Love and Sex Ch. 01

Love and Sex in the Time of the Coronavirus

Spring 2020

"It is not a lack of love that drives most marriages apart, but a lack of trust."

- Felix Francis in "Triple Crown," 2016

#

"Paul, what the fuck is going on?"

My wife rarely used profanities before the epidemic. A month of working daily fourteen-hour shifts as a nurse had strained even her Christian upbringing. While I cringed at my young wife's display of intense anger, I was still relieved to see her safely home. Before the pandemic, I used to worry about her walking a couple of blocks from the bus stop to our tiny abode in a rundown section of Brooklyn. Now, a real threat confronted her every day in a CORVID-19 ward at the University Hospital of Brooklyn. Daily, exhausted doctors and nurses were succumbing as they fought to save their patients without adequate medicine, ventilators, or even something as fundamental as personal protective equipment in the largest and most dilapidated public hospital in the city.

My wife was furious to see I had brought a stranger into our home despite our month-long state-imposed isolation. A colorful, handmade mask, provided by another nurse's mother, covered most of her face, but I could see her weary, dark brown eyes, wide with fright. She glowered at me for a moment before glancing at the burly, half-naked, mahogany-colored man sitting next to me on our convertible sofa. Before the days of the coronavirus, my wife would have welcomed any friend of mine, no matter what color their skin was, with a warm hug. Those days were gone, long gone.

She didn't have to spell out the reasons for her fear. Nearly eight thousand people in the city had already died from the coronavirus, and we weren't even at the peak. New York City was on lockdown. You couldn't invite your parents over for dinner. You didn't go outside except in an emergency or if you had an essential job. On the streets, you stayed six feet away from everyone, even your best friends.

I tried my best to calm my wife's fears. "Cathy, I'd like you to meet my old roommate, John Williams. He just got back from covering the civil war in Syria. The Times asked him to do a piece on the pandemic with a focus on health care workers. I checked him over carefully. I think he's free of the coronavirus."

John stood up and bowed. He started to extend a hand but mumbled an apology and pulled it back. At the last moment, he grabbed the unraveling knot holding the jumbo bath sheet wrapped around his massive waist. It wouldn't have been cool for my old college roommate to greet my good Christian wife for the first time by displaying what I knew all too well was the most massive penis I had ever seen.

Cathy glared at me. We both knew about asymptomatic carriers who spread the virulent disease for days without exhibiting symptoms.

Her voice rose as she challenged me. "You think? You think he's healthy?"

"I met him down in the lobby and gave him a thorough check-up."

"Oh, great. You took your friend's temperature, checked his pulse, and had him say 'ahh.' Then the omnipotent third-year medical student recently anointed as a resident proclaimed him virus-free."

I always get flustered and lose my chain of thought when my wife gets angry. We don't have a lot of arguments, but the last several weeks had been tough on everyone's nerves.

John said, "Cathy, I'm sure I'm safe. I've been in quarantine for two weeks ever since I returned from Syria. I just finished it this morning and came here straight from the hotel.

#

John and I were roommates all four years in college and became good friends despite our difference. The University of Michigan claims it uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to assign roommates based upon hundreds of parameters. It's just one of many reasons I don't trust the nerds who write software. John and I had far more differences than the few trivial things we have in common.

Sure, we were both over six feet tall, but while John was 240 pounds of muscle, I was a lanky kid who fought to maintain 180 pounds. We both played football in high school. I was a wide receiver while my assigned roommate was a fast, burly fullback. Although we were both scholarship students from working-class families, there was a difference in how we obtained our financial aid. I had to work hard for my academic scholarship. However, a host of prominent football universities had pursued John before he accepted a lucrative offer from the University of Michigan. I was a premed student majoring in biochemistry while my roommate was an undeclared major whose only goals were to fuck every coed at the U of M, rack up running yards, and get picked up by an NFL team, preferably the Cowboys. John was gregarious while I was a studious introvert. Oh yeah, John was a black kid from Birmingham, Alabama, while I was white and came from a small lily-white town in rural Western New York. I could count the number of people of color I'd met before college on two fingers.

