Like I wrote in the introduction of this book, pre-quar-quar, my boyfriend and I had never been together for more than two weeks at a time. And even when we were in the same place, he was working remotely / catching up on sleep and I was continuing to overstuff my schedule. Whether we liked it or not (oh, who are we kidding? We are tried-and-true workaholics, so we liked it), we were always, in some way, distracted. Our minds occasionally wandered during conversations. I stayed up until four a.m. writing while he was in bed and asleep by midnight. Being a tour manager for a rock band meant that he was never not on call. Not even when he was home on his time off. In short, there was always something stealing our attention. But quarantine would change that. Work was going to slow down. There weren’t going to be outside activities to break up the monotony of coupledom. It was just going to be me and Baekoff. All the time.
Now, I’m not trying to sound ungrateful, because I know the alternative—quarantining solo—is rife with its own set of challenges, including boredom, isolation-induced dark thoughts, not having anyone to share newfound financial burdens due to unemployment or being furloughed with, and the absence of human contact. Touch deprivation became a topic of national discussion and legitimate concern during Covid-19 because of social distancing. And as time went on, some were starting to feel its effects. In Megan McCluskey’s article “The Coronavirus Outbreak Keeps Humans from Touching. Here’s Why That’s So Stressful” on Time.com, she investigated this new normal and referenced a 2014 study conducted by psychologist Sheldon Cohen and other researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. The study concluded that hugging as a form of touch improves the immune system. McCluskey writes:
The researchers had 404 healthy adults fill out questionnaires and respond to telephone interviews to assess their perceived daily social support and frequency of interpersonal conflicts and receiving hugs, for 14 consecutive evenings. Then, the researchers intentionally exposed each participant to the cold virus. Broadly speaking, the participants who had reported having more social support were less likely to get sick—and those who got more hugs were far more likely to report feeling socially supported.
A stronger immune system is not the only benefit of touch. McCluskey continues: “According to Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley . . . ‘Touch is the fundamental language of connection. . . . A lot of the ways in which we connect and trust and collaborate are founded in touch.’ ” Think about it. That form of communication is everywhere we look. Whether it’s parents skin-to-skin bonding with newborns, friends high-fiving, or a playful squeeze between romantic partners, touch plays a key factor in not only human interaction, but in helping us maintain our sanity. So, if I had to choose between quarantining solo or with my soul mate? I’m choosing “soul mate” every time. And because of that fact, some single folk assume that my boyfriend and I quarantining together was nothing but a bed of roses.
Throughout the quar, single friends (without roommates) would say things such as “Being inside 24/7 stinks, but at least you have each other!” and “I wish I had someone I could talk to anytime I wanted,” and “You two used to travel constantly for work, so it must be nice to make up for lost time,” and the classic “Don’t get knocked up from all the sex you’re having, lolz, lolz, lolz!” Lemme tell you something: Most couples weren’t having as much sex as everyone thinks. Seriously, some of my single friends thought #QuaranbaeLife was just FuckFest2020 with the Red Hot Chili Peppers headlining and Flea slapping the bass for eighty hours straight. That wasn’t happening. Why?
Relationships, romantic or platonic, aren’t designed for the people in them to be around each other constantly. Not even for those couples we consider #Goals. I bet there were moments during the quarantine where my Forever First Lady Michelle Obama said to Barack, “Bruh, if you don’t go put on some stonewashed dad jeans and play hoops in the backyard for two hours so I can have some peace and quiet,” you’re fooling yourself! Trust me when I write that no one is ever turned on by being around the person they love all the damn time.
