Browsing Tag

escapism

A Package For Escape

Posted on March 29, 2021

Written by Marie Petrarch

At the slightest twitch the seat of Eleanor’s desk chair wobbles and leans left. God damn it. She shifts her body, determined to reclaim the sweet spot in the center she found minutes before. The chair creaks loudly, protesting her weight, as she moves from left to right and front to back. Frustration builds with each gyration. She moves faster and faster in a spastic chair dance until suddenly, she admits defeat. Her chair leans left, her arms hang limp at her sides and her head is tilted back. She stares at the water stain on her ceiling. It’s shaped like the state of Texas and she envisions where Houston would be.

This sucks. Eleanor has been working from home for a month now. Her chair has been broken for a year, but it never mattered since she spent so little time in it. It seemed like an unnecessary expense to replace it. That was before. Now she spends hours of every day in that god forsaken chair, and it’s one of the many things scratching at her sanity. As is her too small apartment, her loud and amorous neighbors, and her lack of real human interaction.

Her cell phone chimes with a reminder that she has a virtual meeting in five minutes. Before, when people were able to congregate in conference rooms and sit within inches of each other, she thought of meetings as a major impediment to a productive day. But now, meetings are the feature of her days. She looks forward to seeing the familiar faces and hearing their voices, even those of her coworkers she doesn’t like.

She stands up to stretch and refill her water glass before having to settle in for the meeting. Her outfit is the clothing equivalent of the mullet. Business on the top and a [slumber] party down below. On the short walk to the kitchen she passes the large, thin, rectangular box that was delivered three days ago. Before, she would have ripped it right open the moment it came, but now you’re supposed to leave packages untouched for a few days in case it’s been contaminated with the novel virus that’s shut down the world. I’ll open it tomorrow, she decides. Tomorrow is Saturday. It will give me something to do for five minutes.

Saturday morning Eleanor sleeps in and then lingers in bed. There’s no good reason not to. Netflix will be there no matter what time she gets up. She stares out the window next to her bed. The light coming through is dim and grey. Rain drops cover the glass beyond the sheer curtains. The only sounds are the occasional footsteps from above. Eleanor ponders how she’ll spend her time today. I should exercise. Maybe yoga. Then I should clean. If it stops raining, I’ll put on my mask, and go for a walk.

Before, she would have gone to the gym then shopping, and met up with friends for dinner and drinks. Maybe they would have gone to a club and danced the night away. Maybe she would have met someone and not gone home alone. But that was before, and now she is very much alone. A point hammered home by the thumping of the wall that starts just behind her head.

“Aaarrgghhh!” Feeling aggravated and jealous, Eleanor gets out of bed and shuffles towards the bathroom. Loud moans join the thumps just as she sits on the toilet. She pops back up and closes the door, but it’s not enough. Eleanor’s apartment is filled with an erotic techno beat overlayed with soprano chanting of the Lord’s name.

On her way to the kitchen, Eleanor spots the quarantined package and changes course to her desk for a scissor. After slicing open the tape, she sprays disinfectant all over the box and scissor and then washes her hands. Pulling back the now damp cardboard flaps of the box she reaches inside and pulls out the bubble-wrapped contents before spraying the bubble wrap with disinfectant. She decides to let that dry for a few minutes while she washes her hands again and puts on the kettle for tea. Meanwhile, the beat of the lover’s song has slowed to it’s sultry, breathy, still loud, bridge.

Sipping her tea, Eleanor sits on the floor. She sets her tea aside and carefully unwinds the bubble-wrap to reveal a framed print of Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights”. A card is attached.

Dear Eleanor,

Remember when we saw this painting in Madrid last summer? How mesmerized we were? I thought it would add some color to your life during this dull and scary time.

Love, Grandma

Eleanor laughs. Only her grandmother would think to send such a bizarre yet erotic and disturbing painting to her granddaughter.

The only wall space big enough to hang it is above her bed. The frame is ornate with a gold finish. Just her grandmother’s style. She sprays the frame with disinfectant, washes her hands, and fetches a hammer and nail from the tool set in her closet. The bridge of the background music has transitioned to the outro and it seems her neighbors are gearing up for a dramatic end. The ecstatic moans and rhythmic pounding of the wall drown out Eleanor’s knuckle tapping for a stud. Finding a good spot, she positions the nail and gently taps it in place. After two quick bangs, the nail is ready and she hangs the picture.

