| Intl. Notebook | Sex Files | Mar 22 2020 |
In Barcelona a group decides that desperate measures call for hard times.
COVID-19 has caused many casualties—among them humans, finances, political stability, and baseball season. But one of the biggest casualties has been humor. Consider this next tale, which under normal circumstances could be funny: Friday night Barcelona police thwarted an orgy, an event that was in clear violation of public health measures in Spain mandating that people stay confined to their homes. But in times of isolation sexual caution is one of the first things to go, it seems. Eight people were arrested, but the event would have drawn as many as thirty had it proceeded as planned. Police were not in uniform when they arrived at the rental flat and were at first mistaken for orgy participants, but they identified themselves as real cops, really there to arrest people, and no doubt hard-ons instantly drooped when the news sank in.
You see, that story could be at least a little amusing, but this coronavirus, in addition to everything else it's lethal toward, is a humor killer. One of the detainees had a cough and fever and there's nothing funny about that. He was sent to a medical center for testing, and amazingly, came up negative. But did he know that in advance? Doubtful. Even if the pandemic robs this curious little tale of humor, it's still instructive as a preview of any potential breakdown of human society. People will inevitably divide into camps or tiny nation-states. Cable television has taught us that.
There will be the hardcore military style groups filled with people who all think they're alpha males, and which will descend into violent social hierarchies in which compassion is banished and anyone who coughs is executed on the spot and their body flung beyond the perimeter with a catapult. Then there will be the party-like-it's-1999 groups who figure they're all screwed anyway, so might as well go out on an alcohol, drug, and sex high, 
and whose ranks are eventually whittled away while foraging for power sources for their audio system. That would be the group from Barcelona.
and whose ranks are eventually whittled away while foraging for power sources for their audio system. That would be the group from Barcelona.Then there will be the start-anew-in-ecological-harmony groups that cultivate staple crops, eat wild cabbage, weave their own clothes, and include among their leadership ranks a guy who insists on being referred to as “The Teller of Stories.” And of course yet another group will consist of people with no discernible skills save a bottomless capacity for cruelty, and who won't be bothered to organize at all except to capture unlucky strays, return them to their encampments in chains, and set them on fire unless their compadres toss out half of everything they have. Scavengers, we guess you'd call them. That group is where most former bankers and politicians will end up.
What group would we end up in? Good question. The paramilitary group, forget it. We'd rather be shot and catapulted. And the fourth group is out because: bankers and politicians. Also, torturing people and taking their goods just isn't us, though it is, we'll admit, very pulp. So that leaves the second or third groups. Both have their charms. At that Barcelona party, police found, aside from guys with boners, an unspecified quantity of cocaine, speed, and crystal and liquid ecstasy. Could be fun for
a while, but the companionship of constant drug users can be tedious. We worked in Hollywood, and we can tell you, get stuck next to a suit who's wired to the hairline and you'll beg for death. So maybe the hippie group is the one for us. It might take a while to adjust to eating veggies fertilized with our own feces, but that Teller of Stories gig actually sounds pretty sweet. We're going to Google some weaving techniques right now so we'll fit in.
a while, but the companionship of constant drug users can be tedious. We worked in Hollywood, and we can tell you, get stuck next to a suit who's wired to the hairline and you'll beg for death. So maybe the hippie group is the one for us. It might take a while to adjust to eating veggies fertilized with our own feces, but that Teller of Stories gig actually sounds pretty sweet. We're going to Google some weaving techniques right now so we'll fit in.Edit: Looking at everything we just wrote above, we realize another casualty of this virus must be sanity. We're losing it.
