Going Viral

BY: Michael Arkin

Was it just a few days ago that I was thinking about attending the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition Studio 54: Night Magic? Now, due to COVID 19, the museum is closed, New York’s streets are deserted and the disco era seems like some far-off drug-laced dream. For those of us that were there, dancing under the infamous Man in the Moon whose spoon swayed to and fro, Studio was not only the greatest discotheque in the world, it was Rome before the fall, the garden of earthly delights and Alice’s Wonderland all in one.

While Liza Minnelli, Andy Warhol, Bianca Jagger, Halston and Truman Capote partied in the VIP basement, upstairs, in the darkness of the balcony and crammed into the stalls of its restrooms, revelers, including some pretty famous faces, hooked up, engaging in a variety of what would now be considered high-risk behaviors. But back then, in the innocent pre-AIDS era when everyone was having unprotected sex, doing lines and swallowing handfuls of Quaaludes, it was just another night at Studio. Merely thinking about it makes me nostalgic for the days when we would boogie down. Now we hunker down.

 

Amid the panic and Purell world of COVID 19, I’m tempted to ward off the angel of death by smearing lamb’s blood on my doorway like the Israelites did. After all, Passover is only three weeks away, and no one knows when this madness will end. In the meantime, we can fill our days streaming series on Netflix and Amazon, imagining what sheltering in place would be like if we were still dependent on videocassettes and Blockbuster was on lock-down. The only thing more terrifying than that is the idea of quarantining alone.

42% of Americans are single, and 40 million of them are looking for love on the Internet. So what impact is the virus having on online dating? eharmony tells us that every 14 minutes, someone finds love on their site. You have to dig a little deeper to learn that 53% of people lie on their online dating profile, mostly about their age, height/weight, and job/income. On gay hookup sites you can add penis size to that list. What may be even more distressing than finding out that your date is 30 pounds heavier than their profile picture is that they recently came back from a business trip to Seattle with a nagging cough that they just can’t seem to shake. According to The Washington Post, on sites like Tinder and Bumble people are actively searching for someone to ride out the apocalypse with.

In this plagued climate, the biggest lies on dating profiles may not be that you have an MBA from Wharton and six figure income, but that you have 45 rolls of toilet paper and a refrigerator stocked with food. If you’re swiping left or right on Tinder you’ve probably seen a PSA urging you to avoid touching your face. Maybe we’d be better served staying home and touching ourselves.

According to Global Web Index, a leading market research company, 75% of online daters are under 30, 90% are under 40 and online dating peaks at 25. Since the greatest threat of COVID 19 is to people 60+, it’s not surprising that young romance-seekers are less concerned about hooking up than their older counterparts. The youthful notion of immortality may explain why Spring Breakers crowded the beach at Clearwater, Florida, last weekend. Seemingly unafraid of the virus’ contagiousness, they showed little regard for social distancing. Based on the photos I saw on the news these kids were standing more like 6 inches apart than 6 feet apart and you don’t have to be Dr. Ruth to know which 6 inches I’m talking about.

 

But these seemingly invincible youth need to heed Dr. Anthony Fauci’s warning. The Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said, “There are two reasons why young people need to take this very seriously: you, yourself can be in harm’s way. Even as important is that you have a societal responsibility to protect the vulnerable, and you do that by not letting yourself get infected. You need to make sure that you don’t inadvertently pass on the infection to someone who would not fare as well as you fare because you’re young and healthy.” In other words, you may be bringing back more than a suntan from Spring Break in Florida.

 

The hysteria surrounding the virus is reminiscent of the furor that greeted the HIV crisis in the early 80s. For a long time, no one knew what caused HIV or how to prevent it. Once the virus and its method of transmission was identified, you could protect yourself by abstaining from unprotected sex and not coming in contact with infected blood, semen or vaginal secretions. Today, with the airborne COVID 19, you need a Diver Dan outfit – replete with a copper hat and breathing tube.

With shelter-in-place mandates sweeping the country, look for extended online chats and more FaceTime sex between prospective partners. Now that the Brooklyn Museum is shuttered, may I suggest watching Matt Tyrnauer’s Studio 54: The Documentary or director Mark Christopher’s 54 starring Ryan Phillipe and Mike Myers. If you’re running out of things to chat about to that potential special someone you met online, perhaps you can ask them to stream one of the movies simultaneously while you video chat. It could be a great first date, custom made for the age of Coronavirus.