TWO YEARS IN NEW YORK (Michael Mohr's Fictional NYC Covid Memoir) Chapter 18
Michael Mohr's NYC Covid Fictional Memoir, ch. 18
Chapter 18
It was September 18th, 2020. Covid cases had fallen precipitously due to the warm humid summer air leading everyone to go outside, fleeing their indoor prisons. Even the protests had calmed. It had been a hot, moist, weird summer in Manhattan. We all seemed to understand—as Fauci and expert epidemiologists had repeatedly said—that, come winter, we’d all be back inside again. We’d be back to lockdowns. Shelter-in-place. With the isolation; the solitude; the brutal loneliness; seeing the world through our iPhones and television and computer screens as if from another planet. We were the snowballs inside of the global snow-globe; we would, again, be trapped, with no escape. It was like considering the notion of death, the total loss of consciousness so difficult to grasp that we finally gave up and thought about something else.
Consciousness, after all, is all we have. Life—interaction with other human beings—was what we did.
But that had all changed during Covid.
Running had been something I’d tried many times before I got sober, when still in my disastrous, inane twenties. I remember once, when I lived in Lake Merritt in Oakland when I was 26, in 2009, I tried running around the popularly-jogged 3.2-mile lake. It was a manmade, mucky yet beautiful lake, with the Oakland downtown skyline on one side, Lakeshore and Grand Ave on another, a view of the Alameda County Superior Courthouse at another area, and The Cathedral of Christ the Light church at yet another. Sunlight gaped down and beamed along the blue-green lake water. Serious rowers in narrow boats raced along. Joggers, walkers and couples trudged around the lake. There was grass all over around the periphery. An open concrete area by the courthouse where teens skateboarded and smoked pot. Lake Merritt was where people in Oakland gathered.
That Saturday morning, I recall, I was hungover as all Hell from getting wasted the night before. A female friend of mine and myself—another disaster alcoholic like me—had done the usual: A night of blackout drinking at a little local dive bar called Baggies by the Lake, down the road from my little room on East 18th where I lived at the time. We’d gone scouting for sex, a guy for her, a woman for me. In the end we closed the bar down, drunkenly stumbled the five minute walk back to my room, and fucked each other. (It usually ended this way.)
At this time I was briefly going through a laughable “Healthy” phase. This meant I still drank like a fish, of course, but that I attempted to at least eat some vegetables, and had decided to try to exercise regularly. I’d always been a fierce, determined walker. Hiker. Backpacker. But I’d never really tried to run. Not since I’d been a competitive mile-runner in grade school. (I’d gotten third place in Ventura County at one point.) I figured this sunny, cold February morning, Hey, it can’t be that bad. I can do this. What’s 3.2 miles?
I warmed up, did some stretches—having no clue what I was doing—and set off at a slow jog. At first it was okay. But after about ten minutes (less than a mile) my breathing began to feel shallow and wretched. A horrible hangover headache descended. My eyes were stinging and hot, like they’d explode out of my face. The asphalt path along the lake was smooth and flat. I wasn’t going uphill or anything. I pushed myself to carry on. I berated myself for being such a sloppy drunk, such a loser. Pathetic, I remember screaming at myself, out loud. People probably thought I was crazy. I sort of was.
Finally, after perhaps twenty minutes total, at a very slow jog, I stopped. I bent over, my face flushed with crimson exhaustion. I was breathing harder than I’d ever breathed, it seemed. My whole body ached, especially my feet and legs. The running shoes I’d chosen weren’t even running shoes. I looked like an asshole and a fool. My palms were planted against my waist. I closed my eyes against the hot sun. Cold air retched out of my mouth in sprays and clouds of frigid morning air. I doubled over, hacked and coughed for a few minutes, and vomited.
After I got sober—I briefly moved for eight months after I quit the bottle to Portland, Oregon, and returned to Oakland in June 2011—I started doing many new things. I began going to AA meetings. I started going to Shambala meditation groups. I rode my bike frequently. I read constantly, and wrote, instead of drinking. I didn’t have sex for a while. I finished writing my first novel. And, I started running.
At first it was slow, just a mile or two. It took time, patience and practice. But I loved it—there was something about it that seemed calming, meditative, grounding. I could just get my gear on and go. It was a solo endeavor, between me and myself, my body and the road. It wasn’t competitive. Growing up in Southern California I’d been a serious, sponsored surfer for many years. It had been my first true great love (after BMX biking). It was just me and the waves, man versus nature. Or more accurately man with nature. I surfed with friends but we spread out and did our own thing out there. When I started competing, in my teens, the fun, the joy all got sucked out of it. I went back to just me and the water.
And now, since I wasn’t drinking, I could get decent sleep—real sleep not blackout “sleep”—and wakeup not hungover. I ate healthier. I felt physically better. I had formed less toxic friendships. My soul was feeling fed for the first time.
Over time the distances became a little longer. I lived in North Oakland. I’d run down Alcatraz Ave—my street—and then head north on Grant. I’d go a couple miles into North Berkeley, and then turn around and run back. I did this on and off for several years. For some reason still mysterious to me now, I ceased running sometime around 2013. Around the time Adinah and I started dating.
Fast-forward back to current times: September, 2020. As before, and like many others in this uncertain, confusing, exhausting time, I had experienced general fatigue, depression, desperation, emotional depletion, anger, resentment, and a feeling of time being both far too fast and far too slow all at once. The days blurred by like some mischievous, surreal soup. What day was it? Wednesday? Saturday? It didn’t really matter anymore: I wasn’t working; I spent 75% of my time inside again; I read and read and read; I played with Lucius; I wrote; but at the end of the day I was drained. Spiritually drained. Everyone was. The city itself, as if it were a human being with its own problems, seemed to feel it.
Enjoyed the chapter, (felt like a little bit of autobiography sprinkled in?) especially on running. I remember doing that after a night of drinking as well. Not easy.