You know why affairs are so hot and sex-filled? Because the people involved don’t see each other all day, every day! Do you think on Scandal, Olivia Pope and President Fitz would have been banging in the Oval Office if the previous night Fitz overheard her in the bathroom trying to time her poop plops to the sound effects from an episode of Star Trek: Picard that he was watching? No! Do you think Romeo and Juliet would’ve been so into each other if their families weren’t haters and hadn’t kept them apart? Hell, no; they were fourteen, and Juliet would’ve dumped Romeo because she was sick of Mercutio’s non-funny behind hanging around. You know why Diane Lane’s character in Unfaithful smashed the first dude (a French guy named Paul) who helped her after she tripped and fell in the street while running errands one afternoon? It’s because her husband, played by Richard Gere, was walking around the house every day, rocking the same waffle-knit sweater and not appreciating the Barefoot Contessa meals Diane was making for dinner. Meanwhile, Frenchie was all oui oui and ooh là là fromage’ing Diane Lane outta her Maidenform undies once a week. What I’m getting at is this: Space and absence are the foundations of sexcapades, not deep familiarity and seeing people at their most raggedy for months on end. So thanks to Covid-19, Baekoff and I were constantly invading each other’s space because how couldn’t we, given the circumstances?
And if I’m being honest, not invading each other’s space was an issue in our small two-bedroom apartment pre-Covid, too. To give you perspective, walking the length of Oprah’s estate takes, I imagine, probably the entire running time of The Departed. Our place? Literally a handful of opening notes from the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” that plays at the beginning of The Departed, which isn’t bad when you’re free to come and go, because that’s the point of living in New York City.
Now this isn’t some theory I made up, such as “because of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s astronomical success in Hollywood, when I finally make it, I’m only going to be known as ‘Black Phoebe.’ ” The truth is people do move to NYC for the adventure. And that adventure typically exists outside the home. So when people say they live “in the city,” that’s because the city is where life happens—the transportation, the parties, the workplace, the gym, the theater, the bars, the museums, the parks, the backstreet shortcuts that get you where you want to go faster, the brunches, etc.—so home becomes just a place to shower, snack, smash, sleep, repeat. This explains why when I bought this apartment, we didn’t mind how small it was because our personal and professional lives kept us away from home.
Cut to the 2020 quarantine. He was in the living room, editing an episode of my Black Frasier advice podcast while free-balling it in a Bed Bath & Beyond robe; meanwhile, I was writing this book in my “office” aka the kitchen table next to the couch he was sitting on while rocking a pus-filled acne patch on my face. Despite our unkempt appearances, we felt like a power couple and were happy to be our most comfortable selves around each other. Those were the good days. The not-so-good ones? Well, we were riddled with cabin fever and felt as though we’d never have privacy again. So, in short, quarantining in an apartment only heightened our emotions as well as amplified the ups and downs of sharing a life with another person.
For instance, reading. Escaping into a book keeps me sane. Since sound travels throughout the apartment, I wore headphones to drown out noise. So sometimes, when Bae tried to get my attention to ask if, for the seventeenth day in a row, I wanted some jank Barilla pasta in Prego sauce, I took an AirPod out of my ear like I was on the A train and a gaggle of youths just entered my car hollering about “Showtime” and started freestyle dancing to Chance the Rapper’s “All Night.” I. Was. Pissed. Like, duh, Bae! What else we gon eat?! Quit playin’ like we got options. Plus, we both knew that query was just an excuse to chat for the next twenty minutes. Just be like that John Mayer song and “Say what you need to say.”
Speaking of the kitchen, Bae never found a cabinet door he didn’t want to leave open. Even if he went to get a granola bar and an apple, when he left the kitchen, all the cabinets were open as if he was trying to create an American Ninja Warrior obstacle course out of eco-friendly wood and chrome handles. I told some of my male friends about this and the consensus was “Of course you never close the cabinet doors because you gotta be ready for anything.” I relayed this to Baekoff and he cosigned it with a “You never know what could go down.” Huh? What do we have to be “ready” for? What is going to “go down”?! Our neighborhood was and continues to be boring AF. Our building was and continues to be quiet AF. We didn’t have guests over. Every night, we chloroformed ourselves to sleep goop style aka spritzed our pillowcases with lavender because in your thirties, you don’t simply just fall asleep. You’ve lived too long and seen too much, so you have to anesthetize yourself like some old-timey villain. Jokes aside, nothing of note happens here, much to our low-key disappointment. But even if something did, how would open cabinets help?! Like if a burglar broke in and was about to kill us, best-case scenar is British Bae going, “Oh, bollocks! This is how me life ends, innit? Jolly good that I left the cabinet doors open, which’ll help shave a few seconds off the time it takes to look for a packet of chamomile tea, pop on the kettle, and have a quick cuppa before I die. Cheers, mate!”