After a rough start caused by John's never-ending stream of female conquests interrupting my school work, we found some common ground and developed a symbiotic relationship. I helped him with school work, and he helped me overcome my shyness around women. I'm pretty sure I got the better end of the deal.

It seems an incredible number of white college girls have an urge to fuck a black classmate and punch their black tickets. What better trophy than a big black running back? Once word got around that John had the biggest cock on campus, horny white chicks swarmed all over him. He was in heaven. The endless supply of pussy meant he could fuck a girl at night and dump them the next day without hurt feelings from a happy coed who had just added another trophy to her shelf.

Eventually, John noticed my lack of success with women. After expressing his surprise that a good-looking guy like me had problems picking up women, he promised to help. It turned out to be easy. All he had to do was convince one of his conquests that they needed to add a premed student to their trophy collection. I lost my virginity to a tall, buxom, blond a couple of days later and fell for her hard. John found me crying when the girl who I thought was the love of my life rejected my pleas to continue the relationship. My roommate sat me down for a talk to explain the difference between love and sex.

"Sex is about the joy you find in satisfying your most basic animal instinct. It's all about physical contact. Love involves higher brain functions and requires a long term commitment by two people. It's about emotional contact in addition to the physical aspects. Your first partner wasn't interested in more than a one-night stand. Be patient. Relax and enjoy the free sex. You'll know when you've found the right woman."

"John, you've fucked a considerable number of women. Have you ever been in love?"

"Yeah, once when I was too young to know better. It hurt like hell when she dumped me for the high school quarterback, but I got up, dusted myself off, and found another woman to bed. Paul, you need to have sex again as soon as possible. I don't want you mopping around."

The following weekend, I had sex with another big curvaceous blond. My roommate could hear everything through the thin wall separating our bedrooms and offered to tutor me on sex techniques. He took to leaving his bedroom door open so that I could watch and learn. It took some convincing to get me to leave my door open so he could offer his critique afterward.

Eventually, I got enough confidence to pick up women on my own. I found out I also preferred tall, athletic blonds. My seven inches weren't in the same league as John's cock, but it was still well above average and proved to be a problem with smaller girls.

John learned something from my tutoring that proved useful after college. He was struggling with his writing assignments in our required English class. I suggested writing about something my roommate knew well. Since he could hardly write in detail about his sexual conquests, I suggested he talk to his partners and write stories about their lives. He was reluctant at first since his relationships focused on how fast he could get a girl naked in his bed. After he began talking to his sex partners, he thanked me.

"I can't believe how much women get turned on just by asking a few questions about their background and listening attentively. I've even managed to get that big shy blond who works in the library into my bed. What a great pickup technique. I don't know how to thank you."

John's essays improved dramatically, and he pulled his English grade up to a solid B. The next year, my roommate took a class in journalism and aced it. His newly developed writing skills allowed him to change his career goal when he blew out his knee in the Rose Bowl his senior year.

Eventually, John ran low on eager, trophy hunters, and his technique evolved. He began to rely more and more upon his new verbal seduction skills. Occasionally, one of his dates would chicken out at the sight of his enormous black cock. John showed more patience with hesitant women than I would have expected in a star fullback. John would coax his reluctant date to take it one small step at a time while continually talking calmly and caressing them. As his eager student, I listened carefully. His technique went something like this:

"It's ok, we don't have to screw, but you may never get another chance to touch one this big, black and hard. Go ahead. It won't bite."

After a girl wrapped their hand around his cock, they were hooked. The next step was simply to get the girl to stroke his uncircumcised monster. Once he produced a little pre-cum, he'd offer to let them lick the fat head. Very few of his partners, needed any coaxing to take his hard cock into their mouths. However, I've never seen any woman deep-throat his black beast, but a handful tried and failed.

