Welcome to Love, Us, a column for telling queer love stories in all their glory. (And by glory, we mean all the big, beautiful moments and otherworldly little details that make making and falling in queer love so, so fun.) Read more from the series here.
I didn’t have sex at all in 2020.
Sorry, that might have been too much too quickly. I’ll start over.
Hello, my name is Garrett. I’m a Virgo sun, Capricorn rising, Libra moon. I live in San Francisco, and I didn’t fuck at all in 2020. Not once. Not even a handjob! There wasn’t so much as a finger in my ass last year that wasn’t mine, and although I do love my own angel-soft-yet-decidedly-strong fingers, after a while, one does get tired of one’s own handiwork.
I blame my perpetually un-fucked year on the global pandemic we’ve all been living through. Perhaps you’ve heard of this? It’s not great! I don’t think I’m painting with too broad of a bush here when I say that essentially every waking moment of the past 403 days (but who’s counting?) has felt like walking around in a suit made of little bees that are on fire and also singing the chorus of “Happy” by Pharrell screamo-style on loop. The facade of normalcy behind which we were all operating pretty much shattered to reveal a Charybdis-esque chasm that sucked all social structures into it, with dating, intimacy, and sex being notable losses.
It’s not necessarily that pre-pandemic dating (particularly online dating, which is famously an unmitigated hellscape) was so wonderful, but more so that losing it brought into focus how deeply necessary it is to get one’s rocks off. To let out one’s ya-yas, if you will. I’m hesitant to say there’s a light at the end of the tunnel because, again, this has really been more like a chasm, but as more and more people have started to get The Jab, dating, intimacy, and romance (in person) are becoming viable options again. It begs the question: what the hell is it going to look like now? After a year of park dates and virtual dates and Zoom sex and introspection and masturbation, are we really rushing back to business as usual? Or, is this a gorgeous window of opportunity to reinvent what dating looks like in a post-pandemic world?
“I think that those of us who’ve been single for a significant chunk of the pandemic,” W Magazine columnist Harron Walker reflected over the phone recently, “have had a lot of time to think about what our priorities are and what we want and what we wished we’d maybe had during this past year. I feel like I’m leaving the pandemic knowing very confidently that I want a relationship,” she said. “I want someone who prioritizes me. I want someone to prioritize in my life. I want to build a life with someone.”
After a year of literal hell (the understatement of the century), the idea of riding out a pandemic in a relationship with a person, or persons, you’re unsure about or unhappy with or not satisfied by quite simply isn’t the move. Somewhere around month three or four of the pandemic, near the bottom of a bottle of Lambrusco and elbows deep in a roasted chicken, I realized something. I like myself, and I like who I am when I’m alone. To be honest, I think I always did, but I caved to the pressure of being told that in order to really like yourself, someone else had to like me. So I tolerated ambivalent companionship and reluctant second dates just to say I had them. Now that I’ve admitted publicly that I’m a fucking riot on my own, I don’t want to do that anymore.
Justice Namaste, a bisexual writer in New York, feels similarly. “After a really long period of so little meaningful interaction with other people, I want to be around people who want to be around me,” she said. “I need to be able to say what I’m thinking. I need you to be able to receive it. I want to be around people who aren’t scared or hesitant to tell me that they want to be around me or be with me.”
On dating apps and even in some actual human conversations, I’ve noticed a bit more directness from people in terms of what they’re looking for, and I think that trends with Namaste’s wonderful point — that after a year of solitude, the costs of spending precious energy hanging on to someone you don’t actually care about are clearer than ever. “I’m trying to let go of the habit of just wanting company for the sake of wanting company,” she continued. “I’m not trying to date to marry, but I still need a certain amount of care. I still need responsiveness or communication or whatever. And I’m more confident in communicating that now.”
There was a point during the pandemic where I feel I essentially lived inside of my phone, but in an attempt to provide myself with a certain amount of care, my screentime was down 11% last week, and as such, post-pandemic, I would love never to have to interact with another screen again for as long as I live. More than that, I would love to never again swipe in any direction on any device trying to gamify my love life. Once Tinder started telling me there were “super users” and that I should try “upgrading my like,” it was a wrap. That we continue to cuck for our tech overlords and pretend we know no single friends at all is evidence that a change is necessary. We all have single friends! Enough is enough already. Post-pandemic, it’s time to put your cards on the table, Mary. And by cards, I mean the contact info of that one cute person you met a few months ago who is adorable and single and who might just be my soulmate.
I’ve had a total of, like, one successful interaction on a dating app, and it’s with the person I’m currently seeing (brag), but I don’t love those odds, honey! If, as a society, we’re allowing baggy jeans and whale tails to make a comeback, it’s time to whip out those flip phones and start setting each other up. I think we’re slowly starting to move away from that phase of pretending to be offended when someone would say, “Oh, I have a gay friend I think you’d like,” but baby, it’s time to sprint. You think you might know someone who’s mostly not-terrible, and you think there’s a chance we may or may not be able to tolerate each other long enough to share a few drinks and then possibly slam our faces together (post-vax!)? Sign me up!
And while waxing poetic about what the future of dating could look like is nice, there are a least a few vestiges of pandemic dating (ok, maybe just one) that just might be worth salvaging. “I would hope that if there’s one thing that’s carried over in terms of dating and just social interaction period,” Walker told me, “it’s less reliance on bars and restaurants to be the locus of our dating and hang out time.”
Last summer, I was a little drunk in a park, and I remember looking around and thinking, wait, we could have been doing this the entire time? Don’t get me wrong, I plan to patron the shit out of every dark, sweaty, sticky queer space I can wedge myself into once I’m allowed to do so again, but wow, there is something wonderful about getting to know someone in the sunlight. There is literally not a single redeeming thing about this pandemic, but I am hopeful we won’t forget about the outside once we are allowed to go back inside again.
And once we are allowed back inside and can be inside one another post-vax, I hope no one ever stops making out or touching each other for the rest of time. “I’m just trying to make out with people again,” Namaste told me, to which I screamed, absolutely! “I miss making out with people so much,” she said, “in any context. You’re at a club, or you’re on a first date, anything. I don’t think we’re gonna stop kissing, to be clear, but I think there used to be a sort of freedom to it that I hope comes back.”
I’ve (clearly) never understood the issue people have with PDA. I’m very much a fan, and I personally couldn’t be more excited about the extremely horny after-the-jab vibes that are coming our way. Make out in the streets. Put your tongue in so many places there’s a chance you might not be able to find it again for a few weeks. Be a slut! Live your dreams! So much has been stolen from us over the past year. Determining the most casual way to navigate over to the cute person you just made eye contact with across the way and working up the courage to (consensually) make a move cannot be lost to the times. It simply can’t!
Over the course of the last year, there’s been a lot of talk about how we have the opportunity to reshape the way the world works in light of everything that’s happened. About how work might look different, about how we should prioritize rest, about how spaces can become more accessible, and how progress and development don’t just need to be measured against our output. However, as we’ve started to take steps toward reopening, it’s become evident that we aren’t moving toward a new normal so much as it appears we’re retreating back to the status quo. There’s only so much we can control about how the corporate world works, but we are still deeply in charge of our personal and interpersonal lives. There’s still a chance for us to reimagine the ways in which we make up and make out and get together. The pandemic has already fucked us enough; post-pandemic, it’s time to fuck on our own terms.
“Love, Us” is looking for readers to reach out about your queer love stories. Have a love letter to share or a story you’d like to tell? Send a note to loveussubmissions@gmail.com with all the details, in 500 words or less, and we might just be in touch.
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