Items

• 2021-09-08

  Relative Distance

  A couple of weeks before lockdown began in March of 2020 I had reconnected with someone I met in college years prior. We went on a few dates before I left to study abroad and nothing developed further, but we had struck up a conversation over text and had made plans to meet in Boston the weekend that New York City declared a state of emergency. Needless to say, we never met for drinks that weekend, yet we talked every day without fail for the rest of 2020. Our initial conversations typically revolved around the different developments of the pandemic but we started to get to know each other as text conversations became phone calls then video calls. Our connection grew as a reaction to the large amount of time we suddenly had and by a new reality where distance meant something very different than before. Although I had not seen him in person for almost 2 years, he was there for me in the only feasible way a person could be during that time. He was there through personal tragedies or minor irritations in an evolving and confused stretch of months. Sometimes we did not have much to say at all - I deferred to topics like what I cooked for dinner or we compared notes on the new show that we had just watched. I called him first when my pandemic furlough turned into a lost job. I called him first when l was chosen for my Executive Assistant position many months and numerous applications later. He texted me on my first day of remote work to wish me luck and he consoled me over video chat through my tears of frustration and defeat as I navigated the new reality of learning a remote position in the typically highly visual and highly performative art world to which I was accustomed. On one of these calls he told me that he had to go back home to Italy. There were many more months of having a friendship and possibly relationship in a state of limbo with this person who now knew me better than most. We had become close through untraditional means; it felt strange at times but then again so did everything else. He came back to the United States in January of 2021 and we have been dating ever since. Connection to others took on a new meaning during that year. How we interacted and who we kept in contact with changed. Speaking with him was something I looked forward to and it gave me a sense of routine. More importantly, our conversations provided a dose of levity and joy to each day throughout a very tumultuous year.