Standing on her unmade bed, she steps back to admire it. Despite it vibrating against the wall, she becomes fascinated, just as she was when she saw the original in Madrid. The painting is composed of three panels each with an astounding amount of detail. The colors trap you and then your brain starts to unravel the puzzle before you. The first panel of Adam, Eve, and Jesus Christ is easy enough, but it’s the middle panel that intrigues and confuses. As bizarre as the scene is, the overarching feeling is joy. I miss joy. She imagines herself a libertine in the Garden, frolicing, dancing, and fucking like the people in the painting. Like my neighbors, she thinks, whose love making has reached a crescendo.

She glances at the third panel and remembers her grandmother pointing out the “knife dick” wedged between the two ears and saying how that panel must be about the evil of using sex as a weapon. Eleanor agreed, and still does, but doesn’t want to dwell there. She looks back to the middle panel and again imagines herself in the Garden riding a mythical creature and eating strange berries or climbing a phallic tower and drinking the liquid from it’s fountain.

The neighbors must be racing towards their climax because the frame starts dancing frantically against the wall. It looks like it might jump right off it’s nail. Eleanor grabs the frame to steady it. Being so close to the art, her eyes zero in on a cluster of young women all draped in garland and watching the spree around them. Eleanor is visualizing herself amongst them when the frame starts to vibrate with an intensity beyond the neighbor’s doing. She tightens her grip, confused as to what’s causing the violent shaking. She can feel the vibrations through her hands, moving up her arms. When the protective glass of the frame morphs to a wavy puddle, Eleanor’s confusion becomes fear. Frightened, she lets go and backs away from the frame, stumbling and getting twisted in her bedding. The frame is still vibrating even though her neighbor’s have gone quiet. Eleanor stares at the picture in disbelief. The people inside the middle panel seem to be moving. Faint sounds of gleeful revelry are coming from beyond the wavy puddle. A light, shining through the frame, grows in intensity, and spills over Eleanor’s bed. It beckons her. On shaky legs, Eleanor gets up and slowly moves towards it. She raises a tentative hand to the puddle and as soon as her fingertips make contact, Eleanor is sucked through the frame. She lands on her back with a thud and is shrouded in light. She can’t see anything at first, but when her eyes adjust, she sees the girls from the painting leaning over her.

“Eleanor, we’re so happy you could join us,” says one. “Don’t be scared,” says another. All of them reach down and help her stand. The girls encircle Eleanor and she stares at them in amazement.

“Welcome to the Garden, Eleanor,” says the one who first welcomed her. “We need to get these clothes off you. No one wears clothes in the Garden.”

Eleanor can’t find the words to answer. She is in awe of what surrounds her. Looking beyond the girls she sees naked people cavorting all over the most beautiful garden imaginable. The painting doesn’t do it justice.

“Here, let us help.” Four pairs of hands reach for Eleanor’s pajamas, startling her. She steps out of reach holding up her hands in defense.

“That’s ok. I’ll…I’ll do it.” Eleanor is nervous and confused. Her body is shaking, her heart is racing, and her breaths are short. Am I dreaming or have the long weeks of isolation caused a mental break? This can’t actually be happening.

The girls wait patiently while Eleanor sorts through her thoughts. This must be a dream. She pinches herself and it feels real enough. The girls look at her expectantly. Well, when in Rome, I guess. She slowly undresses, leaving her pajamas on the ground.

“Now, that’s better,” says the one who seems to be the leader. “My name is Natasha. This is Rachel, Beth, and June.” She points to her companions who nod and smile in greeting.

“Hello,” answers Eleanor nervously. She fidgets, not knowing what to do with her arms. She folds them across her chest, and then switches to having one arm across her chest while the other protects her modesty below, and then switches back again until finally letting them fall at her sides. She is a riot of emotions – nervous, confused, shy, scared, curious.

“You need to relax,” explains Natasha. “This is a very special place. Try to enjoy it.”

“How about we go for a swim,” suggests Rachel.

“Great idea! I’ll lead the way.” Natasha grabs Eleanor’s hand and the other girls follow behind.

Eleanor doesn’t know which way to look. There is so much to take in, her senses are overwhelmed. The lush lawn feels like velvet under her feet. The air is warm and smells strongly of honeysuckle with undertones of human sweat. The colors of everything, from the birds and fruits to the strange vessels people are in and spilling out of, are so intense they have a life unto themselves. The sounds are a medley of birdsong, laughter, joy, moans, growls, sighs, and gasps. People are doing strange, random things like carrying humongous fish or standing on their heads while other people are lounging in a sated stupor.

