march30–april12, 2020 | newyork 45COVID-19 islike thetrip-to-Ikealitmustest forrelationships.about sex will be clearer and better than
ever. Maybe every relationship will have
the hazy-dusk glow of a summer-camp
romance, when none of the rules or time-
lines of real life apply.
Around the time the DOH sex guidelineswere released, I received a message from a
man begging me to let him come over. He
said he would walk from his apartment in
Bushwick to mine in Fort Greene. “No cabs
or subway,” he vowed. He promised to
“wash his hands so good” if only I would
just let him in the house for sex. I guess the
guidelines were absolutely necessary.
dating now requires a new set of
skills. Phone sex necessitates a convincing
auditory repartee, and video sex has its own
mood-killing challenges. After days of
building up anticipation via sexting with a
potential partner, one friend ran into all
sorts of hiccups when it was time for the big
video-sex meeting. She struggled to get the
angle of her iPad right, while he struggled
to be quiet enough not to wake his kids.
They gave up and just talked. Another
friend shares a truly cautionary tale of a
failed effort to spice up a flirty yet chaste
chat: “I’d done the move that allowed the
sweater to drop, exposing my bra. Things
started to get hot and heavy. Clothes came
off. I was pinching my own nipple, telling
him all the ways I was gonna make up for
lost time post-plague, head tilted back in
ecstasy as he touches himself and the Wi-
Fi flits in and out the faster he goes,” she
says. “He’s about to come, and I ask him to
come closer to the screen so I can watch ...
as my mom walks in asking if I want to
finish a puzzle.”
But then there are stories like Mabel’s,
ones that feel like a Halley’s comet fairy
tale of pandemic dating. Mabel met Kevin
on Tinder the second week of March, and
by the time they were supposed to go on
their first date, neither of them was leav-
ing the house for work, so no way was itethical to do so for a date. They agreed to
FaceTime. She put on pants—actual
outside-the-home pants—and did her
hair and makeup. They FaceTimed for
four hours over drinks (he, tequila with
lime and strawberry; she, a black-cherry
White Claw).
At some point, Kevin told Mabel, “You
know, this is the part of the date where I’d
normally ask if you want to make out.” The
sexual tension was so intense they pon-
dered their second date: Could they meet
in the park if they stayed six feet apart? No,
they’d probably mount each other immedi-
ately. Instead, they had a Saturday-night
dinner. They shared their addresses, and
each ordered food to be delivered to the
other’s apartment at 6:30 p.m. She got him
a Thai feast (appetizers, drinks, a main.
“I liked him,” she says, a shrug in her voice).
He sent her Mediterranean. They had
another four-hour date. Again they talked
about meeting each other; again they
decided they couldn’t.
One day, during a spontaneous call
before their third date, things got hotter.
They spoke for a long time, then switched
to text. Mabel noticed Kevin was making a
lot of typos. “Don’t worry, I realize it’s hard
to type with one hand if the other’s busy,”
she joked. The joke turned into sexting,
which quickly moved to phone sex, which
abruptly had to transition back to sexting
because Mabel has roommates. Even still,
she assures me, they both got theirs and are
exploring a healthy sext routine as part of
their ... whatever this is.
The other day, Kevin asked her for some-
thing truly wild. Not video sex. Instead, he
said, “What if in order to be socially respon-
sible but still see each other, we just move
in together for two weeks and quarantine
ourselves together?”
Mabel hadn’t watched Love Is Blind, but
it’s wild to think that the show came out
pre-pandemic. Its creators somehow
seemed to know we’d all soon be consider-
ing love in a pod, as a reasonable way for
two (or more) people to forge something
emotionally long-lasting (by reality-TV
standards, anyhow).
As for Mabel, she has some concerns
about Kevin’s offer. “The good thing is
I like him,” she muses. “There’s a deeper
connection. We have a more emotional
base before we dive into the more physical
stuff. But what if I’ve built him up in my
head? What if this is a fantasy? What if
he’s actually a bad kisser?
“Maybe after a few more FaceTime
dates,” she continues. “I mean, it’d be kind
of fun to just move in with him for two
weeks and have a lot of sex and be in the
honeymoon phase. Extraordinary circum-
stances, you know?” ■Illustration by Eugenia Loli