The Django

Sitting again with you at the Django, waiting for Lucy and Grant to take the stage – our doppelgänger couple – you (as from Day One the one for me despotically luminous creature in the room) buy as if you're unhappy a double shot of vodka. Which you consume in a single swallow. So I order a bottle of wine and a second and by the end of the night we share with neighbors what we won't finish alone.

 

And you weren’t unhappy, not then, and not when dozing on my shoulder on the A Train, or in my arms in bed after maybe puking a bit. In the near-dawn while you slept I thought: They see us as allies, too, recognizing our surprise, gratitude, safety.

Those things don’t last but probably shouldn’t. The courageous being condemned to grief by their courage.

 

Still, listening half-drunk we knew we’d found what Lucy was singing about, what Grant played, and I suppose we knew we'd ruin it. But we listened long enough to forget what we feared and let ourselves become what we heard.

The songs were right. Nothing else awaits.

The Universe Gives You What You Need

Sitting on the stoop last night around midnight, a warm night, or it had been, the wind now starting to blow, and a white BMW parked in front of me with two men seated drinking and listening to music, windows down.

 

I’m somewhere through a second or third cigarette when the man in the driver’s seat looks over at me and says, “How you doin?”

 

“Going through a breakup,” I say.

 

The man in the passenger seat gets out of the car and walks around, over to me. “Come here, man, have a drink.”

 

I come off the stoop and he gives me a plastic cup and pours out some tequila. “Thank you,” I say. Together we drink.

 

The man in the driver’s seat says, “What you want to hear?”

 

“My friend, whatever you’re feeling is fine,” I say.

 

He says, “I think you need some Phil Collins.”

 

I imagine he says this because I’m white. I say, “No, how about some Marvin Gaye.”

 

“Marvin Gaye? Ok, I got you.” He puts on Marvin Gaye and gets out of the car and we all have another drink.

 

I say, “You’ve been through it too, right?”

 

“Man, we all been through it,” the driver says. “How long?”

 

“Together a year and a half,” I say. “But I loved her for a lot longer than that.”

 

“Just happened?”

 

“It’s been happening,” I say. “Tonight it feels like it just happened.”

 

Marvin Gaye at that moment singing about blue teardrops, I hear, with the passenger singing along. I light another cigarette and we listen. The passenger stops singing and says, “You gotta keep on, just like the sun. Went down today and it’s night but in a few hours it’s gonna come back up. That how you gotta do. You will. I see it.”

 

The driver says, “And even now it’s night but you still got the stars. Just gotta look up.”

 

“And this,” I say, “us together.”

 

“Exactly,” the driver says. “You understand.”

 

The passenger says, “Man, you speak another language?”

 

“Spanish,” I say. “I lived in Argentina.”

 

“See,” he says, “I knew you spoke another language because you said that about us together.”

 

“I grew up Mormon,” I say. “Went there to save them and they saved me.”

 

“You were one of those accomplices or collaborators or whatever they call them,” the driver says.

 

“Missionaries,” the passenger says.

 

“That’s it, missionaries,” the driver says. He toasts the passenger with his empty cup and the passenger pours us another round.

 

“Came back,” I say, “and I didn’t know what I was. But I knew I wasn’t God, which is what I thought I was when I went. Still don’t know what I am but that’s ok, I guess.”

 

“Man,” the driver says, “you know what you are, you a human being, just like us.”

 

“No more, no less,” the passenger says.

 

The driver points at the passenger and says, “This man here, he’s an inspirational speaker.”

 

“Just what I need tonight,” I say and we all laugh.

 

The passenger says, “I’ll tell you this, man. And I’m gonna tell you this because I think you can hear it and understand it. You can see for yourself if it applies to your situation, I don’t know. But in a relationship, we’re always tryin to turn the other person into something we know. Because we know how to deal with that. Usually that means we tryin to turn them into our parents. Probably the bad parent because we convinced somewhere inside them is the bad parent, and we gotta know if it’s there. The killer. So we try to bring it out. And if we do, we run because we knew all along we were right, they a killer. And if we don’t, we still run, because we scared. We got this new thing we don’t know how to deal with. So you got to figure out why she ran – she, right?”

