It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Last Year

I got COVID for the first time almost a year ago.¹ This essay is from my stay at the COVID hotel the city sent me to so I could isolate. I repeat, this was written last year. 

The city’s COVID hotel program was still in place, just barely. We were right on the precipice of a new mayor, Eric Adams, who took office in January and immediately implemented his “ignore it and it will go away” policy. For the record, this policy is not successful. 

I wrote this in December 2021 while I was staying at the Holiday Inn Express in Corona, Queens on Grand Central Parkway across from Citi Field, home of the Mets.

I’m putting it up here, not because I love to live in COVID, although the substance of this substack may indicate otherwise, but because COVID Hotel was pretty special. We are also in the same boat as last year, COVID infections are on the rise, along with the flu and RSV.

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave²

I received my PCR results on Thursday, an early morning email. DETECTED. I did a double take, my rapid test from the Tuesday test was negative. I couldn’t believe it at first, maybe that’s why it’s all caps. Hey dummy, you got it. Then I felt guilt for being around people at work, even though I was masked. And then, I feel relief. Relief that there was a name for what was happening to me, something other than this is December, or this is the rest of your life. Relief that I finally got COVID, this fear I’ve been living with for a year and a half. 

During the shutdown the city created a multi-faceted hotel program for infected people and hospital workers to isolate from their families and people they lived with. It was helpful in the height of the pandemic, but I didn’t know if it was still in place. The constant anxiety, fear, mask-wearing and single bathroom at home wasn’t doing my health any favors. 

Later that day I waited on hold for one hour and fifty-six minutes with New York City’s COVID hotel line. Once connected, the nurse was kind and efficient, warning me he would ask very personal questions. The questions ranged from medications I take to history of suicidal thoughts and any addiction issues. Apparently he didn’t need to hear my thoughts about my relationship with alcohol, a very “yes, no, maybe” rambling he was patient about. 

“I want to know if you will go through withdrawal.” 

“Oh no, I won’t have the DTs.” 

“Are you a registered sex offender, I apologize for asking this question” he rapidly asked without skipping a beat or allowing pause. 

“No.”

The ride to the hotel is free, the room is free, the meals are free. Hell, the ride home is free. We are allowed to order food in. We cannot have visitors, we cannot leave our rooms to meander around wherever we want. Two days later I received a call telling me my ride to an undisclosed hotel would show up at 2 pm, leaving me with two hours to shower, pack and overthink. I could stay up to ten days to fulfill the self-isolation requirements at the time³, but I wasn’t beholden to stay the entire time. I could leave of my own volition, but I couldn’t return without beginning the process all over again.

I am not a strong packer, let’s begin with that. I have no knack for minimalism. When I am sick I tend to wear the same outfit for days until I decide that the sick clothes are making me sick. I try to anticipate every creature comfort in this category. That is five black shirts, two black pants, three black tank tops, four soft bras, one workout one piece, a pair of tie-dye sweatpants (from a friend! from a friend!), a flannel, a wool poncho blanket situation, every possible clean pair of underwear and all the socks my mother gives me for Christmas that are made of fleece and many colors and have grippy bottoms and sometime sequins. I pack three different face masks and some eye gels, just to really get in some spa time, but forgot shampoo. I tried to bring two yoga blocks, but could only fit one in the duffle bag. 

I bring a small tower of different salts my sister gave me one year that I have never used, a mixed bag of teas and a quart of homemade mushroom soup. I peel and chop all available raw ginger. I bring a box of tampons and a deva cup because perimenopause is cruel and a vibrator because I hope to get better. 

Weapons, drugs and alcohol are not permitted. Right before the car comes I freak out that this is a set-up and some stranger is picking me up for a free ride to a free hotel room. What fucking episode of Law & Order is this? I stash my pocket knife in the duffel along with some weed gummies because how else am I supposed to relax and a small bottle of rye whiskey for tea. I fear lying away stone sober and defenseless staring at the ceiling trapped somewhere with nowhere to go. 