While the girl was giving him head, his skillful hands would roam over her naked body. After he'd gotten her aroused enough for him to work a couple of his thick fingers deep into her vagina, he would describe the pleasure she would experience by taking just the head of his cock in her beautiful pussy. He would promise that he would lie on his back and allow her to be entirely in control. This step often took the most time, but John was willing to lick and finger fuck a girl until she was on the edge of a powerful orgasm. Desperate women were willing to do anything to relieve their arousal. Once he had the head of his cock inside, the rest naturally followed. All of his sex partners, except for the most depraved, expressed their surprise that they had managed to take every last inch of his enormous black cock. It was the reason he preferred large, athletic women. His preference for blonds was just a matter of taste. He didn't seem to care if they were natural blonds as long as they were tall and had curvaceous figures.

#

John spent his career as a foreign correspondent hopping from one hot spot to another. He'd spent the last several months in the tunnels under Homs in northern Syria. Now he was back home in the most prominent coronavirus hot spot on the planet.

While I was examining my best friend in the lobby, I asked, "What was it like in Syria? How bad has the virus hit them?"

John shrugged. " The whole country outside of the capital has been devastated by the civil war. The government had killed hundreds of thousands of its citizens. A lot more civilians have been wounded or tortured. Millions of people have fled their homes. It's going to be hell when the virus burns through the refugee camps. There aren't any real hospitals left. It's only a matter of time, but for now, there are only a couple of cases reported in Damascus. The doctors in Homs said they hadn't seen any yet."

Once I felt my friend was safe, I gave John a warm hug and led him upstairs to the tiny deluxe studio apartment I shared with my beautiful, young wife. Before the plague overwhelmed us, we'd had plans like all newlyweds. Once I finished my residency, Cathy and I would move back to her home town of Bemidji in Northern Minnesota. There is a long-standing shortage of doctors and nurses in the heartland, and the city had offered to pay off my student loans if I took over the retiring practice of a doctor who wanted to retire. My wife would work in the local hospital while we raised a family. Cathy had come from a large family, and I welcomed her desire to have three or four children.

Before opening the door to our apartment, I explained our decontamination protocol to John. Once inside, he would stand on some clean newspapers, remove all his clothes, and carefully place them in a bag. I would turn on the shower for him, so he didn't have to touch anything. I'd had to use a scarce sanitary wipe to clean up after myself when I went through the procedure earlier. While he scrubbed himself thoroughly with a stiff brush, I would wash his clothes. Thank God for the washer and dryer. They were the reason we paid an extra fifty dollars a month for the 'deluxe' studio.

The landlords had advertised the one-room one bath efficiency apartment as being 400 square feet. The university's married housing had a long waiting list, so the tiny apartment was supposed to be our temporary home until I finished my residency. With most of our possessions from college in boxes stacked to the ceiling against the walls, the amount of usable space was considerably less.

The main room served as a living room, kitchen, dining room, and bedroom. The bathroom had a small shower to the left, a sink and mirrored medicine cabinet straight ahead, and a toilet to the right. Two people could fit inside the tiny bathroom only if one of them were taking a shower. Luckily, we didn't usually have guests thanks to the quarantine, because the bathroom door had been removed for repairs. Sam, the maintenance man, had taken the door down to his workshop in the basement shortly before WHO declared Covid-19 was a pandemic. We hadn't seen Sam or the door since. Unfortunately, he kept his shop locked. Cathy and I had gotten used to the lack of privacy while using the bathroom.

While John was in the shower, I meticulously cleaned the thoughtful presents he had brought with sanitary wipes. I hadn't had beer or wine in weeks. My amazing former roommate had brought a half case of cold Brooklyn Lager and two chilled bottles of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

Once he got out of the shower, we popped a beer and sat on the couch to start the interview. I'm a bit of a technology nerd and got distracted when John pulled out a new iPhone to record our conversation.

"Wow! That is one big phone."

"My old phone got trashed in Syria. My editor liked my work so much that he gave me a top of the line iPhone 11 Pro Max."

"We all loved your reporting from Syria and Myanmar. I heard you earned the Pulitzer for your piece on the genocide against the Rohingya."

While we were chatting about the iPhone, my friend attached a small tripod and a massive battery pack. He touched the screen a couple of times and set it on the coffee table.