 

“Yeah,” I say.

 

“So figure out why she ran. Because you turned into a killer or because you didn’t. If you turned into a killer, then you sittin on this stoop tonight is on you. And if you didn’t, then you be awright.”

 

“I think I turned into a killer,” I say.

 

“Or you was one all along,” the driver says.

 

“I started to let myself be mean to her,” I say.

 

“She was waitin for that,” the passenger says. “So there you go.”

 

“I need another drink,” I say.

 

“I got you,” the passenger says, and we all drink.

 

I say, “I thought I was trying to be something new in her life. Not one of her ex’s. Not her father or her mother. For her father she can do no wrong and for her mother she can do no right.”

 

“It’s like that with daughters sometimes, man,” the driver says.

 

“But there has to be another space,” I say. “A new space. I thought that's what I was trying to find.”

 

“There is,” the passenger says. “Love is like nature, my man, love has both life and death. Sometimes we think it has to be all life. And we give every drop of blood to keep it alive. But there’s death in love, too, and you gotta accept that. You can’t kill yourself tryin to keep it alive, that makes no sense. You just have to let it live and die and live, just let it flow, let it do what it do. We get told” – he points at all of us – “we gotta fix everything but in love there’s nothin to be fixed. You just let it flow through, like you standin in a river, because you are. The universe is a river you just gotta stand in. A river of life and death, a river of love because that’s what love is, life and death. You try to fix it, now you the killer. You tryin to fix somethin that wasn’t broken and never has been. The universe or this girl. The universe gives you what you need if you let it.”

 

We’re all quiet for a moment. I look at the driver. “Damn,” I say, “you weren’t lying.”

 

“I told you, man,” the driver says. “Inspirational speaker.”

 

“I gotta give you a hug, man,” I say, and the passenger and I hold each other.

 

“You be awright,” the passenger says.

 

“One more?” I ask.

 

“Hold up,” the driver says. He taps on his phone.

 

Phil Collins, “In the Air Tonight,” starts up on the car stereo, Harlem-loud. We stand there for a while and listen.

 

Soon, tears on my cheeks, I say to the driver, “You were right. That is what I needed.”

 

“I know,” he says. “I know.”

 

“We've all been there, right?” I ask.

 

“What you talkin about, man?” the driver says. “We all there now.”

Carnage

You take my hand, lead me

To the bedroom, and soon

We are covered in blood.

 

Showering later you say

Something kind about my face

And I think: Your face is

A tyrant, your body

A thundering cavalry –

And when by text

However long later

You ask if after

Having lost you

I’m ok, I write, We made real

What I'd most feared.

You probably thought

Upon reading that and now

Upon reading this: He

Has a penchant for self-

Pitying melodrama. You

Wouldn't be wrong, but

 

I remember your hand,

Your blood, your sighs,

The sight of your hair

Wet with sweat across

Your cheek while writhing

bloodsmeared beneath me,

Around me, you were,

For an infinite

Moment, mine.

"Absolutely Not."

A couple of days ago – Valentine's Day – walking east on 123rd I passed a man on the phone with his daughter. He had her on speaker, or they were Facetiming, and as I passed I heard her say, "Dad, yes, they can." The voice and intonations of an eight-year-old Black New Yorker, high and forceful, swinging, confident.

The father replied, "Absolutely not. A boy cannot give another boy a valentine. Absolutely not."

The girl, even more forcefully: "Yes, they can."

And the father, "Absolutely not. Absolutely not."

They continued in this vein; soon I was out of earshot, Central Harlem mixing their voices into the city's howl.

I texted my brother Nathan. Understandably, he seemed less charmed than annoyed. He said, "Good lord. Turn around and say, your daughter is right."

"Or," I proposed, "my brother does it, so apparently they can."

I continued on to my friend Brad's up on 129th. From there down to Nomad, then over to Chelsea; eventually, home. The argument between father and daughter forgotten.

But this morning, finding it difficult to sleep, I remembered their exchange and found myself thinking about that father's "absolutely not."

In the first place I was struck by its futility. Plainly we do live in world – certainly we do in New York City – where boys can give valentines to boys. I thought, I was listening to a man defend a world that no longer exists. His daughter lives in the real world – in the actual world. And he was trying to get her to live in his world, a defunct world, the world of the past.

