone I’d classify as “high risk.” As I lock up the boxes the man pants. He removes the bandanna from his face and uses it to dry off his forehead.
“Are you all right?” I inquire pointedly. By “all right” I mean, do you need an ambulance? I don’t think so, but it seems like a dutiful question.
Chuckling, he raises his palm in refusal and tells me he has other issues. He pulls up one leg of his sweatpants to reveal a portion of his swollen calf outlined in marker, the shape eerily similar to a puzzle piece.
“I had cellulitis,” he says. “They just released me from the hospital. I don’t know if I should even be out here. They seemed awfully worried about it when I showed up yesterday at the emergency room.”
I nod, suppressing a grimace. I feel sympathy toward him, but not in a touchy-feely sort of way. “They’re probably trying to keep bed space open,” I say.
“The hospital was empty,” he says. “So many beds.”
I visualize a ward full of creaseless white sheets and pillowcases waiting for the legions of sick to arrive.
“I really appreciate you guys being out here.”
“I’m just grateful to have a job,” I respond with a sheepish smile. “Do you mind if I sneak by you. I don’t like leaving packages here. They get stolen.”
“I’m sure they do.” He leans over and I ascend the stairs with a precarious armful of boxes. Coming back down he jokingly observes that I’m short of breath as well. I’ve been rushing around all day. The Coronavirus is getting to all of us. We share a laugh and I push the door open, happy to once again be awash in the sun’s cleansing rays.
*
If you believed they put a man on the moon
Man on the moon
If you believed there’s nothing up their sleeve
Then nothing is cool
Each day I home-school my nine-year-old son before work. My wife and I used to argue about whether or not he has dyslexia. I’m trying to use this never-ending Spring Break as an opportunity. The burden is now on us to help him. No more complaining about the school district. They’ve provided us this packet of essays for him to read. I compose my own short-answer questions to test his comprehension.
Today’s assignment is about the first manned exploration of the moon by the Apollo 11 crew of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. Growing bored with my tutelage, my son sketches a rocket ship on a lunar landscape pocked with craters. His simple pencil drawing reminds me of illustrations from the French novella, The Little Prince.
With the REM song from the supermarket still stuck in my head, I’m startled by the coincidence but also wondrous. My son and I are exiled together. Two sad inhabitants of a world gone wrong. We play our games, yearning for a reopening of the schools, a reopening of life. That planet called “normal” is small and blue in the distance, close enough to see but too far away to touch.
Photo: Bruce McCandless on his untethered flight in 1984. Nasa.
Thanks for this, Justin. I enjoyed it.