The '20-2021 Pandemic In Review
I wanted to write an essay about 2021 but when I tried to recall the events that shaped the year it was blurred together with events that started in March of 2020, as the world went into lockdown from the Coronavirus. I think that's when the shift happened for so many of us, the radical change that woke us from our sleepy mindless routines. Being forced to stay inside gave us time to slow down and contemplate the people in our lives, getting closer with whom we love or taking the time to repair broken relationships that we put on the back burner. At the beginning of the pandemic, my father had a personal crisis due to the lockdown (I'm keeping the details private to protect his privacy.) Over several months, a transformation happened as he emerged on the other side as a calmer, gentler man. I don't know how or why this happened, but I do know it changed our relationship for the better. We no longer scream at each other over the phone and I've never felt closer to him.
Some of us lost our jobs or had to pivot our jobs to working online, or we had the financial means to quit a job that wasn't fulfilling us. We finally had the time to contemplate what we really want to do with our short and precious lives. Before the vaccine was produced, some people I know caught Covid even after social distancing and wearing a mask; I was relieved they lived. After the vaccine was produced and available, many more people refused to be vaccinated, and even on their death beds they still believed that Covid was a hoax.
In the first few months of the pandemic, I lost all of my streams of income so I contacted my bank to pause my mortgage payments (which they let me do for six months without penalty.) On paper, I lost 40% of my stock portfolio. After spending the last few months of 2019 trying to nail down a general contractor to commit to a big house project, I had just signed the contract and then had to put the project on indefinite hold.
For income, I had been seeing clients in-person as a prodomme and sexological bodyworker. Before the pandemic, I didn't put much thought into the model of working online (phone sex, fantasy role play, camming, sexting, selling erotic content through fan subscription services.) Touch was my specialty, from pain to pleasure. I also managed a short-term rental property and when the lockdown was announced I was completely booked up for all of March and most of April. My cancellation policy was strict, it was in my favor if guests cancelled within certain time periods as I got to keep a good chunk of that money I would have earned, but the pandemic was considered "extenuating circumstances" so the rental company sided with the guests to return 100% of their money. As the cancellations poured in over the week I saw my entire paycheck for two months vanish. Luckily for me, one of my sex coaching clients bought a package of online sessions for a few weeks. Then I got the idea to start offering phone sex sessions to my domination clients-- mostly erotic humiliation scenes where I was the Mommy/Aunt/Teacher and I would catch them doing something "bad" and punish them. I was impressed with my acting ability to improvise a scene that I only jotted down a few notes before the call, no rehearsal. I learned on the fly to remember the characters names, our roles, wardrobe, location and I also had to time the story to fit perfectly inside a 30 minute window (they paid for the session in advance.) It was like being on a stage doing a one-woman play with one guy sitting in the back of the dark theater who would answer, "Yes Mistress" when I would sensually whisper in my commanding tone, "Is that correct, my little slut?" I would periodically ask the client a question to make sure we didn't get disconnected and he was still engaged enjoying our little show. Online sessions didn't pay what in-person sessions did, so I just scraped by.
I was doing pretty great comparatively. As of December 2021, there are 281 million COVID cases globally, heath care workers and hospitals have been pushed to their breaking point, the pain and of suffering of so many families who've watched their loved ones get sick and die so quickly. I saw a few marriages and partnerships fall apart from the stress of working in a cramped space from home, their kids being schooled from home in front of a screen and the extreme closeness forced upon them to confront the little cracks of resentments built up over the years. Like the tectonic plates in the earth that shift under pressure, it shook relationships down to their core and many didn't survive.
But amongst the daily earthquakes, I also saw some beautiful lotus flowers blossom in the ruins.
Many people around the world who lost their jobs because of the pandemic were forced to either quit or change their business model to fit the new economy. I watched a lot of my community who previously did sex work sessions in person (prodommes, erotic massage providers, escorts, strippers) pivot their business to work exclusively online focusing on building their brand and social media fan base, funneling those horny eyeballs into paid subscribers for erotic content, live chat sessions and sexting. When I started crunching the numbers of some of my colleagues, the money they were making from their OnlyFans labor was mind-blowing (and I'll admit I'm a little envious.) In the spring of 2020, many were brand new to the world of running a fan site and they started out with only a handful of subscribers making a few hundred dollars a month. Since that time, I know several colleagues who've quit doing in-person work for good as they're now grossing between ten to thirty thousand dollars a month (in less than two years of starting their business no less.*) Millions of horny men around the world working from home and thousands of out-of-work sex workers created the perfect marketplace. *Note: if you're not already a celebrity or someone with at least 100,000 Instagram followers, making serious coin selling subscriptions and content is not "easy money". I don't mean to make light of how hard my colleagues work to get where they are today.