I looked around the cluttered room and said, "You aren't going to shoot video, are you?"

John knew I was a neat freak from our college days as roommates.

"Nah, but it does shoot amazing video even in low light. The ultra angle lens is great for close-ups. They even gave me the model with a half-terabyte of memory. With an external battery pack, I can shoot video for hours. The camera even has a mode where it takes photos or video when it detects motion. Man, I wish I had it when I was working in those dingy tunnels in Syria."

John was a professional. Without realizing it, he had helped me relax with a beer and gotten me comfortable talking about camera trivia. Once he had me at ease, he began interviewing me about my experiences working in a coronavirus ward.

By the time my wife got home from her shift, I had just started my third beer. I promised myself it would be my last. I had to get up at 4 AM to make my shift at Jamaica Hospital. I was dreading tomorrow. One of the anesthesiologists was going to teach me how to intubate patients. Some doctors said connecting a coronavirus patient up to a ventilator is like working on an unshielded nuclear reactor. One wrong move and the person you were trying to save would regurgitate virus-laden fluids everywhere. Under the best conditions, anesthesiologists found it challenging to avoid becoming contaminated. Since we didn't have enough personal protective equipment, the odds were never in our favor.

#

"But it was better to be paranoid, I thought than dead."

- Felix Francis in "Triple Crown," 2016

With health care workers dropping like flies, my wife's anger was understandable. She was more restrained than I deserved, considering the long stressful hours we were both working taking care of highly infectious patients.

Cathy wasn't finished lecturing me. She caught sight of the empty beer bottles on the coffee table. John was still nursing his second. He leaned forward to stop his voice recording app. When he sat back, his iPhone was haphazardly pointing at the kitchen.

"Paul, I can't believe you. You're risking our lives for a couple of lousy beers."

I kept my mouth closed. I knew I'd fucked up. I considered protesting that John was risking his life for an interview that would help quarantined citizens understand that the healthcare system they depended on was broken and badly in need of help. I could have said the risk he posed to us was insignificant compared to our working around coronavirus patients all day. I certainly wasn't dumb enough to argue with her wildly inaccurate statement that Brooklyn Lager was a lousy beer.

Before I could reply, Cathy crossed her arms over her generous breasts and glared at John and me. "Ok, doctor, maybe you can tell me just how I'm supposed to follow our decontamination procedure in front of your best friend."

Perhaps, our process was excessive, but we were both health care workers, and we had seen young, healthy colleagues die a painful, lingering death from coronavirus. In addition to pneumonia, people were dying from blood clots that induced strokes and cytokine storms from an over-reactive immune system that attacked the patient's organs. There were no effective therapies, and a vaccine was over a year away.

I had to suppress a laugh. The idea of my innocent young wife stripping naked in front of my half-naked friend was unimaginable. She was one of those rare Christian women who live up to their pledge to save themselves for marriage despite a lot of guy's best efforts, including mine. In college, my black roommate had gone through women like an allergy patient goes through tissues. He had a strong preference for tall, athletic, curvaceous blond women like my wife. He commented that he was afraid of breaking one of those skinny want-a-be models if he squeezed them too hard.

My tastes were similar, except I preferred tall, athletic women with brains. John didn't care about what lay between a women's ears because he didn't plan on staying around long enough for it to matter. Since I was lazy and an opportunistic hunter, most of my dates in college were his castoffs. The few times I found a woman on my own, John respected me enough to leave them alone. As a result, I trusted my ex-roommate completely around my wife.

There was no way Cathy or I would ever violate our strict cleaning protocol. Even though we changed clothes after our shifts, we had come from a hospital rife with infection. Also, we had ridden home on public transportation that the city workers sanitized only once a day if we believed the mayor.

I immediately understood my wife's problem. She'd been raised in a conservative Christian family in Minnesota and had a hard enough time adjusting to changing for gym class in high school. She was still uncomfortable stripping to her underwear in front of other women in the hospital locker room. Getting naked in front of a big, black, handsome stranger just wasn't going to happen anytime before the Second Coming.