I suppose this experience – realizing that one lives in a world that no longer exists – is one of the horrors of aging. That horror might explain why so many older people become, relative to their younger selves, conservative, reactionary, and grumpy. In any case, their particular argument is enacted daily in various forms by millions of kids and their parents.

But beyond that, I thought, his "absolutely not" captures the horror of conservatism generally and its determination to compel us to live in a nonexistent world. To deny the world's fluidity, the permanence of change, in short: reality. The world. That little girl lives in the world. Her father does not.

My reaction at the time, having not been oppressed by that father's particular "absolutely not," was to find their argument charming and reason for hope. Nathan, who understands that "absolutely not" all to well, who has heard it ringing in his ears all of his life, wanted a fight. One must defend reality, the hard-earned world-as-it-is, against those who would have us live, whatever their reasons, in a world that no longer exists.

Ten Things I'll Never Do Again

1) Watch The Bachelor, obviously. After finishing our Blue Apron (having argued again about how long to cook the chicken). You secretly film my reactions to the Rose Ceremony. Laugh at the way I go from feigning indifference to yelling at the screen. To saying, "Can you believe the way these people sabotage their own happiness?"

 

2) Listen, still groggy with sleep, to you tell me about your night’s dreams. I squint at the light coming through the blinds. Your large eyes, unblinking, examine my face. "You should write those dreams down," I say. "I should write them all down."

 

3) Stand on our balcony and watch you drive away in a rush, the boys due to arrive. You take the left turn off Continentals Ave, accelerate – small in the gray sedan – away, up Ralston. Going to your mother's for the weekend. Until Sunday evening, when you call or text, asking when you can come home.

 

4) Walk to 122nd and Adam Clayton Powell. Take the M2 to 110th, east to 5th Ave, down to 92nd. Get off the bus and walk to 2nd Ave, to wait outside Knickerbocker Plaza for you to descend. Hail a cab or walk with you to NR. Hot ramen. Later, at Bar & Essen, a nightcap. The slow walk back. Outside Knickerbocker I hug you and tell you I love you and watch you pass through your lobby, see you say goodnight to the doorman. I walk then for a while. At some point rent a Citi bike and ride back to Harlem, using the Central Park loop, crying or trying not to cry.

 

5) Stand holding you, my eyes closed. Rest my chin on top of your head; inhale. Think: A perfect fit.

 

6) Argue with you about getting a dog.

 

7) Drive together up the coast to Crescent City, on to Portland, or down the coast to Monterey, or from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas. Or in an Uber along the Cabo San Lucas coastline. Or, most memorably, on a luminous Saturday morning, from Belmont to Berkeley, to the Wright Institute for your applicant's interview, to the beginning of the rest of your life.

 

8) Hold you while you remember your father.

 

9) Help you: edit a paper, decipher a reading, think through a patient, compose an email, cope with one of your brothers’ calls. Brew your morning coffee, brew our nighttime tea, undress you, fall asleep in your arms, fall back asleep (after telling you, "A nightmare. It’s Ok. You're safe").

 

10) Weep like this. Motionless, silent – stunned by gratitude and regret and terror. Because I don't know how to imagine a world without you. A siren goes by, fades; Harlem light, so unlike California's – colder, more severe – falls on some flowers I put in the window. I think, One day this grief will pass. But I don't want it to pass. Then you'll really be gone.

The Overabundant

Hard to imagine Harlem as my home without a measure of self-deception. Really, Harlem as home to anyone strikes me as a dubious proposition. Spending time here, one can't help but suspect that the place has been imagined — designed — as a way to kill people.

The triumph, in any case, would be for me to be my own home.

~

4:00 AM. The music is so loud it sounds like it's coming from my kitchen.

I roll out of bed and make my way through the dark to the living room window. It's from a car parked below. Three girls have climbed onto the car and are twerking. Their dresses ride up their dark thighs, onto their asses. All three of them wear white panties. Boys film with phones. And dance shouting encouragement, I’m guessing — although I can't make out what they're saying over the music.

