LAUGHTER IS THE BEST POISON

There are many things I fear living in the USA (apart from Trump, that is). 

In Manhattan, you can become a fatality of falling scaffolding or even a manhole explosion (strangely common). Like anywhere else, you can be mugged on the street or have your belongings stolen when you go to the rest room (that bastard in Mr Biggs still has my lovely cream duffel coat; every winter, I scour the streets looking for it. Woe betide you if you’re wearing it. And I’ll know it by the wine stain down the front).

   

The day to day anxieties, however, are as nothing compared to my phobias, the main ones being a fear of balloons (globophobia), clowns (coulrophobia) and masks (maskaphobia). It’s believed that the last two are related; they might also be related to a fear of humanoid figures (automatonophobia). In my case, they certainly are; anything with its face hidden or disguised in any form produces genuine panic symptoms – raised heartbeat, sweating, intense anxiety. I can barely speak to bearded men (let alone women, and there are some of them out there, too) and the idea of a masked ball fills me with terror. A masked ball with balloons would be enough to bring the paramedics running.

   

Imagine my distress, therefore, when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced this morning that as from Saturday, masks will be compulsory in New York. That’s it. I am doomed never to leave my apartment again; forget Coronavirus putting me in hospital, the Admissions form when I am in a coma will read “maskaphobia”.

   

The problem is that it’s impossible to get a mask. My order doesn’t arrive for another week, so until now I’ve been wearing an eye mask that came with a spa beauty kit – the only problem being, given its design, that I have to choose whether I cover my nose or mouth; never both. Apparently, scarves or any other covering will suffice, and if you disobey, the Mask Police will be at hand to tell you what’s what. I’m trying to ease my distress by watching TV, but inadvertently caught The Masked Singer last night, which set me back somewhat (just for the record though, Governor: happy to model masks for you privately).

   

For the most part, I keep panic at bay, but at times it’s not easy. I have become very accident-prone in my own home, dropping and spilling things as if my body is slowly losing touch with gravity. I also had a bad fall, which brought back memories of breaking my humerus last year in similar circumstances. This time, I was luckier; it was only my neck I nearly broke.

   

These new difficulties are doubtless to do with having to spend so much time indoors. In the UK, I lived in an enormous six-bedroom house with a huge garden and never bumped into anything; now, I am confined to a little over 600 square feet (a veritable mansion by most Manhattan standards) and every day the walls seem a little closer.

   

Two nights ago, trying to rearrange my fridge at 2am (don’t ask), I mishandled a pint of giblet stock I’d been saving for a rainy day (as you do) and it rained all over me and the kitchen floor. Last night, I spilt a very large glass of red wine, while trying to rearrange my pillow while watching Murder, She Wrote in bed (don’t judge; these are trying times).

   

This morning, two packs of six toilet rolls fell on my head. Yes, I know I should be grateful to be in such a position, given the shortage, and I hereby apologise to said rolls for my outburst. I’m probably the only person in the world cursing toilet paper at the moment.

   

Even before the pandemic, I was struggling, and the day a 3lb bag of loose rice that fell out of a cupboard, continues to cause issues. Like Christmas tree pine needles you are still discovering in July, I am finding tiny grains in kitchen orifices I previously never knew existed.

   

In the current climate and in this confined space, every inanimate object poses a threat, and my food cupboards are a domino effect of dangers. Today, carefully trying to manoeuvre a can of beansprouts next to the black bean section (I am organised, if nothing else), it slipped onto the baked beans (an orchestra unto themselves), which in turn fell onto the giant containers of cumin and basil, all of which came hurtling towards me like the Charge of the Light Brigade. Who knew there was so much danger in domesticity?

   

I’ve also started to dwell on ailments I hadn’t previously noticed. I have a bruise on my stomach that today I became convinced was the plague; every head pain is a tumour; my lady bits look like killer triffids when viewed in a 20x magnifying mirror (small wonder a lot of guys don’t want to go there).

   

Irrational fears are, I suspect, upon us all in these unsettling times. On any one day, Coronavirus is Frankenstein’s monster, the ten plagues of Egypt, the Apocalypse, all rolled into one; what’s not to be scared about?

   

But like all animals, we are survivors; we do what we have to do to ensure the continuation of the species. That will be different for everyone, just as this whole experience is. So, is there anything we can do, collectively, to conquer the fact that, at some level, we are all s**t scared?

   

The writer George R. R. Martin said: “Laughter is poison to fear”. He’s right. To me, laughter is the answer to pretty much everything in life, but more so now than ever. I’ve been laughing with friends and family on the phone and on social networking; today, I walked with a friend, six feet apart, both of us masked (I was okay, having taken a Valium beforehand), and we laughed just the same as if we had met in a pub.

   

Fear cannot change who we are. 

At the moment, the devil sits on both shoulders, seemingly unshakeable, and in my good moments I try to laugh both it and the fear away. Old episodes of The Big Bang Theory, Frasier, Gavin and Stacey. 

Yes. Laughter is the poison to drive away fear. 

And until something else comes along, it is our vaccine.  