Thankfully, no breaking and entering happened during the quar, so we never found out how Bae would’ve reacted. In fact, he and I were quite strict and no one was allowed at our apartment the entire time we hunkered down. This meant Baekoff and I were each other’s go-to for conversation and connection. So we talked to each other. A lot. And we didn’t always know how to get a break without coming off like an asshole. So you know what I did? I started meditating in the living room because I was like, “A bitch can’t talk to me with my eyes closed.” But you know what a bitch can do with my eyes closed? Go into the kitchen, which is mere inches from the living room, and turn on the Vitamix to make a protein shake.
When we weren’t talking to each other or trying to steal a couple of private moments, we FaceTimed our parents. Of course, all the clichéd technological foibles occurred: Our parents’ foreheads were the only visible image on-screen, they forgot the password to unlock the iPad and missed our calls, they could never prop up the iPad well enough, so it toppled over mid-convo, etc. Obviously, there was no middle ground when it came to the length of conversation. Either our parents would want to have a three-hour-long caucus with us about everything ranging from what went down at the supermarket to the trash Netflix movies they watched or they would go entirely MIA for days, as in the case of my mom that one time when she claimed she was unavailable to talk for an ENTIRE weekend because she had to spread mulch. LOL. Wut? Did she suddenly get forty acres and a mule overnight? Because I’ve been to her house alls my life and there ain’t that much land. Spreading mulch probably took her five hours, but she hit me with an out-of-office autoreply like I was Carol in accounts payable.
Anyway! When the FaceTimes did go down, Bae and I made sure the other looked their best before these calls. Scratch that! Well, I held up my end of the bargain. Like when my boyfriend and I FaceTimed with my parental units, I did what they call in Hollywood “last looks,” meaning I would make sure his clothes were neat and his hair and beard were on point and framed him up nicely in the camera. Y’all, I was giving him SAG-AFTRA union glam and Directors Guild of America–type professionalism on this nonunion set aka our couch. Meanwhile, Baekoff gave me no heads-up, and would FaceTime his mom at random hours of the day and just flip the camera on me when I hadn’t smoothed down my edges and was sporting a Hanes Her Way T-shirt with years-old pit stains. Once the FaceTimes ended, I’d go, “Da fuq?” to which he’d respond, “It’s fine. Who cares? She’s seen you at your best.” Yeah and I ain’t trying to have her see me looking six degrees from a Katt Williams mug shot. Suffice it to say that Baekoff’s allyship rating definitely took a hit after these trifling FaceTimes with his mom.
But guess what, boos?! As much as my boyfriend did things during the lockdown that could really burn my toast, it turned out that I, too . . . am annoying . . . to live with . . . sometimes? Most of you reading this are probably thinking, Duh, mofo; everyone is annoying periodically, but this was low-key startling for me. See, thanks to a healthy diet of watching nineties / early aughts sitcoms in which put-upon wives dealt with their ding-dong husbands, I assumed this quarantine was just gonna be Baekoff and I doing a deep dive on him and all the things he needed to work on and then when it came to me, I would be treated as though I just nailed a voguing competition: “Yaaaaas, bitch. Flawless. Stunt on these heauxes. Make them eat it. Legendary!” Cut to week two of the quar and my bf was starting to look like J. Jonah Jameson, the editor in chief of the Daily Bugle, because all my ignorance caused gray streaks on the sides of his head.
