Love & Sex in Times of Corona

Dr. Weintraub

Tuesday, May 26, 2020, early morning

"Ohh shit dad, have you seen the news today?" She screamed while running down the stairs holding her Apple laptop open. She gets to the kitchen where her father is making breakfast and lays the computer on the island. "Dad, check this out."

On the screen is a video of what appears to be several police officers standing around a police vehicle. But what immediately catches his attention is that on the ground is a man, a black man, with a police officer holding him down by leaning on his neck with his knee. Robert didn't believe what he was seeing. Not again, he thought. Not in 2020. Then to his horror, he hears the man on the ground plead with the officer to let up cause he couldn't breathe. The officer continues to lean on him. The man was saying in an apparently hoarse voice, 'I can't breathe, I can't breathe. He even said, desperately, 'please, please officer, I can't breathe."

The man died while on the ground.

Robert Ryan was shaken by what he'd just seen. He recalled when back in 2001 he saw a video of terrorists in the middle east beheading a British journalist. It was graphic, disturbing and inhuman. He remembers thinking that nothing like that can ever happen here. But now, what he just saw was the equivalent of that other video. And the thing is, it was done in broad daylight with onlookers pleading with the police officer to get his knee off the man's neck. It happened here, in the United States of America.

He looked at his daughter, "baby, you alright?"

"She nodded at him silently, as if in a trance. He knew she was not alright. He reached for her, embraced her and held her tight to him. He knew she was crying because he could feel her tears fall upon his arm.

"Daddy, that could have been Michael, or Jimmy, or..." she couldn't speak through the sobs. The Ryan's were always clear about one thing: people are people and they did not limit who they had as friends. In their book, everyone was just as good as the next. In their social gatherings, one would think they worked for the United Nations. And they passed this down to their children so that Robbie and Kaily had an assortment of friends, of all races, color and backgrounds.

They stood there in the kitchen, father and daughter trying to come to grips with what they just saw. She was no longer the little girl that he could just hide the ugliness of the world from. He himself did not understand what he just saw, so how could he possibly explain it to her. Many things have happened since she came back home, and the biggest of them all was that now, she was asking big girl questions, adult questions about what was happening in the world around them. And he was at a loss for answers.

Finally she pulls away, "daddy, I'mma call some friends ok?"

"Sure baby." He knew her contacts with the outside world were important to her. They maintained her sanity, as she mainatained his.

Once she's gone, he picks up the house phone to call his wife and notices that he has several new voice mails. His phone hasn't been ringing much in the last few weeks, as most of the large companies he consults for were awaiting the effects of the quarantine. So business isn't what it used to be. Now that the weather is more summer like, he and Kaily spend most of their time outside, playing ball, or taking long walks while they talk. So he could see how he could've missed some calls. There were several. He recognized his sons number, Ms. Ferguson, his neighbor from next door and a few other familiar numbers. There is a call from 617 area code, which he does not know.

It is now 11:30 in the morning and with Kaily upstairs, he decides to return some calls.

First on his list is his son.