       

  

  

  

HOW TO BE . . . ALONE IN AMERICA

Even before the lockdown, I never found New York to be “the city that never sleeps”. In fact, it’s always seemed a bit dozy to me. 

Having lived in Paris and Puerto Banus (just outside Marbella in Spain), I grew accustomed to staying out all night if I so chose. It was the same in London in the Nineties, but then, my generation seemed to grow old suddenly: they needed their beauty sleep and, where once they would be emerging from Gerry’s Club in Dean St at daylight, they were packing up at 2am (how old am I? Four?). In recent years, everyone had to be out at 3am anyway (even Mike, the owner, was getting older), but I have many happy memories of those late nights/early mornings.

   

In Los Angeles, where I lived when I first came to the States in 2009, the rules were (and still are) very strict. Closing time is 2am, and staff wait for your glass (still half full) like dogs ready to pounce on an available bone. In New York, the witching GTHOH (Get the Hell Outta Here) hour is 4am, though even in my lively area of Hell’s Kitchen, restaurants shut up shop at around midnight and very few bars stay open till 4am. You don’t want to stay anyway, because the smell of lemon-scented cleaning fluid overpowers any lingering aroma you might have left wafting up from your wine.

   

Now, with everything shut, an hour in any hostelry would seem like a glorious holiday; sharing a drink with a real live human would feel like all your Christmases had come at once. As for the idea of going to a restaurant and eating among other diners, your body might now not be able to withstand the excitement; if the Coronavirus didn’t get you, the shock of becoming reaccustomed to socialising could well do.

   

Even in these circumstances, though, it’s hard to feel lonely in New York City. I’ve experienced loneliness in many cities throughout the world – usually on Sundays, when I imagine everyone except me is sitting round a huge wooden table with hams piled high and laughing children running around in gingham outfits, chanting The Wheels on the Bus – but it’s rare here.

   

I am lucky in that I have a spectacular view over the Hudson, where every night the sunsets bring a new art gallery to my window. Despite the quiet of the streets when I go out for my self-isolating walk, the feeling is one of a city in suspended animation, silently reassuring me that it will breathe again, without assistance.

   

In the confines of my apartment, I read, cook, watch TV, listen to music, meditate and give thanks for the respite from car horns impatiently waiting to enter the Lincoln Tunnel at rush hour. The non-stop thud of nearby construction no longer wakes me up and has me weeping with stress, come 5pm. I find activities and interests online I would never have discovered before. I’m refreshing my French and having yet another attempt at learning Spanish. I’ve even delved back into Italian, which comes much more naturally to me than Spanish, and I already feel fluent just by putting an 'a' on the end of every word I know and reading about the Mafia.

   

If I put an 'o' on the end of every word, I feel pretty fluent in Spanish, too, but I don’t feel as immersed in Spanish culture (not unless you count the gallons of Rioja in my cupboard) and I’ve always found a relative lack of interest in a country makes language learning more difficult. French, while being a more complex language, came quite easily to me when I moved to Paris in 2001; keeping up with it is a challenge, although I am hugely helped by Quora (which I have in French, English, Spanish and Italian), a site on which people pose questions that others answer or debate.

   

Because my work is essentially solitary, I’ve always been at ease in my own company and while being alone is not the same as feeling lonely, my situation makes these strange and frightening times easier to bear. When loneliness hits – panic moments when I wonder when I will ever communicate with a real live human again – I remind myself that everyone is in the same boat. It may feel like a sinking ship, but we’re all in it together.

   

There is a quote attributed to Scott Fitzgerald (some say wrongly so, but it’s still apt): “The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”

   

I suspect that is what many are feeling right now and there is a collective loneliness that has its roots in this very helplessness. Whether Fitzgerald said it or not, loneliness lies at the heart of The Great Gatsby – mainly, the loneliness that the pursuit of social status and money ultimately brings. Written in the 1920s, it’s a salutary lesson for our times and certainly worth reading or re-reading, not least for the ending: “So we beat on, boats against the current” but, to me, not “borne back ceaselessly into the past”, but towards a better future in which people have re-evaluated themselves, life, priorities; a world in which we will have learned, in being alone, that we truly never are. 

To quote the poet John Donne: “No man is an island,/Entire of itself,/Every man is a piece of the continent,/A part of the main”.

   

Donne was talking about Europe (and that’s a whole other debate), but knowing that we are not alone in this appalling crisis is what gets us through. Yes, there is, and will be more loneliness; some will cope better than others. There is fear, anxiety, dread, and all sorts emotions we cannot explain in a life that just wasn’t supposed to be like this.

   

While we are denied physical contact, other than with those we live with, it’s important to touch base on the phone and through social networking; reaching out to nature brings so many rewards (it’s very chatty when you give it time). These are precious moments to absorb the world around us – it really is our friend, even though it doesn’t seem that way at present.

   

Today, when I was out walking (briefly), I looked at a brownstone building and admired its colour. I am fascinated by architecture and how it reflects us at any given time. The words of Pink Floyd were singing in my head: “All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.” I found them strangely comforting.

   

Having said that, now I need a drink. Where’s that Gatsby drinking buddy when you need him?