Home

Featured Post

Love in the Time of Corona

Love begins and ends with need. On this needy Melbourne summer night, an ex-girlfriend calls him saying she is nearby and has a friend visiting from France. Is he at home if they drop by for a drink? The visit will interrupt his evening of reading, but he likes meeting people not met before. He lives alone in a warehouse apartment and while he chooses to live alone, he doesn’t like being alone. He has the quiet assurance of a someone who has fingered the inner contours of his heart, his skin, his gut. There are no bad options today…I deserve the best…I like me.

They arrive. Melissa is escaping winter at her home in Nice. Her summer-sky eyes still his. She is tall and strong, a modern-day Boadicea fully occupying her territory, and that of others around her. He senses in her an efficient capacity to dispatch upsets in her life as if they were clay pigeons. She is energetic, smart, dry witted, quietly confident and tanned. I have a fortunate life…I am living it fully…I am vital.

They talk, but language is a poor medium for communication. It is their eyes and laughter that connect them. He likes her quiet strength. It draws him in. His ease draws her in. Their mutual friend seated between them is invisible and her chatter unheard. Different forces fill the space. The metaphysical meets physical…and wins. Poles north and south. Attraction. The seed. Unspoken. A new phrase, social distancing, has entered their vocabularies as they chat about news of the new corona virus in Wuhan Province.

Unrequited attraction is a skin condition. It requires attention. Scratching. A balm. He wakes next day with Melissa present to his senses. The laughter. Her energy. He imagines he can detect her scent in the apartment. He feels for the imprint of her touch on the book she picked up in his study. He googles her online, Facebook, Instagram. Most of the images capture her in movement – swimming, running, cycling – but it is her smile, the curve of her lips that captures his attention. Vibrant. He shuts the laptop. Stop it. It’s ridiculous. She lives on the other side of the world.

She writes verse on the plane back to France the next day and emails him.

                  Zero and one

                  Open and closed

                  Black and white

                  All turned grey

                  Is grey where we are?

She likes his alertness to life. He is different. Subtlety funny. Quick. He is a risk taker. She goes to his YouTube channel where his gravelly voice brings instant recall of his first playful words when they met, ‘You don’t look French.’ The verse she sends is a teaser, a test. We only ever test waters when we are looking for more depth. She wants to see his response. If only for a laugh. Stop it. It’s ridiculous. He lives on the other side of earth.

His response surprises her.

They message regularly over the next month and an easy on-line rapport is established. Their conversations are safe explorations of the present and their confused pasts. She has had three husbands, and he a marriage that lasted three decades. Children, politics, weather, sport, books, transform into playful conversations about broken relationships and sex. She is uncomplicated about sex. It is there to be enjoyed. It is just finding the right person. Trust. Connection. Talk of futures and hopes are avoided. He fears a future with another.  She fears a future without another.

The corona virus is declared an epidemic in Northern Italy. Football matches are cancelled. Governments issue cautionary travel advisories to China, Korea and Italy. Other countries look on, hoping this virus will pass.

Boldly, she suggests they meet for 6 days in equidistant Thailand. They are risk takers and they quickly settle on arrangements for a beachside bungalow on Koh Samui 4 weeks later. He is excited about getting to know her. And about the sex. He had a similar almost-a-stranger-tryst two years before. That worked well but combusted spectacularly on a follow up rendezvous.

Melissa smiles at the daring of 6 days in a tropical bungalow dominated by a large bed, with a man she hardly knows. Recent lovers have reignited her sense of self and she is up for more. She trusts her judgement, and if it becomes awkward, she has books, the ocean, and the paddle board.

Plans once made, create focus, urge beginnings. Each share with friends the boldness of their plan. They feel like players in a high stakes truth or dare game. Anticipation builds.

His imaginings begin. He arrives at the resort bungalow several hours after her. There is momentary awkwardness as the baggage porter leaves them alone. Taut, crisp white linen sheets on the oversized bed separate them.  They move instinctively, hesitantly. In life, reality always supplants hope. There is a lot of reality in a first kiss. Touch, taste, yielding lips, scent. Past lives dissolve into exhaled sighs. There is only the present as hurried movements alternate with lingering caresses…  

But none of this happens. The day before each is due to travel to Thailand, their Governments issue Corona virus Travel Advisories DO NOT TRAVEL to any Asia destinations. A global pandemic is declared.

‘I can’t believe this. Maybe we can get there via another hub.’

‘Well you might be able to, but I can’t.  The other Asian hubs are all now closed’ he replies in their anguished phone call.

Disappointment inflates the silence. She rails against the heartless cosmos, as she puts it. He likens their predicament to a Shakespearean tragedy…the course of true love never did run smooth.

They unpack their luggage not, in Thailand but separately, silently, in France and in Australia.

Over the next few weeks it becomes clear that border closures mean they will not see each other for months, or possibly not at all that year.  Both are in home lock down. They begin communicating daily online, via voice and video. There is no prospect of meeting. Or touching.

