Love Sick / Sick Love
by Thomas Feder
I was at MoMA where this pretty blonde girl and I had some shared tension towards each other. She wore a mask and I wore a mask. Though only the top third of our faces were exposed to the HEPA or MERV-16, 18, 20 whatever cleared air, the attraction was definitely there. It was near divine, we would continually find each other after separating ways in a building where the rooms are plenty and meant to slow you down, or lead you into others. A friendly maze, of sorts. Her hair was long and blonde with a few black streaks. Her sweater was maroon and oversized, as were her black silk pants that curtained her black & white spectator shoes. Some paintings interested her more than others: I tended to be drawn to those similar works. She’d shoot a glance at me but I didn’t dare return the acknowledgement because I would easily look like a child falling off a swing. They say eye contact is everything, so without it there is nothing. In this world of masks it feels doubly true and that “nothing” hits twice as hard. In a museum, the mind points in the direction of curiosity. I lost interest in the paintings, obviously, though I tried ever harder to appear interested. She became the most intriguing piece in the museum.
I’d haul myself away – name of the game – to another room to feign my disinterest. My forehead may as well have carried a card saying, “You do not exist.” Of course, she was always right up there, always on my mind. I wouldn't see her for lengths at a time until lo, we’d run into each other again. I had just exited the room of Monet’s triptych of lilies and found her in gallery 514 on Weimar Citizens. Max Beckmann struck me the most. I enjoy cartoonish portrayals that pretend not to take themselves seriously. It was a good room. She particularly hung around Otto Dix’s Dr. Mayer Hermann from 1926, which looked alright but roused no emotion from the well. Again, I avoided looking at her so well you’d think I could bump into her by accident. My eyes embraced peripheral vision, noticing her looks at me as I “concentrated” on a nice, pleasant print by Käthe Kollwitz that had something to do with mothers mourning their children of war, or something like that. She eventually left the room and went to see Monet’s Water Lilies. As an excuse, I took this opportunity to again feast on the brilliance of those pieces and finish an audioguide on Agapanthus. The room that was filled turned empty very quickly. She stayed maybe another minute before leaving the best room in this chunk of a building. I continued through the other rooms before going a the floor below to the Geffen galleries to graze through the post-modern and contemporary stuff but they all had me a bit deflated in passion.
“The museum is closing in ten minutes,” commanded the intercom: a goddamn cockblock, truly, despite it never going anywhere. By chance, we approached the escalator at the same time; she was with a lady friend. Eye contact was made by accident. I think she smiled. I found myself immediately on their tail as we descended the remaining three floors. Even on the escalator, there was an elevator silence. During the last minutes of the museum’s opening hours, we made two more passes in the lobby and that was all.
A pandemic may very well threaten or expand anyone’s existence on this planet. Love in a pandemic, with or without a lover, ought to drive us all mad. With or without this pandemic and this mask, I’m a sitting duck with a corkscrew dick, hoping for a swan to float over to me. Even if there were such a brave swan, I very much well know I wouldn’t even give them a chance. Even when the currents flow in the same direction, I’ll always find a way to get out of the water.
