Popping the Bubble: Escaping the United States in a Pandemic

Touch: a tool for intimacy and violation (Field, 2011). A way of making sense of the body we are in through contact with another. Before coming out, I would hug people almost desperately—tight, trying to squeeze every emotional and physical sensation before it ended. Fear motivated this clinging: scared at being found out and that the touch may not happen again. I still seek out the hold—though less thirstily—recognizing others’ need for the solid pressure, the gentle passing impression.

As a child, I preferred to be home alone curled up reading. Being outside meant being called a sissy and the possibility of violence. In middle school, a pack of White girls decided to grab my hair and make fun of my skin, darker than theirs. As an adult, men made it clear they wanted to feel me and I let them. After contracting HIV, the feelings changed: I had to find new places to learn to be with men again. Touch has brought me joy and connection, fear and loathing. My body has never been a simple place.

During the pandemic, I felt trapped in my home, cut off from anyone except my dog, Ace. This manifested as depression, major weight gain and a return to daily, heavy drinking. Clicking, shopping, ordering. Repeat. Grateful for the privilege to have life delivered. Sitting with myself, alone, trying to make sense of this space. I continued teaching and writing articles and attending meetings, even though I wondered why. As weeks went on, online engagements became more insistent, filling up every space in my calendar. The screen time seemed to deaden life, still the air, add to the feeling of claustrophobia as we hunkered down.

Referring to the experience of Black gay men, Bost (2019) describes loneliness as a “form of negative affect” involving “alienation, isolation, and pathologization” as well as “a form of bodily desire, a yearning for an attachment to the social and for a future” (p. 49). As a gay man of color, I felt cut off (again) by disease and a need to reach out. I turned to post cards, sending a few each week to different friends and former lovers: from my hand to theirs. Without the use of a screen.

How to touch another person in a pandemic? With HIV, we learned to use condoms or not, and we carried that consequence with us (Spieldenner, 2017). We discovered we were not meant to be alone: we found ways to be together. Crimp (1987) notes “sex is not, in an epidemic or not, limited to penetrative sex” and we can be open to the “great multiplicity of those pleasures” (p. 253). With COVID-19, we could carry the disease so easily with our breathing or maybe contact with the same surface. Handwashing, masks and distance were our condoms in this new pandemic. Days spent in solitude in the quiet of screens, interrupted by the clicking of a keyboard, the switching of the channel or the ringing of a delivery. How to find that “great multiplicity of (…) pleasures”?

Webcams became essential to our work, socializing and, for me, sex. There are rules to get familiar with, mechanisms for interactions including price menus and chat boxes (Jones, 2020). I spend time with a few men, eager at first with this new platform to discover another means to connect. The excitement fades—the touch is so limited—and I am left wanting.

Like others, I made a bubble (Appleton, 2020). Mine was with some former students. We bonded over what we shared—food, school, the Movement for Black Lives, mixed-race identity, the pandemic, a need to write about our lives—and what we didn’t—experience, sexuality, religion, anime, sports and comic books. I queered boundaries with them as a political act of community building, for my own safety and wellbeing (Spieldenner & Eguchi, 2020). One shifted into being another straight boyfriend in my life, comfortable with some of the emotional and physical parts of the role without the sex: I love you, Andy, he says, holding me tightly. His beard scratching against the top of my head. This touch was everything, until it wasn’t.

Ace died in the pandemic after 15 years together. The eternal lapdog seeking a human source of warmth. The only constant contact in my world. Online work made living in the expense of San Diego ludicrous, clarifying my position in the economy—even with tenure relegated to the precarity of renting. The numbness grew. A friend had settled in Guadalajara in this time of online teaching. Leaving was easier than expected: I needed something more than straight boyfriends.

In Mexico, I couldn’t hear the U.S. news, the election, the protests, the pandemic. In another part of the world, there was quiet. My limited language skills restricted meeting new people, even if I wanted to. My Brownness was a camouflage, almost as if I belonged, walking without the pressure of racism. In this context, I made enough money to live comfortably and pay all my bills: I did not have to choose between the two for the first time in my adult life.

Privilege is being able to relocate in a pandemic. Redfield (2012) asks, “[w]ho can move, and at what cost” (p. 376)? Living in another country and working online are a result of my passport, degrees and tenured position, each providing mobility options. Others cannot order dinner every night or hire personal instructors for Spanish lessons and yoga. No matter my appearance or desire to fit in, I remain an expat, bringing the history of U.S. politics with me (Redfield, 2012). I bring this up as an act of critical self-reflection and care (Hobart & Kneese, 2020; Spieldenner & Eguchi, 2020), so as to be mindful of the power and consumption already over-determined in the two countries’ histories and policies. How to find someone to form a bubble?

His ad says heteroflexible and, perhaps with my coterie of straight boyfriends, I am intrigued. I had been slow to engage the sex work industry. Even in teaching classes on it and advocating for its decriminalization, even after having done forms of it when much younger, the stigma associated with sex work persists as a powerful deterrent (Johnson, 2014; Jones, 2020). I have first meeting jitters, but there is a comfort in the control. I chose him. He speaks English; he’s funny, perceptive and into music and comics. He has been married to a cis-gender woman, his other sex partners have been trans women and gay men. Most of his customers are heterosexual couples. Our weekly meetings are healing, a sanctuary from the pressures and traumas left from others. He knows when to push the boundaries of kink and when to sit quietly, holding each other. Touch can become a fetish when certain kinds of it are denied. This is what I was missing before: the physical acts of sex, the mutual appreciation in the naked play and exploration. We still keep in contact and I look forward to seeing him again, feeling his caress and kiss.

There is a cost to missing intimate touch in a bubble. The United States in pandemic, protests and President Trump felt like a cage. Media doom-scrolling and the merciless capitalism that demanded each hour be accounted and productive held me hostage, and had particular impacts in my Brown queer HIV-positive body. I sought out other means of connection, and negotiated different boundaries with men, regardless of sexuality. I asked for more than these relationships could hold. Changing my cultural, economic and linguistic environment and turning to sex work were ways to manage the isolation brought on by COVID-19’s public health measures, the political climate of the United States, and the loss of my dog Ace.

Conflict of Interest

The author has no financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications or opinions stated – including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author or for the associated departments or organizations, personal relationships, or direct academic competition.

References