They are geographically distant, but much more separates them. Our deepest connections are anchored in shared memories, nostalgia. They don’t yet have these anchor points. And out-of-synch diurnal cycles conspire to frustrate needs. When she feels playful at night, he is slumbering into the next day’s dawn. Their first misunderstanding occurs. Over sex.

She struggles with their too-ordinary conversations of weather, children, politics, the virus. Sexting quickly loses appeal. Arousing on-screen images soon only heighten the absence of touch. She senses they are heading for the friend zone. Away from the banter of love. Insecurities and uncertainties seep in over pre-existing friendships, old relationships.  Imaginings. Jealousies. Messages become sparse. Silence is heard. She is probably still in contact with the Moroccan. He is probably still sleeping with his neighbour.

This virus kills more than flesh.

Both talk themselves out of this descent. He replays frame by frame his memory of her brief visit to his apartment two months before. That was real. This is not. Verse erupts from within him.

            Crowded clouds scud slowly

            Filling grey horizons,

            Patchwork fields colour, bright, warm

            Yet every hue becomes blue

            Missing the image of you.

            Something is missing.

In a bid to reconnect with her early emotions she writes prose…my love for you grows, unfurling like a fern…

Over a croissant breakfast she reads in The Spectator of a clinical psychology study, The 36 Questions That Lead to Love.  Increasing levels of self-disclosure build intimacy and love. Ask and answer these questions with anyone and intimacy will follow says the abstract. 

They work through a question a day on-line.

            Question 2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?   

            A writer he says…an Olympic athlete she says;

            Question 12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one                               quality or ability, what would it be?

            To be a female he says…to have my own cooking channel she says;

Question 34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?

            My grandfather clock he says…my sports medals she says

Question 36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it.

            My relationship with my son he says…my abuse as a child she says

Intimacy returns. The seed grows. Wanting him. Wanting her. Wanting more. They have distance Netflix movie dates. They exchange playlists. Read the same books. On-line they order sex toys, flowers and books for each other. Each writes more prose, more poetry.

 She is different for him. This time there is no sex to cloud judgement. He has learned not to trust himself in matters of love. His heart is a fast-paced runner that hasn’t learned to jog. It is distance that counts in love, not speed.

He learns to jog alongside her.

Six months pass. Curves flatten, immunologists’ triumph, and corona-closed borders reopen. It is October. Nine months since they met.

With a sense of determination they re-book flights to Thailand. Their medical certificates stamped COVID-19 IMMUNITY are like gold currency at Border Control. They arrive within an hour of each other at Samui Airport. He waits for her at the Terminal’s arrivals doors. Fidgeting. Searching each blond-haired corona-masked face.  Dreading. Hoping.

At last.

Their embrace is broken by the urge to just look at each other. Masks are discarded. Disbelief. Laughter. More holding. Unconscious to the jostling of others trying to pass. ‘Who are we?’ he whispers, smiling.

The hour taxi ride to the resort is filled with laughter, touching and silent gazing over passing exotic green palms and Gatorade blue tropical waters.

The resort is nearly empty. It is only frustrated lovers who defy warnings coronavirus mutations. Diving, sailing, beach walks and poolside time follow lazy breakfasts. They retreat from each afternoon’s heat, onto the cool bed linen, exploring skin-pale areas marked out by dark tan lines. Lovers’ laughter, slaps, energised chats and the clink of chilled glass escape through billowing gossamer curtains trying to escape the bungalow’s open doors.

He finds on the bedside table a copy of Ramakian, Thailand’s epic love poem. It is a story about Prince Rama who pursues – and is ultimately reunited – with his abducted lover Sita. Each dusk they lounge together on their balcony daybed and read parts of the tome. Love endures adversity. She gifts him a silk woven representation of the tale.

But after six days it is time for lingering farewells as they depart the bungalow to return to their homes. They plan to meet again in 6 weeks in Sri Lanka, the place where Rama overcomes his enemies and is reunited with Sita.

During that week however, outside the universe that is their bungalow, the corona virus is mutating and within a few days governments rapidly shut down borders to manage the impact of the highly virulent second wave.

He has the silk woven representation of Ramakian framed and hangs it prominently in his now locked-down home. A reminder of her, of them and love in the time of corona. But he senses an ending and captures his fears in a verse which he prints and seals in an envelope, placing it on the backing of the framed Ramakian.

      Will This Be The Last Time

      Labial sounds of wetted lips

      Linen-rustle against moving hips

      The caress of flesh of you above

      Our chatter, laughter, belly sighs of love

      But these sounds must end…must end

      Will this be the last time I hear you?

      Your tendril hair brushing my thigh

      Ignites flesh fire-fronts fanned by sighs

      The tented arch form of your ring-finger print

      The shape of its ridges unseen yet sensed

      But this touch must end…must end

      Will this be the last time we touch?