From my window, helped by a fluorescent streetlight, with the boys below I watch the girls twerk. Maybe for them Harlem is home.

What would have summoned the Belmont police in a matter of minutes apparently here only after a very long time, if ever. I know I'm not calling. I've retired from — am in flight from — calling or being police.

~ 

It was after midnight; I was alone and feeling peaceful and — unusual, for me — wanted to smoke.

I came outside to the sound of a young woman shouting. Screaming.

I walked the other direction, to the closest bodega, and bought American Spirits and a bottle of Stella.

On my way back, the woman and I passed each other. Now she was muttering. She might have been crying.

Sitting on the stairs of the brownstone I smoked and wondered what it would take for me to scream in the street after midnight.

She came along — I saw her bleached white, closely cut hair and tight pink top, jeans and high heels. She passed me, or almost passed me, and stopped. “Do you happen to have an extra cigarette?” I handed one to her and lit it and she sat down next to me. “I'm not having a good night right now.”

I stayed silent, letting the cigarettes do their work.

“I just can't let her do it. She’s fifteen. She's my sister. Out here blowing guys for what? A pair of Jordans? I can't watch it happen. The fucking guys. A bunch of weirdos. Just using her, I know, I know men. I'm a model. I know how they think, it's not like I don't know. I just can't watch it.”

She didn’t need me to say anything; I said, “That's heartbreaking.” And wondered — or later wondered — at the fact that listening to her I was more curious than sad and that her story seemed like life and mine an impoverished dictatorship of fear and feigned — or, worse yet, real — indignation.

But she was heartbroken, panic-stricken.

I was able to contemplate her not-yet desolated beauty and listen to her and say as little as possible, because anything — everything — I might have said, given my imagination, would have been patronizing — supremacist, maybe, and dishonest, as there is little about me more dishonest than my supremacy, which is really insecurity, because how else does cowardice feel when confronted with real pain, horror? Maybe guilty — I suspect guilty, inevitably.

Before my cigarette burned out I offered her the pack. She declined: “I don't smoke packs. Just one when I need it."

"Me, too," I said.

Soon, she asked, “You live here?” She nodded at the brownstone.

“I do.”

“It's nice. But I don't want her to come here.”

"No."

Two nights later, I heard her screaming again. “You all fucking weirdos!” For a while, from my couch, I listened, but it was a cold night and eventually I closed the window.

~

 

To the man filling the bodega’s beer coolers the cop said, “I deal with mental health issues all day. I put my life on the line every day. So I don't need to hear this right now.”

The man, agitated, said, “You kill people. You kill people.”

The cop said, “I don't kill people. But if you're having some kind of crisis, you need to go in the back and calm down. You need to calm down.”

The man — very pale, paler than me, his brown hair a mess — pushed boxes of beer into a storage cooler and disappeared into it himself.

The cop said to the young man behind the counter, “You need to control this. This is your store. If you know one of your guys has a problem, you need to keep them in the back. This is on you.”

The bodega is across the street from the 28th Precinct; I see cops in there all the time, ordering sandwiches and buying bags of chips. I've learned to speak to them without deference, which seems somehow more respectful of their humanity and will I hope eventually reflect how I feel about them, around them.

~

I'm on my way to a BBQ in Anna's backyard garden in West Harlem. Spring is here: the trees are in bloom; the breeze drifts with the fallen petals of cherry blossoms.

Descending the stairs at the 125th Street subway station I come upon a man terribly disfigured by what must have been third degree burns. His face, his arms — the fingers of the hand he holds out for coins have been burnt away; his hand is nothing but a scarred palm. I have no coins, no cash — just a debit card and my phone.

The BBQ is wine, steaks, fresh fruit, cupcakes. Aperol spritzes and cold beer. Sunlight and the company of a breathtaking tree — an eastern redbud, I think — covered in clusters of pink flowers. Laughter, friendship, cigarettes.

Seven hours later, returning home, ascending the subway station's stairs, I see that the man is still there, holding out his palm.

~

There will be a reckoning. This overabundant life — a world that feels sometimes like Mad Max and sometimes like Moonlight — will either be survived or not survived, a journey to madness or freedom. Those are, from what I can tell, the only possibilities. Harlem won't let me kid myself — play myself. At least not as I did, for so long.