When they reach the water’s edge the girls walk right in while Eleanor dips a single toe. A message of pleasure is sent directly to her brain. She walks in up to her waist and glides her hands through the water. It feels like caressing the finest silk. She moves in further, and when the water hits her breasts an intense jolt of pleasure moves through her body. She can feel tension leaving her every muscle until she feels she must resemble a boiled noodle. The happiest fucking noodle there ever was. She starts to laugh and so do the girls.

“See, I told you this place is special. You can be completely free here, untethered to any responsibility, and free of judgement. Just embrace it and enjoy.” With that Natasha swims away, and the other girls follow.

Eleanor stays where she is, closes her eyes, and floats on her back. This is amazing. Every time the water washes over her nipples she gets another shock of pleasure.

“Hello.” Her eyes fly open at the sound of a male voice so close to her ear. She stands up, and looks into the face of a beautiful man. “I’m Jared. What’s your name?”

“Eleanor,” she answers shyly.

”It’s nice to meet you, Eleanor. Welcome to the Garden.”

“Thank you.”

“Can I interest you in a berry?”

Common sense tells her no, that she shouldn’t accept a strange fruit from a strange, naked man, but common sense seems out of place in the Garden. If I’ve lost my mind, I might as well enjoy it.

“Sure, why not?”

He holds out a large, purple berry. It’s bumpy like a blackberry, but a hundred times bigger. She takes a small bite and her mouth fills with it’s luscious flavor. “Hmmmm, that’s delicious.”

“Have some more.” She takes a larger bite, and chews while smiling at Jared. The more she chews, the more his beauty grows. These berries must be some kind of aphrodisiac.

Jared releases the berry to the water. “Can I kiss you, Eleanor?”

Without hesitation she answers, “Yes, please.” She surprises herself with her reply, but doesn’t stop Jared when he gently takes her face in his hands, and joins his lips to hers. He tastes like the berry, and she reaches her arms around him pulling him closer. Her hands explore his back and pull his hair, both slick from the magical waters. He wraps an arm around her waist and fondles her breast. Their kiss grows more passionate and their hands more curious. Pleasure is all there is until a giant bubble carrying lovers and floating on the water bumps into Eleanor. She’s knocked off balance and falls beneath the surface. She’s immediately sucked down deeper, but before she can panic, she lands on her back with a bounce on her tousled bed.

Naked, dripping wet, and breathing rapidly, she pushes up on her hands and looks around her tiny apartment. Bubble wrap and the cardboard box litter the floor next to her teacup and disinfectant spray. Sun shines through her sheer curtains, and the raindrops on her window have dried. She looks down at her glistening skin dampening the sheets. Loud, joyful laughter starts deep in her belly and fills the air. She looks behind her at the “Garden of Earthly Delights” hanging slightly askew, but still, almost coy. She collapses flat on her bed laughing, reminding herself to call and thank her grandmother.

Marie Petrarch is an emerging writer from Long Island, NY. She gave up a career in fashion to stay home with her three kids, and started writing to preserve her intelligence and mental health. She is currently writing her first novel.

2020 Article Contributing Writers Pandemic

A Love Island-Based Quarantine

Posted on August 15, 2020

Written by Maeve Barry

I’ve spent quarantine in my childhood bedroom, surrounded by dolls and dog hair and relics of my twelve-year-old self that now smell like mildew; only disrupted by the addition of a heavy-duty vibrator and a pack of cigarettes hidden in my desk drawer. Conversely: I have spent my quarantine in a self-proclaimed ‘luxury villa’ that is certainly large, yet filled with obscenely tacky signage, hot pink throw pillows, and highly unflattering, neon lighting.

My luxury villa is in Spain. It is supposedly proximal to a glamorous beach, but we only ever swim in the pool. We spend the majority of our time in a makeup room, crowding around personalized vanities, gluing on our drooping lashes. Any conversation of consequence is held in an unmarked and dreary hallway that no one has bothered to decorate. It is only a staging area.

During the Coronavirus Pandemic, I’ve been watching a truly abhorrent amount of Love Island UK. I left Brooklyn in March to quarantine with my mom in the house that I haven’t lived in since I was twelve. I’ve now been here nearly four and a half months. Four and a half months, during which I’ve spent roughly 271 hours in a luxury villa, or eleven(ish) entire days. I gained access to my villa through a friend’s Hulu Student account. I found my villa after taking an edible, feeling hopeless and terrified and like I (and the world around me) was spiraling out of control. I wanted something that would make me feel nothing. And so I found myself saying ‘litchrally’ and ‘baantor’ and ‘mugged off’ for four and a half months, surrounded by men whose veins contain not blood but Creatine and women with gravity-defying tits. I found myself on Love Island.

