Tallboys

Things are going well in New York City. Our virus numbers are slowly but surely decreasing, and it’s foreseeable by month’s end that we’ll be able to start the re-opening process.

We’ve reached the Tallboy stage.

This stage is designated by the addition of tallboy beer cans to street trash, alongside the used rubber medical gloves, that I still see constantly. (On the plus side, I haven’t seen any used rubbers in the gutters for awhile.) We had a few warm days last weekend, after a month of unruly weather not unlike Scotland’s rainy/windy climate. Of course, people came out in droves, which was to be expected. One thing I hadn’t anticipated. At night, I could hear young adults and kids going around in groups. Not necessarily being assholes, but being an asshole did seem to be a prerequisite for many of them.

Even without aural proof of them wandering the night, I could tell they were assholes by their droppings. The usual detritus – empty cigarillo and cigar packs to make marijuana blunts, and those small zip-lock packets suggesting recreational drug use. But most of all: empty tall-boy cans of cheap beer. Keystone Light, Milwaukee’s Best, Bud Light, etc. You have to be cheap and tasteless to be buying shit beer like this. Buying it in tall-boy cans?

Asshole.

Much to my surprise, I haven't seen any Four Loko cans. Maybe too high class for this crowd?

In a perverse way, it’s a good sign. It suggests a greater wave of freedom is coming, and these assholes can’t wait to partake. Granted, I’m describing very few people in the neighborhood, but I look at them as those birds you see in flying V formations in early March skies, slightly ahead of schedule. I can clearly see we’re going to have stops and starts, and flare-ups with the virus in the next few months. By the same token, we’re all yearning to be free, so I can understand an idiot expressing it this way. I have to believe that with social distancing and masks in tight public quarters, and enough sane people practicing these things, that we’ll be able to keep a lid on this, if not eradicate it. Once we get a vaccine in place and mass inoculations? Game over for this shit virus. Or at least render it controllable on the same level as the annual flu epidemic, which will still mean tens of thousands dying. (If you hadn’t noticed, this is normal for the flu.)

But we’re months away from that, not even to the point of opening society here in NYC, but inching closer. It’s a good feeling. As much as I hate masks and waiting in lines for basic services, I’m much more used to it now. Unlike people who are going around stating things will never, ever be the same again, I can see they will eventually. Beware of people using “never, ever” in a sentence. If they’re more than five years old, there’s no excuse. If you’re thinking “never, ever” with this virus, understand that the Spanish Flu in 1918 killed 50 million people and infected over 500 million. Aside from the availability of an annual flu shot, there have been no “never, ever” scenarios associated with that pandemic. (I write that knowing there are probably countless small ways the flu changed society that we still practice today. But I’m focusing more on alarmists now implying our world will be “forever changed” in countless major ways. They may as well be wearing acid-wash jeans and listening to Candlebox and Matchbox 20 as far as I’m concerned. Things change, often for the better. Every “list of changes” article I’ve read has been nothing but negative; there will be major, positive changes coming from this thing, the same way they come from any world war, which is exactly what this is.)

I like to think there’s a Jonas Salk out there who, in the next few years, will come up with a gamechanger in terms of thwarting any future viral outbreaks. As it is, I’ll settle for an annual vaccination that keeps the coronavirus numbers manageable going forward. Amidst all the negativity and paranoia, I’d like to believe there are some major breakthroughs in the near future that could greatly diminish or eradicate pandemics all together. At least something more tangible than wearing a fucking mask and crossing my fingers that some moron doesn’t sneeze too close to me! I don’t consider myself a particularly hopeful person. Maybe when I was a child or teenager, or a young adult. But at some point in my adult life, I realized that if you want positive results, you need to work towards them, with the possibility that all your hard work might be fruitless. I suspect there’s a lot of that going on right now with major drug and viral research companies.

What the hardest thing I’m realizing the past few weeks? It’s not only the virus and its endless spider web of issues. It’s stupidity. I see it every day. It’s safe to say that New York City has been one of the hardest hit places on earth by this virus, over 20,000 dead, hundreds of thousands infected. From the first day of mask regulations to this day, I will see people with no masks, clearly no intention of ever wearing one, making no effort to distance themselves from anyone, convinced this whole thing is “fake news.” On the streets. In stores, although I’ve seen a few deny them entrance. Believe me, when you live here, unless you’re completely clueless, you’re acutely aware of just how hard this thing has hit.

I can work around this individual stupidity, but when stupidity is contagious and possibly deadly? That’s a whole new level of crawling up your own asshole. In every action movie, there are numbskull bad guys who appear to be menacing. We watch the movie and usually within the first half hour, these brazen imbeciles either get murdered or ass-kicked by the hero. These people I’m seeing now in New York remind me of those disposable action-movie henchmen: arrogant and dumb as nails. I never found that movie-character archetype worth emulating, but these guys aspire to that level of assholic loser. Whether it’s on the streets of New York or toting a semi-automatic rifle in a state capitol’s veranda. This is shameful behavior that’s the antithesis of everything I understand to be true about America.

The unspoken threat I’m seeing is the horrifying failure of the American education system that people like this not only exist, but take a perverse level of pride in their stupidity. If we come away with anything from this? It’s the realization that we need to overhaul our education system so that people like this can grasp basic human qualities like shame and empathy.

And a word on New York “seeding” the virus in early March via travel before restrictions were imposed in mid-March. It makes sense. We were all living normal lives up to St. Patrick’s Day, believing the virus “wasn’t here yet” and those news reports of pandemics in China and Italy would, much like SARS, have little impact here. I would wager all American cities did the same to varying degrees. You can’t really fault people for spreading what they did not know or understand to exist at the time. None of us did.

That said, I gather there have been waves of New Yorkers who have abandoned the city since then, not quite realizing wherever they go, the virus is already there. And they’re possibly bringing it with them. A vast majority of us stood our ground and have weathered this thing. April was a truly frightening month to live here, no matter how much we downplayed it in reassuring phone calls and emails. It’s the same fear a lot of people across the country are going to have when virus numbers skyrocket where they live. It didn’t occur to me to leave here for two reasons: this seemed as good a place as any to face this thing, and I didn’t want to risk spreading the virus wherever I might have gone.

The pain of New York? All those people who fled will come back. Eventually, they’ll be among those who can afford to live here. Many of us who stood our ground, who chose to stay, will slowly be funneled out of this city by rising rents and gentrification. What’s wrong with this picture?