The Plague Year

It ended at a Walgreens in the Upper West Side, a Saturday afternoon, the nicest day to date of New York City's 2021, 63 degrees, the sidewalks something like what they'd once been: teeming.

In front of me in line were a young Asian woman, a middle-aged white woman, and a young Black woman. Behind me was an Asian man with a baby in a stroller.

We handed our paperwork through plexiglass shields to the pharmacist's assistant and took a seat and waited.

A Russian woman came out and called us one-by-one into a make-shift room constructed next to the pharmacy. The Black woman went in first. When she came out, I said, "Congratulations," and she smiled with relief and said, "Thank you." That's when I started to cry.

Next, the Asian woman went in. Her little daughter — five years old?— stood next to her and watched her get the injection and asked if it hurt. Her husband took a picture just as she said, "Not at all."

Then me:

It was one of those rare moments in my life when my body aligned with my feelings. Humble, disbelieving gratitude. I see now that I gripped the arm getting the shot as if it were some kind of lifeline.

The Russian woman told me go sit down where I'd been and wait for fifteen minutes to be sure I had no reaction.

Well, I had a reaction. I cried like a baby. I thought of the hundreds of scientists — more — who had raced to develop these vaccines, and I thought of the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who had allowed their bodies to test them, and I thought of the hundreds of thousands of dead — in this country alone —for whom they came to late. I thought of the tens of millions who had been hospitalized, and the millions yet to die or be hospitalized, because, unlike me, they didn't get to sit on this Saturday afternoon in a drugstore in the Upper West Side to be saved.

And I thought about the long, terrible year we'd been through. And how it was over, for me. Yet not close to over for so many millions, most of them poorer than me, darker than me, and, frankly, more deserving than me, because they or the people they loved had given and lost so much more than I had, a year in which I'd lost practically nothing but for the convenience of in-person work and the luxury of walking through the world without wearing a life-saving mask.

Nevertheless, I was right to get the shot when I could. Like those in line both before me and after me, we were doing our part to end the reign of the virus and return our lives to ourselves. Yes, inevitably, some new plague will "rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.” But getting up from my chair and walking out of Walgreens, into New York City's early spring sunlight, I recognized without effort the strange, timeless joy that brought an end to my weeping. The Greeks, from what I understand, called it hope.

The Best Books I Read in 2020

It's not enough to say that I read these books: I survived them. Survival was, even while reading, the year's ambition.

In no particular order:

• Hurricane Season, by Fernanda Melchor
• Die, My Love, by Ariana Harwicz
• Cleanness, by Garth Greenwell
• Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, by Elaine Pagels
• Strength to Love, by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Trump, by Alain Badiou
• Freud and Man's Soul, by Bruno Bettelheim
• The Stoic Challenge, by William B. Irvine
• The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, as translated by Michael Nylan
• Beowulf, as translated by Maria Dahvana Headley
• Self-Portrait in Black and White, by Thomas Chatterton Williams
• The Fat Years, by Chan Koonchung
• They Will Drown in Their Mothers' Tears, by Johannes Anyuru
• Ghost Image, by Hervé Guibert
• Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts into Tears, by László F. Földényi
• Like Flies from Afar, by K. Ferrari
• Everything Flows, by Vassily Grossman
• Fracture, by Andrés Neuman

Of those I re-read, The Plague, by Albert Camus, was the most felicitous.

Of those I added to my library, Dirt Road Epiphanies, by David Treanor, was the most sacred.

Finally: How Fascism Works, by Jason Stanley, terrified me with its unnerving urgency. The hour is upon us. Read this book.

The Cosmic Kite: Diego Maradona, RIP

On June 22, 1986, I learned, in less than ten seconds, to love soccer.

My whole life, imitating my father, I'd hated the sport, mocked it, refused to play it. I called it ping-pong on a football field, an exercise in futility, without elegance — a game for masochists bereft of imagination.

But — some context — in May of that year, I'd been assigned by my church to complete a two-year Christian mission in the Province of Buenos Aires. Upon learning that soccer was a religion in Argentina, I decided to give the sport, by way of the World Cup, a chance. I was determined to claim Argentina as mine — my segunda patria.  I'd read that their star, Diego Maradona, might be the best player in the world, and I made it a point to watch all of their matches.