Each episode of Love Island UK follows a distinct and predictable rhythm. An episode never leaves me anxious, but ends with enough suspense that I continue to click ‘Next Episode’ without hesitation, without ever waiting out the credits. Like chain-smoking. The narrator makes the same jokes every night. He is barely funny but makes me smile. He mocks the contestants just enough so I don’t feel crazy; I am not alone in the madness.

The premise of the series is that it barely has one. ‘Hot’ ‘Singles’ live in a house together and hook up and accuse one another of “playing a game” which is literally (litchrally) what they’re all required to do. They are dumped and recoupled and all want to stay in the villa for as long as possible. Because the longer they stay in the villa, the greater their chance of being involved in an Instagram pyramid scheme after leaving, or of winning 50,000 euros.

Here is the beauty of Love Island UK: I am not even remotely interested in participating in the world it presents. In fact, I am thrilled to be far away from a villa with migraine-inducing lighting, filled with enormous and terrifying men who seem mere seconds away from punching a hole through any available walls. The Islanders are constantly sunburned, consistently in conflict, almost always yelling. They are surrounded by people and exchanging fluid and I am not even remotely jealous. I am, for a change, thrilled to be shut away in my room and removed from these shockingly toned, relentlessly confrontational individuals.

When I began my Love Island journey, I found the contestants to be refreshing. They are unconcerned with pretense or with appearing mysterious and restrained. They are loud and bold and unabashedly proud of their bodies. They appear to have healthy levels of serotonin and don’t feel that they must be missing something in order to feel happy. Thus, I am not tasked with ever having to watch or reflect upon myself. I hate my body and consistently worry about seeming stupid. I think about the bars at which I stood uncomfortably in Bushwick, prior to Covid, surrounded by very mean boys wearing very small hats. All they want is to seem like they don’t notice people and to smoke cigarettes very quietly.

On Love Island, all anyone wants is to be noticed. In the first seasons, before it was clear the show would become an enormous commercial success, before anyone was concerned with Instagram deals or regulations or privacy, contestants chain smoked and drank and sobbed and fucked constantly. They were entirely unconcerned with ‘holding back.’ They bought each other tacky and earnest anklets before tearing them off and hurling them into the pool.

This suited me well at the beginning of quarantine. I smoked and cried most of the time. I could hardly make it through the day without an edible. No matter how terribly I was behaving by my parent’s standards (which I was now required to live by), someone on Love Island was behaving even worse. I was a voyeur of their misery, but they also never seemed to feel that miserable. They bounce back quickly because that is simply the arc of an episode. I attempted to follow suit.

During those first few seasons, everyone had sex on camera. I felt like the man in Rear Window as I watched synchronized, thrusting sheets filmed on a grainy, infrared camera. The beauty of these sex scenes is, to me at least, that they aren’t even a little bit erotic. The sex is almost always hurried and missionary; sans meaningful glances, mood music, a lingering hand. It is the kind of sex I’m glad to no longer have the option of participating in.

This stood in stark contrast to shows like Normal People, which I also watched during quarantine, which made me absolutely miserable. In Normal People, the sex was well lit and romantic. It was motivated by feeling and intimacy and complexity. It reinforced every feeling I was attempting to turn off. I unblocked the phone number of an abusive ex for the first time in six months after watching a single episode of Normal People, months of progress spiraling down the drain. I saw my depression and trauma and past relationships and the kindness that I wanted and never received, and during a pandemic could not receive, blaring through my laptop into my lonely childhood bedroom. I clicked out and went back to my island.

A personal trainer recited a five-line, rhyming poem about dating and pie. Everyone cheered and called him a genius. I was okay again. I have never once unblocked an ex’s phone number watching Love Island.

As the show gained widespread public attention, its budget increased and the series became more polished. It lost the chain-smoking and the drinking and most of the fucking. But by this point of quarantine, so I had I. I had found a way to be palatable. I accomplished this by becoming numb. Love Island’s repressing and regulating coincided with my own quarantine transition, one marked by the collective realization that this would last, that our profit-hungry society required that we be ‘productive’ while people died and hurt and were gone without recognition or eulogization. I upped my dosage of Prozac and put on pants in the morning. I re-entered a routine of making phone calls and waiting.

And Love Island was waiting and it stuck to its routine and rhythm and ritual. What I could count on Love Island for was ensuring that I never need feel ‘too much.’

