Love & Quarantine

Finding love during the pandemic-by BarbaraRoseBrooker

“I dream I’m a vagina.”

I’m at my zoom therapy session. It’s the pandemic. Dr. T stares. His blue robot eyes don’t move. I continue: “In my dream it’s all puffy and pink and all these men are humping it. In real life it’s bald and hangs like a purse. I hate it.” I press the Kleenex to my mouth because when I cry my mouth quivers funny.

“What do you think …your dream… means?” His thin hand pulls his auburn color mustache.

“Means? It means I’m a sicko! You tell me why I’m dreaming I’m a vagina! All those years of Brazilian waxes, patting it with talcum powder, and squirting it with my good Chanel perfume. Not to mention the Prince nothings grabbing, sucking, salivating, slobbering over it, while I was worrying I’d let out gas or urinate or make noise.

Silence.

“I’ve it with men and their vagina obsessions. Your vagina is like a pillow, the moron diamond dealer complained. As if his dick was something to adore? Hardly! It was like an umbrella handle with a mouth.”

A siren screeches from outside. I slump further into the uncomfortable leather couch. “Anyway, I’m 80. I no longer aim to please. I’m me.”

“Why are you crying?” Herr doctor asks after this huge silence.

“Letting those rat men tug at it!” I continue. “Now I’m 80 and my vagina hangs like a purse. Plus, it’s bald. But no way am I going to get a designer vagina like Bubby Cohen. Mutilate myself for some jerko saggy rat.”

I grab a Kleenex. “Especially during the pandemic, how am I supposed to find love? Here I am 80, celibate, poor. I dream about love. Am I doomed for virtual love? During the pandemic all the rats are out of their holes, and quarantined.

He nods. “See you next week.”

*

So this is what happened. Just when my novel Love, Sometimes was published I was chosen to be a candidate for the new Senior Bachelor TV show. I was on Inside Edition holding a stupid red rose, gushing that love is everything and book sales went through the roof. Not to mention I have this humongous option for a TV series. Then wham! The corona virus hits and everything shut down. Bookstores closed. Bookings were cancelled. Book sales stopped. My writing workshops were cancelled. So here I am quarantined, social distancing, living on social security, fighting over toilet paper at Trader Joes and endlessly talking on the phone with my telamoans — my single women friends, about finding love during the pandemic. I’m obsessed with love. Before I die, I want love. I was lousy in that department. Ever since the super rat jilted me on my wedding night, when I was nineteen, I‘ve loved men who didn’t love me, or hated men who did love me. Talk about fucked up. Now on the last part of my life I’m obsessed about love. It’s all I think about.

I have this recurrent dream where I fuck Rhett Butler. We’re at Tara. He’s carrying me up the swirling huge staircase. I’m wearing this great black Yves St. Laurent dress with flowing sleeves, and a white gardenia in my silver streaked long hair. He’s still gorgeous but tiny — shrunk. Just as we’re at the top of the staircase, my vagina pulsating, he trips and falls down the stairs. I wake.

“You need to meet someone like my Alladin,” says Deborah Greenstone on face time. She’s 70, a real estate developer and a widow.

“He belongs in a lamp!” I say. “He’s a 31-year old Uber driver. He steals your shoes, and money, while you’re sleeping. And you should be social distancing.”

“He fucks with a mask on.”

“You’ll die from the virus. Is it worth it?”

“He brings me to Niverna.”

(to be continued-

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