The world may end this year…so why am I still buying low-fat yoghurt? (By Brian Johnson)

The thought struck me yesterday with the force of a hammer forged from irony. I was shopping in a Hamptons grocery store. Usually, the store is not patronized by people from Manhattan until Memorial Day Weekend (late May). This year, they've blown in early.  

We see them first sat deep inside their leased Cadillac Escalades, kids scrapping in the football field of many back seats. These virus-unfriendly days, they're hunkered down in their $20m 'cottages' to escape COVID (or they've brought it with them from the city; thanks, guys.)  The ‘blow-ins’ are not hard to spot. Literally Botoxed up to their eyeballs, the women are puffy-cheeked, snuggled somewhere inside their padded, fur-collared coats, wearing too-tight jeans (‘check out my thigh gap’). Yesterday, one of these mutton-as-lamb sirens was followed by a sullen, trolley-pushing sixteen-year-old who was saying on her cellphone ‘OMG, I’m on, like, a shopping trip with my Mom!!!’  The men also are easy to identify: dressed in casual chic: Tom Ford to the fore, distressed Polo beanie, black moleskin shirt with matching Frame jeans, and Locke boots ('got 'em on Jermyn Street on our last trip’). Always on their cellphones, these shouty oafs are yelling through their designer masks at some underling back on Wall Street. Or they're bellowing to a fellow MOTU ('master of the universe') who's checking out Porterhouses in the meat section. 'Hey, Sandy! You're not gonna believe the price of this challah!' 

And there's me: a local retiree of no consequence, trying to stock up on fruit and veg and please, please, some fish. But today, there's no salmon, no halibut, no tuna. Tilapia? No thanks. I make do with some sea scallops, pick up some Thai noodles, and head for the check out. The check-out is decked out: with decals imploring me to 'keep six feet apart' (the USA being one of only three countries on the globe - Libya and Myanmar being the other two advanced civilizations - that has not gone metric. And now, one imagines, never will.)

I’m reaching for the low-fat yoghurt to sweeten my boring but healthy oatmeal and a little voice asks ‘Why? If we kick this sick puppy into touch this year, you’re only extending your own survival (I’m retired, remember) for a few more years of admirably worthy yet miserable eating. If we don't lick it, we're all licked anyway. So it's a win/win – even when it’s a lose/lose. Eat, eat, my boy, like there’s no tomorrow! Cos there may not be’. I go nuts: buy slabs of salami; cheeses that a Frenchman would applaud; broccoli and cheddar soups, oyster crackers; potato chips; butter pecan cookies, meatballs, teriyaki sauce, lasagna, mac ‘n cheese; and English toffee ice cream (I never buy ice cream; I’m not even sure I like ice cream but I hear it’s bad for you so – ship it in!) And, $150 later, I’m outta there and hurrying to the parking lot to drive home and enjoy a feast fit for the gods. In isolation.

In the car, goodies (baddies?) loaded, I wrestle off the mask which, with its many cords, often takes me five minutes. Putting on the mask takes much longer: I sit in the car wearing a thick woolen scarf under a heavy coat. Then, plastic-gloved, I try to tie a bow backwards - not an activity for which my shaking, fine-motor-skills were designed. There must be a better way! There is: ‘Get one with loops, pal’ says an unwanted onlooker as he passes. The young busybody snaps on his own mask with (rather too much) flair.

APRIL FOOL? 
But, but – another thought strikes me: what if this entire COVID pandemic is one huge cosmic April Fool’s prank? I’m convinced Y2K was a conspiracy conceived by The Spotty People, they of the unmoored eyes and stuttering voices. We techno ingenues waited for cyberspace to terminate as midnight approached in 1999…or was it New Year’s Eve, 2000? (I remember people were split about that.)  But the Revenge of the Nerds never happened.

Rather like a second visit from my washing machine repairman. He had called by two days previously. It was kind of exciting  to have another sentient being under my roof; one who could talk and breathe, albeit behind a mask, standing not six but twelve, feet away. He was a philosopher, this man from Honduras; he speculated that the planet no longer wanted to house us; the planet was sick and tired of our excesses; indeed, we were the virus on the face of the planet and it was payback time. The planet would send its own winged messenger, COVID, to destroy as many of us as possible. Then, if we learned the error of our ways, ended our plastic existence and restlessness, the planet might give us another chance. I was prepared to give this ‘deus ex machina’ another chance when, an hour after he said he’d fixed my machine and driven off in exhaust fumes of rectitude, it again went ‘on the fritz’. Now, two days later, I wait in isolation with my list of ‘topics to discuss with the Honduran nihilist’. So far, there’s been no ETA from mission control, although as they earnestly inform me on voice mail, my ‘business is very important’ to them.

© Jonny Comet, Amagansett, NY, April 2020.