I began quarantine attempting to watch movies with subtitles and the movies that won awards that I pretended to have seen when talking to a condescending former film major in Greenpoint. I’ve always been inclined to rewatch movies and TV shows, to the extent that I have most of my regular rotation memorized verbatim. I always say this is so I need not worry whether they are good. More truthfully, this practice allows me to ensure that a film or show won’t force me to sit and watch my own depression or loss or trauma. If I’ve already seen something, I never run the risk of mistakenly watching an episode that includes sexual abuse and me consequentially spiraling for the entire, following week.

I read on Twitter that re-watching movies/television at this obsessive amount is a symptom of anxiety, which makes sense. It also mirrors my cyclical and obsessive thought patterns that are a result of my persistent OCD. My thoughts cycle to avoid triggers. Cycling through TV/films serves the same purpose. During Covid, however, even my usual cycles of sitcoms felt risky. I’d remember someone terrible who I watched them with or I’d think about an episode I watched while getting ready for what turned into to be a terrifying or glorious night out. My mind wasn’t safe, and neither was most television. The only thing that felt consistently safe was Love Island.

Contestants weren’t furious with themselves for not writing or applying to graduate school or calling their friends back or being in love. They were satisfied doing exactly as they were. I watched parents come to the villa towards the end of each season and cry and tell their children how proud they were of them for chain-smoking and screaming and throwing lawn furniture into pools. I found this to be incredibly reassuring.

During every episode of Love Island, contestant’s very best friends and the potential loves of their lives are kicked off of the Island. Everyone is initially very sad, and then they bounce a scene later. They aren’t allowed the time to repress or to bury or avoid. They are sent into their confessional for a tearful interview, to identify their feelings, to leave them there and behind.

We are living in, and over the past months recognized that we have been living in, a system that not only accepts but necessitates that human lives are disposable and expendable. Contestants on Love Island (of course to a less violent or dangerous degree) reflected this practice of disposing of humans and abandoning empathy in order to function within a game, status quo, or system onto our television’s and computers for the past four months/ten years.

There is a fine line between healthy escapism and numbing ourselves into complacency. The fact of the matter is, there is nothing ‘natural’ or ‘healthy’ about cycling through people like expired cartons of milk or a face cream that ‘just isn’t the right fit.’

Although Love Island is reality television and is obviously not intended to serve as a blueprint for healthy human existence, the reality is that its contestants are people. And I finish each season, I find their Instagrams and learn that Islanders are no longer ‘madly in love’ and that their relationship lasted two months following filming in the most successful of cases. I’ve watched these contestants eat and sleep and fuck and cry for roughly forty-five hours. I forget about them just as quickly as I found them, in the amount of time required to backspace an Instagram handle in a search bar.

Love Island UK began in 2015, but somehow those early seasons feel like they belong to an entirely distant and distinct decade’s past. Season six caught up with me and I was in 2020 on my island and I realized that the host, Caroline Flack, who I love because she always sided with the women Islanders who men called crazy, had killed herself. I then did some Googling and learned that she was the third Love Island cast member to kill themselves this year. Even Love Island was not immune to the loss and the reckoning associated with a year that continues to remind us that there is nothing healthy or safe about our ‘normal’ modes of existence.

After learning of the suicide rates among Love Island contestants, it became more difficult, required more of a conscious effort, to lose myself into Love Island, and to briefly feel okay. Watching the living, former contestants travel to Ibiza and frequent night clubs and dine in restaurants on their Instagrams was no longer silly or charming, but actively violent during a global pandemic that requires distance and staying put.

Watching ‘haul’ videos in which pretty people unload their boxes of luxury dog treats became less comical when placed in proximity to infographics regarding the countless Black people murdered every day by police and people forced to choose between housing and food and healthcare, if afforded the choice at all. And of course this had already been our reality. The contrast was simply highlighted when the collective consciousness of our media made a miniscule, yet notable, step towards reflecting it.

None of this is to say that I have stopped watching Love Island.

I currently fall asleep each night to women complaining about ‘blokes’ or to the slurping noises of ‘pashing.’ We are still in a pandemic and I still have anxiety and therefore return to my predictable island that always opens with a recap of the last episode and then a shutter- speed-close up of a distraught Islander’s face and then a still image of a consistently full moon. Love Island continues to serve its purpose of structure and release and escape, and also remains really fucking good TV. I am reminded, simply, that it should not and cannot act as an end-all escape or solution. Nothing can; whatever it is we’re avoiding will eventually come creeping back up and into our screens, like weeds, until we uproot them.

Maeve Barry (she/her) is a writer and artist who moved from Los Angeles to Brooklyn last year. She teaches creative writing and painting to kids during the day and hangs out with her dogs most afternoons. You can find her on Instagram @maeveharkinscowboyatgmail.com or Twitter @maevethecowboy!