My partner moved in with me in October of 2020 and started paying half my mortgage and utilities so that helped give some financial relief. I also felt a debt of gratitude to not feel the impact of loneliness that many single people felt being separated from their friends, social events, dating and seeing family on the holidays. My partner and I share a few things in common: We're both relative newcomers to Portland and don't have close friends nearby. We prefer cooking at home over going out to eat. We almost exclusively work from home. We tend to isolate in our jobs and I don't see my family more than once a year. So when the lockdown happened we were insulated within our bubble from the shock of self-imposed isolation. The only inconvenience was not being able to work out at the gym but it opened up more time to do outdoor cycling (which I'll always prefer over the gym, even in rainy Portland.) And now my best friend was on a bike next to me, huffing and puffing up the hills taking in the views, snuggling on the couch with me every night as we watched cooking shows and made new dishes for each other in the kitchen. I've never had a time in my life when I felt so much of the opposite of lonely.
Being mostly single for most of my life, I found myself reading a lot of self-help books on dating that suggested if you just put yourself out there with activities you enjoy you'll meet people in a natural way. So every weekend I would force myself out of the house and go for dinner at a new trendy restaurant, attend a comedy show, a singles social event, or the most masochistic way of putting yourself out there-- an awkward first date through OKCupid. I would always leave feeling even more empty and alone as I looked around at all the people connecting, laughing or hooking up. I always felt like I had a big 'loser' spot light on me when I would go out, like Steve Martin in the Lonely Guy.
Suddenly, my years of isolation and self-reliance became a mental shield in a global pandemic and I felt this smug schadenfreude wash over me. I like to think of myself as empathetic and loving, but this my shadow side doing all talking here-- the jealous, unpopular seventh grader who’s still a little bitter:
Hey world, feeling isolated, alone and depressed? Can't go to parties or hang out with your friends anymore? Well boo hoo, welcome to my teens, twenties and thirties, bitches! I did my time in social isolation for decades and because of it I developed immunity to endure it when it was forced upon the world. But you? Nope, you're just so popular with all your friends all over the world, your connections and close family around you all the time to prop you up and now you're weak without them. And yes, Melissa The Lonely Loser Girl Who Has No Friends finally found love and a stable partner after twenty five years of loneliness, heartbreak and despair. So go fuck yourselves happy people! How does the shoe feel on the other foot? Fellow loners and introverts, we finally have the power!
{ I feel like a just took a massive steaming pile of a dump right in front of you, dear reader! I'm feeling ashamed of my giving a voice to my shame and insecurities. But my philosophy on releasing shame is if you're brave enough to shine a light on your demons and share them with the world you can start releasing them. That's why I've started writing and coming out.}
Speaking of that girl who was in therapy on and off since she was in seventh grade-- In the spring of 2021 I got back into regular weekly therapy sessions but I had a very different agenda this time. I was paired with my therapist through a mental health collective for workers in the adult industry. My therapist gave me weekly practices to let go of my shame so I could reach my goal: to come out of the closet under my given family name as one person with many facets: sex worker, healer, activist, photojournalist, writer, digital media artist. Eight years of living an underground life under several personas has been disempowering and exhausting. My ultimate goal is to grow a kryptonite shield to ward off the trolls, haters and stalkers (and those dudes who drive by yelling stupid shit at me when I’m riding in the street) but I know that it will take time to practice the art of letting go, the zen of giving no fucks and Taking No Fucks (NFTs).
Yes, we sure had dumpster fires greater than my little problems in 2021. The January 6th insurrection. Trump and his supporters still believe he won the election. The right to choose an abortion and women's healthcare is going backwards fast. 40% of Americans who can receive a COVID vaccine have not and may never. Close to a million Americans have died from COVID. Billionaire tech bros got even richer and the middle class shrunk lower. The hottest temperatures on earth were recorded. A man with an assault rifle murdered two Black Lives Matter protesters and was acquitted. QAnon conspiracy theories believe John F Kennedy Jr will rise from the dead and proclaim the orange turd president yet again. Insiders are saying the orange turd may run for president in 2024 and actually win this time.
"There is the mud, and there is the lotus that grows out of the mud. We need the mud in order to make the lotus."- Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh.
The past 21 months have been a lot of stinky muddy shit, but I've seen a lot of us grow stronger and even bloom in this swamp. I'm really looking forward to look back in another decade of what this time in history meant for us globally and personally, what risks we took and brave choices we made to create a future we really want to be in.