January 2020
BraTenders was busy with Broadway heading into 2020, and January was unusually busy with
brides and wealthy tourists in town to shop. we had been hearing some chatter on the news, as
well as from people we knew who regularly crossed the ocean on business related excursions,
about city wide shut downs in China and Italy, and about a new flu-like illness that was sending
people to the hospital, or morgue. Some of our vendors in Italy couldn’t deliver products
because of these circumstances, and that trend continued for the coming weeks. Shipping
delays started to cause product shortages in multiple industries.
In March we first heard about a potential Broadway shut down; the plague had arrived in the
states, and New York City seemed to be a hotbed of illness. On March 12, Covid -19 made its
Broadway debut, and infected several cast and crew members, with one being hospitalized. The
Broadway League finally pulled the plug after days of waffling, and the Great White Way went
dark.
I knew that BraTenders would go dark too.
We remained open through the weekend, and saw the last few brides with imminent weddings,
and Gregg Barnes, a multi Tony award winning costume designer who was working on a small
show, the opening of which was now in doubt. His leading lady needed some undergarments
for her costume, and she was coming in for a fitting. Gregg and I chatted, and marveled at the
fact we had known and worked with each other for over a decade, possibly closer to 2, and that
this could be the last time anyone worked in the theater until the dangerous virus passed.
I was scared. the entire planet was in the throes of this new illness, and people in China and
Italy, now in India and pakistan too, were dying by the dozens, nay, by the hundreds and
thousands, on a daily basis. Surgical and respirator Masks became standard apparel for many
when venturing outside the safety of their homes. Wuhan then went into total lockdown.
It had been discovered that Covid-19 was an airborn illness, and that the virus was contained in
the droplets of exhaled breath. it was believed to live on surfaces, in fabrics, it was everywhere.
Humans had to be reminded to wash their hands well, and often, and we were convinced to
disinfect anything we handled, such as groceries. i stocked up on Lysol Wipes, Isopropyl
alcohol and hydrogen peroxide, as well as KN95 masks and nitrile gloves. i burned sage
everyday, and stopped going outside. i relentlessly doom scrolled through social media, and
had nightmares about battles over food and shelter in a barren, corpse laden hellscape.
I asked Dawn to come and stay with me on the second night of the lockdown, I was so anxious,
in a way I’d never experienced before. Of all the ways I imagined the world ending, plague was
not on the list. I’ve been a nuclear neurotic since age 9, when the threat of annihilation from the
Cuban Missile Crisis disrupted my carefree childhood. The Cold War was ever present in our
lives, and then it just seemed like there was one war or conflict after another, until this very day.
There has not been Peace on Earth, nor Goodwill Towards Man in my lifetime.
Dawn declined to come, saying she wanted to be in her own bed. I remember saying to her,
let’s grab all the cash we can from our banks, pack some essentials, buy a cheap car, and head
outta NY, to some rural place that was sparsely populated, and the chance of being infected was
lower. I imagined us as Thelma and Louise, riding west across Route 66, to some unknown
place, to stay safe from the plague and start a new, different kind of life out of the city. The next
day when I called her, she informed me she was on her way to Texas to be with some other
friends. I was crushed. I felt abandoned. and she had lied to me.
i was pretty sure that BraTenders was dead. and That NYC, as it existed, and which was under
mandatory lockdown, was dead too. The streets were deserted. Times Square, for once in its
raucous and rowdy history, was still and silent. Hospitals were insanely overcrowded, with
gurneys lining every inch of available space. The morgues had run out of room, and Corpses
were stacked in supply closets, and along the lengths of corridors, until city-block long freezer
trucks were parked outside the loading docks to contain the overflow of deceased.
With Donald tRump and his merry band of fools in charge of our government, they spectacularly
denied the pandemic was real, and failed the first responders and health care practitioners on
the front lines. There was a lack of dearth of Personal Protective Equipment for hospital
personnel, and nurses and doctors had taken to wearing garbage bags as precautions against
Covid while attempting to treat patients. The illness attacked the respiratory system, ravaged
the lungs, and there were an inadequate number of respirators to help everyone who couldn’t
breathe on their own. Hospitals was bursting at the seams with people seeking treatment.
except there was none.
Covid was something new. This was a virus that had apparently jumped species at a wet
market in Wuhan China, from a pangolin, an exotic meat source, to a human according to the
prevailing theory. another theory posited that the virus was caused by a lab leak, an OOPS
moment, like Chernobyl. Secretive experiments on bio weapons were supposedly conducted
at a U.S.military installation, which had a connection to a Chinese official working at MIT, and
also the WuHan laboratory of infectious diseases. Conspiracy theories ran amok, and to this
day, 3.5 years later, we do not the truth.
As of this writing, we are at the beginning of another Covid surge, yet another variation of the
mutated virus which already has dozens and dozens of strains. Thus far, between 5-6 million
U.S citizens have died from Covid and Covid related illness, with the true impact being closer to
- Scientists around the globe were able to share real time data and findings, and created an
antiviral vaccine in record time, and subsequent boosters for that.
But there are too many versions of the virus now to protect everyone.
And in the jolly old USA, there’s the issue of mask and vaccine avoidance by about 30% of the
population, the cult members who still remain loyal to the dangerous psychopath donald trump,
the former president of the U.S who botched and bungled this nation’s covid response, who
withheld funds for vaccines research and production, and who denied the severity of the illness.
Dotard told us to drink bleach, or take Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug used in livestock, to
prevent or cure Covid.
America became a fact resistant nation, one that accepted propaganda and lies as “alternate
truths”, and facilitated the swift decline of america upon the world stage.
