What You Do When You Have No Life...
I've often thought I would just put a .45 to my head if I had a boring, dead-end job, and maybe that's what playing Covid-19 roulette is really all about.
GOING THROUGH THE CHECKOUT line at a supermarket must be like streaming one of those channels on your ROKU that you would never explore except when you’ve seen everything else and you wonder, how the fubu did I ever get here?
I’m at the Ralph’s on Wilshire and Hauser on the day before New Year’s Eve picking up the Perrier Jouet Belle Epoque Fleur de Champagne, the Gouda and whatever else to celebrate the canning of 2020 with Miss Michigan, but right now I find myself being helped by three millennials who are allowing me to overhear their own plans for tomorrow night.
“Where you going tomorrow night,” the young woman cashier asks a young guy too cool for his own good who has come to hand her what appears to be a party invitation. She looks at it.
“You’re going to AZ?” she asks him.
I have no idea if AZ is a hot underground club in L.A., or if she means Arizona, or if that’s just shorthand for Azuza. My bet is on an underground club.
The cool young dude nods his head and leaves.
The cashier looks at the young woman bagging my Perrier Jouet, while studying the white painted floral bottle as if she’s deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs.
“He’s going to AZ tomorrow night,” the cashier tells her. “You going out?”
The bagger says she is but can’t decide what to wear.
“Wear what makes you happy,” the cashier says.
“But aren’t you supposed to wear something with a color that makes a statement? You know, about the year?”
The bagger looks at me as if I should know what you wear to a New Year’s Eve party. I shrug my shoulders. I haven’t been to a good New Year’s Eve party since the one that our friend, artist Dennis Mukai, hosted in Venice sometime last century or so.
“A glittery black gown and a matching mask,” I finally tell the bagger. “The mask will say a lot about the year.”
It goes straight over her head, but she acts as if she really wasn’t asking me, which is fine. To be honest, I have no idea what you wear to a party at AZ. Miss Michigan and I are wearing our Christmas pjs when we celebrate tomorrow night at home, I’m sure.
A moment later, having paid and wishing the cashier and bagger a safe happy new year, I walk away as casually as if I’ve just switched over to Netflix, not believing the brief scene that had just streamed before me.
Yesterday in California alone, 442 people died from Covid-19, and 34,972 new cases were reported. Those are historic numbers, and sure to be exceeded soon. Los Angeles is the epicenter of the worsr pandemic in our history, and state and local health officials are urging residents to stay home on New Year’s Eve. Still, the obvious question goes unanswered.
Why risk infection when people are dying in such record numbers that many funeral homes simply have no more room for the dead? Will unmarked mass graves be next? Death has come calling, and people are answering the door as if they’ve had no warning.
Why? Why? Why? Could it be that it’s because people think they’re invulnerable that they’re so foolishly reckless or is it just because they have so little to live for that life has become truly meaningless?
If not, then, call it Covid-19 Roulette, sadly a game of the pathetically bored, sad-assed and sorry.