The driver is talkative and kind, a big fan of Christmas and doesn’t treat me like a pariah. I nod my head and lie that I also love Christmas, because I have manners. This one’s a new hotel to him, a Holiday Inn Express right across Grand Central Parkway from Citi Field, home of the Mets. I’m taking that as a positive. The lobby is decorated for the holidays, like it’s a functioning hotel awaiting tourists. I tell a security guard wearing both a face shield and surgical mask my name and wait in a chair distanced from others. This is just the second day this hotel has been accepting people, it is filling up quickly. The people are varied, and there are two mothers with daughters waiting for a room. The woman who came in before me gets her room, it’s on the sixth floor.

Sixth floor! Dare to dream! Could I get a COVID room with a view? Not a chance.  I’m on the second floor right next to the elevators and 24-hour makeshift health care worker station. They check new arrivals’ bags in a closet. 

“Do you have any weapons, drugs or alcohol?” 

“No.” 

Anything untoward is put in a large ziplock bag with the room number written on it. One mother brought a large kitchen knife, in it goes. Another person’s pack and cigarettes and lighter goes in another.  I open my bag and am able to obscure all offenses with so many mixed fiber black clothing. I feel both triumphant and like a dirtbag.

It’s a solid room, a big bed with clean white sheets and you know the first thing I do is check for bedbugs under the mattress pad and in the chair. I use hand sanitizer to clean anything I and a previous tenant might touch – bed frame, remote control, doorknobs, the table... The view is of a gate hiding HVAC equipment. The television has one channel, the news, and in my attempt to find other channels I lost this one, resulting with the black & white fuzz from Poltergeist. Neither the microwave nor the tiny refrigerator have anywhere to plug into that doesn’t jeopardize the lamp or the now pointless TV. Dystopia achieved. 

Things felt a little dark at this moment

I ask the health care worker about the door that doesn’t shut. All the deadbolt hardware has been removed from doors, which makes sense in a makeshift hospital way but freaks me out, as my door is ajar, it doesn’t shut, and what if some nutbag brings a knife? 

We are monitored frequently, temperature and pulse ox monitoring three times a day, trash pick-ups, meal drop-offs and a knock on the door twice a day for “fresh air time and smoke breaks.” Sometimes in the middle of the night just because. Otherwise we cannot leave our rooms. The staff increases as my days do, the hotel fills up as COVID spreads. For our breaks we are taken down in elevators three people at a time along with one health care worker in an existential quandary to keep us distanced. We have reached capacity, something like 268 people who all need to be ferried three at a time for outdoor breaks. Smokers are reunited with their cigarettes.  

This Holiday Inn Express used to have an indoor pool, we are on the patio outside of it. Everything here is grey, the sky, the outside patio, my soul. The pool is now drained (thank god because I did consider bringing a swimsuit and that may have put me over the edge if I didn’t and could swim). Someone set up a sofa with a coffee table and a few chairs like it’s a living room in the deep end. Someone has a sense of humor. Various holiday decorations, discarded furniture and mattresses are scattered about the perimeter of the pool. She’s like the Mona Lisa, impossible to capture through photography, even though almost every person on outside time tries. This area also overlooks an empty public park, which feels cruel but I get it. Some of us stretch and walk in circles like it’s a track, trying to take advantage of these precious moments.

Certainly a charming scene in the empty pool but everyone in New York knows there’s nothing more terrifying than a discarded mattress and bedding material

Thank god there’s a vending machine and it takes cards. I offer to buy the other people in my elevator anything they want, that’s right, it’s Saturday night and I’m a big spender. Round for the house on me, bartender. I’m the only one with a wallet, it all costs $3.50, a cheap Saturday night. 

The people working here, from the security to the health care workers to the custodial staff are incredibly kind, patient and respectful, remarkable since they are surrounded by sick people. They work all the time, it takes a few days for staffing to meet the needs. I’m continuously stunned by their warmth and care. I don’t really care if the food isn’t great and I notice when someone actually tries. Whatever, I can order in, and I do, Szechuan food from a restaurant in Flushing. My friends kindly send me some groceries.⁴ I fix the open door with a washcloth shim. Someone from custodial gives me a new TV remote so it’s not just broadcasting the apocalypse. I feel taken care of here, by people spending their holidays taking care of COVID patients at this health care outpost. 

