The Free Love Bus Hasn’t Stopped Here In Years
A comment here on ErosBlog from someone who’s had no sexual contact since the start of the Covid pandemic caused me to reflect on the AIDS epidemic as experienced by, for example, rural teens who didn’t know (didn’t know they knew) any gay people.
There was a cruel window in the early 1980s during which it was possible to pass through puberty steeped in the delicious propaganda of the sexual revolution, with its alluring promises of easy sex and promiscuity, only to watch in horror during your teen years as the AIDS crisis annihilated it all. Free love (and all that) got buried in in fearful and grudgingly-pair-bonded layers of latex while we watched, and before we ever got our first adult taste of pussy or cock or whatever we were wanting to lick and suck and fuck.
Of course, even acknowledging this feels churlish, petty, and self-absorbed now. For the obvious reason that this recollection of frustrated horny teen angst pales to insignificance when compared to all the lives literally destroyed by AIDS.
So why mention it now? Because of the Covid thing. I won’t say it hasn’t been covered in think pieces on smart websites, but I don’t think we’ve fully apprehended or begun to count the costs of all the intimate isolation that resulted from Covid and continues among people who are still trying to avoid new courses of infection every third month. What’s our culture going to look like when we have an entire generation whose dating and hooking up and casual fucking was constrained in novel ways by a respiratory pandemic? That’s going to express itself culturally, it has to. I just don’t know — none of us know — what to expect from it.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=30923
I would be interested to hear about how this has affected different kinds of people. What about the people whose sex lives were centered around swinger’s clubs or fetish events and found themselves separated from them by different ideas about infection control? (After AIDS queer and kinky people tended to be good on safer sex but when it comes to airborne infections that seems to have changed in some places). The people whose stuck-at-home marriages turned into a bacchanalia or a scene out of Judge Judy?
Some cautious introverted people with a small or non-local social circle must be finding sex or romance during COVID, and what strategies are they using? Some casual googling tells me that Dr. Nerd Love lost interest in the question after 2020.
I, too, would like to know a lot more about that.
Unfortunately as the topic of Covid avoidance has become politically charged, people seem to regard anything Covid-related as a disreputable topic of conversation. On social media people who manifestly have Covid will say “I’ve been sick” into their TikTok or Youtube camera, but they won’t say the word Covid or talk candidly about the choices they’re making that are affected by it.
And of course, the best way around that is talking to people you know and trust face to face, but if your goal is to build that network in the first place that is a chicken and egg problem. And sometimes events no longer have an infection control policy, or no longer enforce it, and don’t answer polite inquiries.
Dating sites / apps work for some people some times.
I also think that when you are young and inexperienced, its hard to see the darker sides of a culture.
A lot of the American talk about sex positivity and polyamory and feminism around 2010 had the unspoken subtext “some famous or wealthy men are using their hobbies, NGOs, or companies as a dating pool and making things awkward for women who want to be regular participants not so-and-so’s new girlfriend.” That was very hard to see through Internet and Old Media discourse or being on the edge of a space. And I think I will stop talking there.
@Vagans, the strategy I happened on was Dog walking.
As an introvert, without a dog, I spent a lot of time during lockdowns walking the local fields for exercise and the necessary minimum of hearing other voices. The people I met and talked to, in a social distanced way were people walking their dogs. And that was how I met my current love, and their dogs, completely unexpectedly and unlooked for.
Ironically without Covid, I would probably not have met them, and definitely would not be in a passionate relationship with them now.
John Finnemore also recommends dog walking for introverts in his brilliant Cabin Pressure radio series.
It’s tempting to say there’s no hope for cat lovers, but I suspect that posting cat videos may be a thing for more than just lols…
Meetup is a great way to meet people in groups with low pressure, although it certainly helps that I live in Australia where we have pretty low rates of hospitalisation compared to the USA, although we’re similar now to a lot of other countries. Perhaps the long distances and prevalence of outdoor events helps.
Finagle, that’s brilliant. I don’t want to gender this in a way that you did not, but as a strategy for cishet men in particular, it rocks because so often women in public rightly perceive unknown men as potentially dangerous. The security offered one or two loyal dogs lowers that cautionary emotional barrier. If her well-behaved little pittie is keeping his hairy eyeballs on you in a mannerly way, she may be relaxed enough to exchange friendly greetings, as she otherwise might not.
Somewhere, long ago, I saw a meme photograph on social media of a woman sunbathing by herself in a lounge chair on a crowded Brazilian beach. She had two alert Belgian Malinois sitting at either hand and they were all respectfully surrounded by a 10-foot-radius bubble of empty sand. I think anybody who has reason to be concerned about strangers in public — and that’s a lot of people! — should get themselves a security-breed dog who loves them.
Dogs are not a guarantee though. There is a potentially dangerous guy we met who was nice as pie, then threatened us and the dogs with a knife because one of ours growled at his dog. There’s also a notorious local lady who is so mistrusting her dogs are aggressive towards everyone, which is not helping her at all.
So I’d qualify your advice by saying if you consider getting a dog, and if your lifestyle can accommodate one or more, please do, then make sure you learn how to be a good owner. One of the things that attracted me to my partner was that these are their first dogs and they are working hard to give them the best life they can. If they commit to their dogs like that, then there’s a good hope they will to a human relationship.
Malinois are very handsome dogs… I’d see that as a come on to say hello and talk about dogs :-D But always check with the owner before inviting any dog to approach you. Sticking your hand in a cranky, or a security trained, dogs face is a good way to lose fingers.
A female friend has a sticker by her front door…
Never mind the dogs watch out for the owner.
Oh, yes to all of that, absolutely.
I am an 87 year old widower who had recently moved to an independent living facility when the COVID shut down began. I moved here because I did not like living alone.I then spent almost a year in isolation. not fun. Additionally, I had just hoked up with two women both of whom enjoyed sex, What a bummer
Southern-Swinger: oof, another example of the problem! I imagine that a fair number of relationships ended during COVID too.
[…] for me, puberty and the AIDS epidemic were more or less simultaneous events, I’ve spent my entire sexual life being bombarded with […]
[…] post The Free Love Bus Hasn’t Stopped Here In Years is a short post, but personally notable for me because I finally managed to capture in two […]