On that June afternoon, Argentina began its quarterfinal contest with England. Beyond its importance in the tournament, the match was Argentina's chance to exact a measure of revenge for 1982's Falklands War. (Or to suffer further humiliation.) I was sitting on my parents' bed, in Woodland Hills, Utah, watching the match on their bedroom television, my father having requisitioned the bigger, better, family room TV for, as he would have put it, a sport worth watching.

First, in the 51st minute, came the "Hand of God" goal. Which I knew I should disapprove of but couldn't. Its cleverness — its comic genius — was, in a word, Shakespearean.

Then, a mere four minutes later, with the soccer universe still trying to find its equilibrium, came the earthquake, the cyclone, the bolt of lightning, in the diminutive figure — 5' 5'' in boots — of Diego Armando Maradona.

I was speechless. I fell back on the bed and held my face. What I'd witnessed — and I'd spent much of my short life watching sports — seemed impossible.

Not amazing. Not spectacular or extraordinary or marvelous. Impossible.

Merely watching the highlight, which lifts the moment from its context, fails to capture that impossibility. Of course, in Utah, I'd heard the shellshocked commentary of the English commentator, whose flattened tone conveyed its own kind of disbelief. But Victor Hugo Morales' reaction communicates how the world, including England, reacted to what Maradona had done. That does not happen. That was not possible.

Soon, I raced downstairs and tried to explain what I'd seen, and how the channel had to be changed, because maybe they would show a replay, and you have to see it to believe it. And even then you won't believe it!

My awe — an inadequate word for what I was feeling — was met with little more than bored indifference.

No matter. Argentina went on to win the match and, soon thereafter, the World Cup, and over the next two years, traversing the Argentine pampa, I had the honor of catching Maradona highlights in the homes of Argentinian friends. Despite the fact that he was playing in Italy, all of his matches — all of his miracles — were broadcast in Argentina. They watched with reverence and glee. He was theirs. He was doing that, for them, in the world.

Now, soccer — fútbol — is the only sport I watch with any degree of diligence, up early on Saturday and Sunday mornings to catch Premier League matches on NBC. My favorite team changes yearly, depending upon the rosters of the team. I go for the teams that have an American — this year, Pulisic at Chelsea — or for the team with the most, or best, Argentine players. Of course, I always have an eye on Barcelona and Lionel Messi, Diego's inimitable progeny.

And I owe this passion to Argentina, mi segunda patria, and to one man, el "barrilete cósmico," Diego Maradona.

Victor Hugo Morales, in that immortal moment, asked a question the world is asking today, upon hearing of Diego's passing, with wonder and gratitude: ¿De qué planeta viniste?

Es para llorar.

Some Thoughts on the Covid Pandemic

Most people missed this article from The Lancet on the prevalence of Covid antibodies in the U.S. population. I would have missed it myself, in all likelihood, but for one of my students.

Some quick numbers summarize its content:

According to the article — for those who aren't familiar with The Lancet, it's widely regarded as the world's top medical journal — at the end of July, 9% of the U.S. adult population had Covid antibodies. Meaning they had come into contact with the virus.

At that time, approximately 150,000 Americans had died of Covid-19.

These two numbers let us do some straightforward math. I'm going to round these numbers to keep this simple.

Let's assume — reasonably — that if 9% of adults had encountered the virus, that same number of the total population, more or less, had encountered the virus.

9% of 330,000,000 = 29,700,000.

That's far more than the number of confirmed cases at the end of July, needless to say.

Of those 29,700,000, 150,000 had died.

150,000,000 of 29,700,000 = .005

So Covid's death rate (again, rounding) is likely around one half of 1% — five times influenza's death rate.

In other words, Covid's death rate (.005) relative to influenza (.001) appears to match the difference that Donald Trump communicated to Bob Woodward when they spoke about the virus on February 7. He said, "This is more deadly. This is five per- you know, this is five percent versus one percent and less than one percent. You know? So, this is deadly stuff." He correctly noted that Covid-19 is five times more deadly than the flu — but his percentages were off.