“Are you angry?” At least two people have asked me that when I told them I have COVID. I am often angry, at our government, at anti-vaxxers, at affluent people who think they’re better than the rest of us and we end up living the shit end of their ambition stick. But for me to feel angry because something bad happened to me? No. I don’t have the energy for that and I know that something much worse could happen. I am lucky, because I can take time off of work and I don’t have to get notes from Urgent Care to convince my employers. I feel an exhausted sign of relief that I’m not just rundown and burnt out and this is how I will feel until the end (of COVID? Of my life?), that what I have has a name, and I can go somewhere and stay for free and not feel the constant hum of anxiety of increasing infection rates. 

This seems about right

I also use this time as my own personal shutdown, a permission to just go nowhere except for twice a day, loll around and read. I struggled with this in the beginning, that I wasn’t really “sick enough” to do this, that I could push through like I always have to go to work. That’s the part of the pandemic that’s such a mindfuck for so many, that we always push through and now we have to recalibrate our thinking so we’re not just a giant walking germ. My brain finally quiets when I realize that maybe physically I am not at my worst, but mentally, mentally I need this isolation. I need to be here.

I bring four books, Moscow 1941, about how the Soviets beat the Nazis, Hanif Abdurraqib’s “A Little Devil in America,” Taste Makers” by Mayukh Sen, and “In Regard Of Self” by Toni Morrison. I always pack too many books, I still believe I might be that person. I always pretend I am an upstanding intellectual and sometimes I am. I am for a moment, until the TV is fixed and find John Wick and Rocky movies. Aaaah, human complexity. 

I release myself on Christmas Eve. I haven’t been here for ten days, but I’ve had COVID for that long. Someone else needs the room. I haven’t read the books or worn all the soft clothes, the yoga block has gone untouched and I’m too much of a lady to discuss the vibrator. The quart container the mushroom soup traveled in is the real MVP of this sick stay, repeatedly used to make ginger tea. My best instinct was to peel and chop the raw ginger. I’ll take it. 

Post-Script, December 2022

Last year was our second COVID holiday season and first attempt to truly return to normalcy, whatever that is. SantaCon, a pox on us all, returned. People dress up like Santa Claus or Mrs. Claus or an elf and stumble through the city drinking all day en-mass. It is the worst day of the year. No matter how drunk people get, and yes this is during the day, and yes it’s just a giant sprawl of people bar-hopping and careening through the sidewalks and streets, no one gets arrested or in any trouble because most participants are white. It’s just another day of safe space for white people to get publicly wasted without repercussions. 

Art Basel in Miami also returned in 2021, a massive international contemporary art show that’s like the Super Bowl for artists and galleries. I really just know about it because I know art handlers. And for the party people it’s a giant Spring Break coke den. I know about that because I have an Instagram account. Last year 60,000 people attended. 

Also last year LCD Soundsystem announced a 20 show run at Brooklyn Steel, continuing to toy with their fans’ emotions with a “will they or won’t they” kind of Sam & Diane from Cheers energy about ever playing again. They didn’t finish the run, canceling the last three shows after omicron cases soared. I calculated that for the shows they did play, at least 38,000 people⁵ were in attendance for these back to back nights, some people traveling from out of town and some people going to multiple shows and some people working. Just working. 

I pick these three events because they are quite densely populated, a massive change from the past few years. There’s a big difference in the amount of people exposed at a show where the capacity is 1,800 like Brooklyn Steel (which probably doesn’t include VIPS & staff) and going to your local restaurant for a meal. Their ability to quickly compound and spread was devastating. In December the amount of people infected in North Brooklyn, mainly Greenpoint and Williamsburg, two neighborhoods of affluent gentrifiers with disposable income was the highest in the city. Honestly it was almost laughable. Just consider the intersection between Art Basel and LCD Soundsystem and then people who eat and drink out. It’s like watching the trails of contamination video from a health department about raw chicken hands but with COVID. And those hands have credit cards and love to go out. 

Now it’s December 2022 and we’re doing it all over again. Art Basel, SantaCon, LCD, except without the COVID hotel policy. We keep doing the same things over and over and over again, expecting different results. Damn we’re dumb.

1. I have had COVID 3 times in 6 months.

2. More prevalent than the terrible knowledge that I just quoted the Eagles’ “Hotel California” is the fact that this line is a perfect title.

3. The CDC changed the isolation time from ten to five days during this period of time, not based on any medical information but from pressure from the heads of airlines.

4. Hot sauce is a godsend.

5. Yeah, I did the math in COVID Hotel.