In all seriousness, despite the love of my life having the patience of a saint, there were still moments and days when he was absolutely sick of my mess. Sick. Of. It. I mean, I interrupted his video game playing with his friends overseas so he could do a quality control check on my two-strand twists. He listened to me on business calls uttering phrases such as “Let’s circle back next week,” “Would love some clarity,” and “It’s really important for our company synergy” ad nauseam. I have a twenty-dollar karaoke microphone and I walked around our home singing only the “aww baby,” “ooh baby” parts of Ashanti’s “Rock Wit U” because breath control I do not have. Sometimes I wore my plain-ass sleep bonnet until seven p.m., took it off, didn’t style my hair, then put the bonnet back on at 9:30 p.m. because it was bedtime. I chewed and smacked my lips loudly while eating. Fear not, I wasn’t born this way. Rather, because, prior to Baekoff, I lived by myself for several years, there wasn’t anyone to check me with a “Hey, boo, every bite you chew sounds like the cast of Stomp clip-clopping around on linoleum tiles and tang-a-langin’ on trash can lids. Close your mouth.” Naturally, my “style” of eating worsened, and during the quarantine, British Baekoff knew that having a meal together meant subjecting his ears to a Live Nation ASMR concert he didn’t ask to attend. So, yep, there’s no way around it: I can be irritating. Case in point: Baekoff’s not allowed to watch any TV series by himself, old or new, if there’s even a hint of suggestion that I may *one day* be interested in it. Please enjoy:
Phoebe Being on Her Bullshit: A Play
Baekoff sits on the couch, enjoying his quiet British life without my loud American voice blaring in his ear as he watches TV. I see him happy for five minutes and think to myself, “Well, he had a good run.”
Me:
You’re watching the newest season of Ozark? Interesting.
Baekoff:
Huh? Oh. Uh, yeah. The show premiered before we started dating, so . . . yeah, I’ve been watching it.
Me:
I guess that tracks.
10 DAYS LATER. Baekoff has headphones in, watching TV. LOLOLOL. Like why is he wearing headphones in this apartment? He trying to block me out? I had a Ricola today because I was bored. My vocal pipes are ready.
Me:
Babe. Babe. Babe. Babe!
He removes his headphones.
Me:
Is that the new season of The Walking Dead?! There are 2.8 hot dudes in it; why didn’t you tell me that so I could start watching the show from the beginning* and catch up before the new season started?
Baekoff plays clip of a zombie getting shanked in the head and I dry heave over his cup of tea.
ANOTHER WEEK PASSES. We’re in bed, scrolling Netflix, trying to find something to watch.
Baekoff:
What about The Witcher?
Me:
Ehh, that’s just white people in wigs doing goofy ish.
Baekoff:
That’s literally what Mrs. Doubtfire is and you love t
hat movie.
FIN.
Does this play get a Tony? An Obie? No? Well, I tried. Moving on!
I’m sure there are folks reading this and thinking, It’s not that big of a deal. I pooped a little when I gave birth to our kids and my partner saw it. Nope. Does. Not. Count. Conducting the miracle of life overshadows all the ways your body may betray you during childbirth. But for me, there was no baby. No miracle. No breathy “ah-hahs” à la Maxwell in “This Woman’s Work.” Just a grown-ass woman standing in front of a grown-ass man, asking him to love her over the sound of her crapping herself. It was beyond embarrassing because losing control over my body like that meant I also lost control over how he saw me. Okay, fine. I wasn’t exactly Miss Manners before this incident. Yet, I wanted him to see me in a certain light: as the cool, funny chick. Silly as that may be, we’re all guilty of wanting our personas to remain shatterproof in our relationships at all costs. Like, some folks want to always appear unflappable in front of their partners. Others might strive to forever be the life of the party. Or the go-to problem solver. Or the compassionate shoulder to lean on. Whatever the case is and no matter how “real” people are when dating, everyone has an ego, which means a part of us is always stage-parenting ourselves to ensure we “book the gig” aka stay in the relationship for another day, week, month, year, or for eternity. And, in case anyone was curious, until me, I’m sure pooping oneself would not secure the gig with my boyfriend and would get nothing more than a “Don’t call us; we’ll call you.”
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