No Glove No Love/Part of the Solution

I remember going to see Madonna’s Like A Virgin concert with a bunch of friends in the 80’s.  I was 14 and I don’t remember having a sense of anything particularly sexual about her, just that she was cool, fierce, and somehow could dance on a gondola without falling off, which made her rad.

The 80’s were a kind of odd time to go through puberty and high school and all that  because of AIDS and the very big public awareness campaigns at that time that said, basically, sex can kill you.  

In the early 90’s during college I did some volunteer AIDS education work, which was basically telling people to not have sex or if they had to have sex to make sure to use a condom.  We ran around the dorms with cucumbers teaching people how to put them on properly, handing them out so the kids who felt not too embarrassed to have sex but too embarrassed to go to the drugstore would have access.  Stuff like that.  

You didn’t need to be an immunologist to be able to say, “Oh, there’s a really bad disease with no known cure out there and a big way people get it is by having sex and you can radically reduce the risk by not having sex or using a condom, pick one.”

So today, I don’t get it. 

There’s a really bad disease, super-contagious, with no known cure, and the way you get it is by being breathed on by other people, who’ve been around other people, who’ve been around other people.  

And whether or not I’m getting breathed on by this person wearing that kind of mask or that person who isn’t coughing but is talking loudly which expels more air, or this other person I’m in line with but they’re X feet away (6? 10? 26?), and I’m turning away from them, but we’re indoors, but the doors are open, doing all that calculating seems pretty exhausting, futile, and straight up dangerous to me.  

I’m no infectious diseases expert but from what I can tell, there’s no way to be around other people and radically reduce the risk of transmitting or contracting COVID-19 except with a sealed N-95 mask and a full face shield, that you remove in the proper way and then wash your hands in the proper way and dispose of in the proper way to avoid cross-contaminating etc etc.

So who am I willing to die for, or kill for, to be around? What am I willing to die for or kill for to do that requires being around other people? 

A latte? 

A driveway party?

A friend I really really love who wants to see me so bad and promises to wear a mask and stay 6 feet away?

No one wants to hear this news.  Just like none of the first year students in Carmen Hall wanted to hear that their super cute boyfriend who just doesn’t like condoms might not be worth contracting AIDS for.  

They’d corner me and ask, “Well what if he only comes on my stomach?” And I’d have to break the bad news, “There’s actually more viral load in the pre-come. So you gotta decide, is it worth it?”  No glove, no love.  If he loves you, he’ll glove up.  

If you love me, you’ll visit me on video chat.  I love you, and I’m staying home.

Thank you to the people whose call to service requires them to take risks.  I am staying home to avoid becoming work for you in the future.

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