Love & Sex in Times of Corona

DAN IV

Daniel Lansdale adjusts the clip on the gun. For two weeks now he sat on the sofa and played with it like a new toy, inserting the magazine only to remove it, over and over again. He took another swig of Jim Beam and let out a burst of air as the hot acrid liquid flowed down his throat into his stomach.

It has been two years since he felt the burning sensation flowing down his throat and settle in his stomach with a heat he never actually got used to. Two long years of abstinence and everything is the same. Nothing's changed. Alcohol, no alcohol, what's the difference, his life is in shambles no matter how he looked at it. What's the use. Just when he thought life couldn't get any worse, this virus shit happens. What's the use?"

So two weeks ago he gets on the internet and finds what he's looking for, Logan's liquor in Chester. He waits a few minutes, deciding, although he had decided already, the thought of what he was about to do deserved some contemplation. He calls, they're open, but he has to order and pay online and then pick it up in two hours. He can't enter the store. One drives up, gives a clerk a name and order number and they bring out the order to your car. Adaptation; in times of need, humans adapt. If one cannot adapt, they die.

He knows he's dead.

He cannot understand and yet, he feels like his life is over.

He orders two liters of Jim Beam. He doesn't want to make the trip too many times. That was two weeks ago and since then, he's bought four more.

After a month of isolation, he started analyzing his life, his morals, lack of character. He used to be a fighter and so he is continuously perplexed at how he has no fight left in him. The last ten years he has developed a propensity to take the easy way, It's so unlike him. The alcohol eased the disappointments, blurred life's challenges and made everything seem alright. It made him feel successful, for when drunk, he could see in his mind visions of a successful life; smooth, cool, everything falling into its rightful place.

As he starts feeling the effects of the alcohol, he wants to call Maribel, his pregnant twenty year old receptionist. Maribel, such a common name for a Hispanic girl. Maribel Rivera. Yes, his alcohol fueled mind feels strong, courageous, sexy. He'll call her, tell her how much he misses her. Perhaps she can leave her father's apartment in the Bronx and come stay with him while this thing blows over. Yes, she's pregnant, but they can still have sex. He remembers her skin, like café con leche, with a little too much leche, so tight, her body, so firm, her moans in the dark, the scratches on his back. Yes, he will call her. He is feeling good now. A warmth flows through his body as the alcohol takes hold. At the very least, they can have phone sex.

He'll tell her father he loves her, that he'll do right by her. So what if she's almost thirty years younger.

Maybe he can still convince her to get an abortion and everything will go back to normal. She did say she wants to be with him. They all say they want to be with him. What he doesn't understand is that for them, it's all fun and games. An affair with the boss, an older man. Young girls thrive on that, he's just an adventure to them. Except that this one complicated things by getting pregnant.

He calls her cell, no answer. He calls again, no answer. He'll call later. He looks out the window to the backyard. It's a beautiful sunny day. Perhaps he'll go out and walk around his property, enjoy it a bit. It's a beautiful house on a beautiful property with a beautiful mortgage he cannot afford. He takes the bottle and goes out the back door and sits on a lounger and admirers the beautiful scenery. How can everything look so heavenly and serene while his life is in tatters. After an hour, he's really tipsy. He goes back inside because he doesn't want to fall asleep on the lounger as he has done several times in the last two weeks.

He sits back on the couch in the living room and begins to think how ironic life is. How his neighbor's husband died from the virus, a man with a family, morals, a wife which whom he could enjoy the rest of his life with. A man who makes a difference, brings people joy, by the thousands. An accomplished man, captain of cruise ships, making a difference in the world. Perhaps society would have been best served if he disappeared, and captain James were still alive so that his wife need not be a grieving widow.. After all, what contribution to society can he make; a middle aged, alcoholic, down on his luck, getting twenty year old girls pregnant with no means of support. A man with no morals, no direction, selfish and weak.

The bottle is almost empty now. He takes another swig and grimaces as the liquid burns the epithelial lining of his esophagus. He picks up the gun from where he left it on the sofa, inserts the magazine back into the grip and takes it out. He does this a few more times before bringing the gun up to his eye. He stares down the perfectly machined barrel. He marvels at the smoothness of the inside of it and wonders at what speed a bullet would come out of it. It would be so easy and then all his problems would disappear.

So easy.

He removes the magazine one last time, and getting up, places it on the kitchen table, away from the empty gun, which he takes back with him and stuffs under the seat cushion of the sofa.

Maybe tomorrow he tells himself, maybe tomorrow, as he takes another drink from the bottle, for even with the cloud of inebriation that engulfs him, he knows he is too much of a coward to do it today, as he was yesterday and the many days before.

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