So, for simplicity's sake — noting, too, that treatments are improving — let's turn that 9% of the population into 10%. Therefore: we reasonably estimate that for every 10% of the population that gets infected with the virus, about 150,000 people will die.

Again, this is essentially what we saw over the first half of 2020, and what we are still, almost certainly, seeing today.

It would follow, then, that if every American encountered the virus, 1.5 million of us would die — more Americans than have died in all of our wars combined.

That won't happen, however, thanks to "herd immunity," which begins to kick in when around 70% of the a population has been infected. Infection rates would then decrease dramatically; the virus, even with no vaccine, would never reach every American.

Nonetheless, with a 70% infection rate, approaching herd immunity, 1,050,000 Americans would die.

That, in short, is the number we're trying to avoid: one million Americans dead.

Back to the present. As of today, the number killed by the virus amounts to 100 Pearl Harbors, 80 September 11s, two WWIs. By the time Donald Trump leaves office, the total dead will have approached, if not surpassed, the number of Americans who died in WWII.

The virus is an invading enemy, killing Americans at an unprecedented pace. To defeat this enemy, we must mobilize as a nation and agree to make difficult sacrifices. If we refuse, basic epidemiological math tells us that over 1 million Americans will die, many of them avoidably.

In the past, when our country has faced a similar horror — a national catastrophe and many Americans dead — it has asked us to sacrifice our children to eliminate that threat.

I live a few miles from Golden Gate National Cemetery:

There are 137,000 American soldiers buried in that cemetery. That is the history of this country's response to a mortal danger. That is the kind of sacrifice our country has, in the past, asked of us.

In 2020, the nation — local, state, and federal government — is not asking me to sacrifice my sons to fight this lethal threat.

It is asking me to socially distance, avoid large gatherings, and wear a mask. It is asking all of us to endure a period of economic and psychological hardship — in many cases, great hardship. But, let's not forget: our sons and daughters stay home. The nation is not asking us to risk sending our children to an early grave to fight off a threat to American lives. 

In short, the sacrifices that we're being asked to make today in response to a national threat is not comparable to the sacrifices of earlier generations.

Yet many of my fellow Americans are reacting with disheartening outrage when called upon to sacrifice for the common good. Their response does not compare favorably the responses of our fellow Americans to earlier crises.

A vaccine is coming. Until then: socially distance, avoid large gatherings, wear a mask. If the government authorities that we elected, after listening to experts in epidemiology, ask use to stay home, stay home. Doing so will likely save over 500,000 American lives — four Golden Gate National Cemeteries of Americans.

Prior generations sacrificed far more. It's our turn to be patriots.

The Trump Years

I'm at my computer, playing a video game. My face immobile. Fingers clicking the keyboard. For weeks. Months.

Spanish Fork, Utah. My brother Ryan is at the wheel. I'm beside him; in the back seat are my sister Kim, and Aaron, my youngest brother, the one I know least and for whom I feel impatient awe.

We've loaded golf clubs into the back of Ryan's truck; we leave Kim's house, waving at the kids, who are playing in the front yard. William, Aaron's three-year-old, catches sight of us leaving and panics, screaming. He chases the truck, running down the sidewalk after us, crying — terrified.

Ryan stops; Aaron descends and takes sobbing William into his arms and speaks to him reassuringly and disappears into Kim's home, where he deposits William into his mother's arms.

Sahar and I are at a stoplight. This is in quiet Belmont, a mile from home. An old truck pulls up next to us — an '90s Ford, a beauty. I glance at the driver. He is staring — glaring — at us. I look away. Soon, Sahar, who is in the driver's seat, says, "That guy is staring at us." I tell her, "Ignore him." She says, "It's the bumper sticker." And I remember the old "Feel the Bern" sticker that remains on her bumper. "Just ignore him," I say. "Why should I have to ignore him?" she asks. So I look at him and wave. He continues to stare — not at me, whom he disregards, but at Sahar. Until the light changes and he roars away.

Sahar says, "You didn't do enough."

