There were two rules for the first-ever Zoom mixer of Here/Now, a curated dating company. The first: Don’t talk about work. The second: Don’t talk about quarantine.
There was a technological glitch when the host announced this; her voice, once chipper, suddenly morphed into that of a dying robot. “You’re freezing!” a digital 20-something cried out from the corner of the screen. “We can’t hear you!” shouted another. Behind my laptop sat a glass of wine. I leaned out of the video frame and chugged it.
This happy hour was meant to (virtually) bring together New York singles. But half us in this session aren’t even in the city anymore. Instead, we’ve fled to the beige coaches of American suburbia, our backgrounds dotted with framed pictures of smiling families and childhood Labradors. We are lobbed icebreakers—“What is something you’ll never do again? What kind of a kid were you?”—that we try to answer. But, after a while, we can’t ignore why we are all in our parents’ basements, why we are alone and video chatting at 9 on a Wednesday night. “Why,” as a striking blonde from Brooklyn said, wildly gesticulating at her laptop, “we’re doing this.”
So we break the second rule of Zoom mixing: We talk about quarantine, and endlessly so.
Across America, the businesses of Main Street are closed. Cities, and their citizens, are under shelter in place. Social distancing, a phrase that didn’t exist in the cultural vernacular until March, is now a fine-enforced law in many states. An overseas disease that once felt so far away infiltrates the lungs of our acquaintances, friends, and loved ones. The USNS Comfort sails past the Statue of Liberty, a symbol equal parts haunting, hopeful, and heartbreaking, a reminder of how, in just three weeks, our lives have utterly, irreparably changed.
But, as the saying goes, love endures—in wars, disasters, and even pandemics. And so do the attempts to find it.
If a typical first date in New York B.C. (before corona) begins at a bar, COVID-era courtships start on a screen. Dating companies like Here/Now are embracing Zoom, as are apps like Hinge. On Twitter recently, the dating app shared a set of digital backgrounds that mimic stereotypical first meetups: a picnic at a beach, a fancy hotel lounge, a path in the woods. (“We made some date backgrounds to help your Zoom dates feel a little more like real dates. Date from home and stay safe, everyone!” the company wrote.) The League, another members-only dating app, recently rolled out a video-chat feature that allows matches to digitally meet face-to-face without exchanging numbers. From March 15 to 22, the company saw a 41% increase in users. “People are embracing the fact that, okay, I can’t date in person. The closest thing I can do is talk to someone over video,” says Amanda Bradford, the League’s founder. Links to mass virtual gatherings—usually hosted on Zoom or its chaotic counterpart, Houseparty—are texted from group chat to group chat, giving you the chance to meet someone in pixelated person.
Hijinks, hiccups, and heartbreaks still happen. One friend of mine got a surprise FaceTime from a suitor—which was awkward because she was already on a phone date with someone else. (“I mean, what excuse was I supposed to give him for why I couldn’t talk tonight? Tiger King?”) Another thought she had hit it off with a guy, only to get a DM request for nude selfies a few days later. She left him on read and played Animal Crossing instead. Then there’s the exes who use the pandemic as an excuse to get back in touch. Maybe they miss you. Or maybe they’re just bored. In a strange way, these cringeworthy constants are comforting, reminders of our old reality as we grapple with one we never could have imagined.
So as a virus swirls around us, we still play the dating game. Perhaps more so because of it: “The worst thing that we can do as humans is to imagine a future where we are alone,” says Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo, the director of the Brain Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine.
But can we ever win? Stay-at-home orders and nonessential travel bans mean we can’t see one another. Health ordinances ask that we don’t touch one another. (“You are your safest sex partner,” New York City Health Department said, like a celibate Uncle Sam. “Consider taking a break from in-person dates.”) Our country’s educated experts aren’t sure when life will go back to normal—or if it will go back to normal. (“Everyone wants to know when this will be over,” tweeted Governor Cuomo. “The truth is: We don’t know. No one knows.”) So for the foreseeable future, we’re stuck as Sisyphean singles in cyberspace, shouldering the boulder of loneliness as we scale Mount Zoom.
Monday the ninth of March was our third date. We sat in the back of a forgettable Tribeca trattoria with only three other tables occupied. He ordered a martini, I, a Manhattan. Both were way too strong for the occasion. Even hushed, our voices reverberated around the empty room. The city wasn’t testing anyone, he complained. Coronavirus had been circulating here for weeks, thousands were likely infected, and had I read that article in the Atlantic?
“Do you ever wonder what we’d talk about if we met before all of this?” I responded.
I was to meet up with him again that Thursday, at a museum’s party for young New Yorkers. I’d borrowed a dress for the occasion. It was made of emerald green silk and slinked down every inch of my body until it skimmed the floor. A colleague watched me try it on in the office bathroom. “Now that,” she said, “is a fall-in-love-with-me dress.”
The day before, just before heading into the office, I received an email from human resources that there was a suspected case of coronavirus in our building. I was to work from home until further notice. That evening, President Trump suspended travel from the Schengen Area of Europe, the NBA canceled its season, and Tom Hanks announced he was COVID-19 positive. On Thursday, March 12, gatherings of more than 500 were banned, shutting down Broadway, Lincoln Center, museums, and their parties for young New Yorkers. By March 13, social distancing became the only way we could flatten the curve. I knew I shouldn’t, wouldn’t, and couldn’t see him—and many others—for quite some time.
On the evening of I-don’t-remember, because quarantine time all blends together, we did a Zoom date. He put on a goofy tropical background, which made me laugh. I accidentally muted him and then couldn’t figure out how to unmute him for two endlessly bumbling minutes, which made him laugh.
We talked about Netflix. We talked about working from home. We talked about whether or not to ride this out in the city.
And then we talked about people in our situation, generation unattached, and what the future might hold for us. “I think people are still going to date,” I said.
“What else are they going to do?” He countered. “Can you imagine talking to someone that you barely know, for months on end, only over apps or text—without knowing when you’ll actually see that person? Technology is a good way to continue something from a distance. But it’s hard way to start something.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I looked away from my laptop. In the corner sat the fall-in-love-with-me dress, slumped over a chair back, never worn nor seen.
Read the author’s earlier article on love, sex, and dating in the age of COVID-19— “How Do You Date Amid the Coronavirus?”