I'm going through my Missionary Journal. And remember being interviewed for a local public access TV station in General Belgrano, in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. July, 1988. The interviewer, who appeared to be something of a local celebrity, asks me, "Who will win the American election?" I'm taken off guard — we were supposed to be talking about my then-beloved religion — and respond by naming my preferred candidate. "Bush, I believe," I say. He shakes his head. "No. Your country is ready for something new."

After the interview, when he shakes my hand, he says, "Always remember, when you vote for your president, you are voting for all of us. The entire world suffers more or suffers less according to your vote."

26 women. One of them, I had met. She was the younger sister of my neighbor in Salt Lake City. He attacked her at a beauty pageant, when she was 21 years old. 

I decide to teach Journey Into the Past, by Stefan Zweig. When I introduce the book, I tell my students something about Zweig's life. "Ultimately," I say, "with the rise of fascism in Germany, when it became obvious to Zweig that his country was lost, he left for Brazil with his wife, Lotte Altmann. They were there for two years before they took their own lives. They left a note saying that they couldn't overcome the despair they felt at what had become of their country."

My students are surprised — embarrassed — to see that I'm crying.

Stupidly, I imagine that if I read all the books, or the right book, peaceful sleep will return, peace of mind will return — I will have unlocked the mystery of what was happening to my country and to people I love. I'll be able to say, "Ok. This is what's happening." Escape From Freedom. On Tyranny. Beautiful Country Burn Again. The Plague. How Fascism Works. How Democracies Die. The Origins of Totalitarianism. I Shall Bear Witness.

Eventually I stop reading. The sleeplessness persists. TV is easier. "The Sopranos." "Schitt's Creek." "The Bachelorette."

On Mother's Day, 2020, I insult much of my family by questioning their decision to meet at a park near their Utah homes.

At some point I tell them — text messaging — that by my birthday, August 2, there will be over 140,000 dead Americans as a result of the virus.

This claim is met with great skepticism.

From that point forward, we no longer speak of Covid.

But as the summer passes, I become obsessed with my prediction. Looking at my phone, following the trajectory of the pandemic, I find myself, to my great shame, wanting more people to die so that I'll be right.

But the virus doesn't care what I want. It merely does its work. On my birthday, there are 146,000 Americans dead. I tell Lincoln, "I told them! Three months in advance, I told them!" Lincoln nods his head sadly.

At work, a new language has developed for consolation, camaraderie. "This chaos." "This circus." "This shit-show." We all know — we imagine that every person in the world must know — what "this" is.

8 minutes and 46 seconds.

Reports that the Amazon is in flames.

I text Sam, "Impressed by how well the NBA bubble has worked."

Finally, after months, we are able to dine indoors again, and we go to Vivace.

A woman at the end of the bar, distressingly tan, slams down her hands. "Trump 2020!" This goes on for a while.

Finally, Sahar says, "Would you mind keeping it down? We're trying to enjoy our dinner."

"Majority rules," the man next to her says. The tan woman says, "This is a bar, we can say whatever we want."

The bartender says, "Actually, this is a restaurant."

"It's not worth it," I tell Sahar, and I watch the World Series on the wall's TV.

The woman is getting louder. Eventually, yes, I turn to look at her. She points at me, says, "Look at him. He eats like a faggot."

A special thanks to:

All for Nothing, by Walter Kempowski.

DAMN, by Kendrick Lamar.

INRI, by Raúl Zurita.

Fetch the Bolt Cutters, by Fiona Apple.

"This Extraordinary Being"

Everything Flows, by Vassily Grossman.

Jorge and David and I are on Zoom, arguing about colonialism, the roots of white supremacy. I hang up on them, my dearest friends.

Often, I sleep through the afternoon. Upon waking, I need a drink but do not drink. I ride my indoor bicycle. I think, Maybe there will be good news, and I put on the news. Soon, I'm back on my bed, staring at the ceiling. I think, I should write something. I should be recording this — what is happening. You see it happening. All those years of reading, which you believed in, which you thought would prepare you to see it. And now you do see it, and you're on your bed, staring at the ceiling.

It's the eve of the election. I have voted. I will change no one's mind. No one will change my mind. But before this ends — before tomorrow, and the inevitable chaos, circus, shit-show — I finally say, too late: I saw it. I bear witness.