Welcome to The Sexy Times, where I, Pitt News staff writer Genna Edwards, write weekly on all things sex, love and relationships — with a heavy dose of humor and a splash of queer feminism. Feel free to email your sex life woes — or any woes, honestly — to me at gee9@pitt.edu. I may be able to help you out.
When searching for literature of the sensual kind, it can be difficult to find pieces that really speak to you. Sometimes you can’t relate to the main character at all, and that’s just no good — you want to be invested, swept off your feet. During our current historical pandemic, feeling connected to fictional damsels is harder than ever — they’re not worried about their canned bean supply, they can meet up with their friends, they may even exist in a country where health care is a human right! How are you supposed to relate to this?
Do you find it harder to get, and stay, hot and bothered during a worldwide pandemic akin to the Spanish flu? If the coronavirus is impeding your ability to get in the mood, you’re not alone. It can be difficult to stop stressing about the virus to step into a world so different from this one — but maybe, if the literature were more current, it would be easier to imagine yourself about to kiss a handsome lad.
Read on for some sexy COVID-19 scenarios that’ll get your brain all excited and ready to go.
- Your boyfriend comes home from work and, upon seeing you watching “The Bachelor” on the couch, doesn’t make fun of you watching “The Bachelor” on the couch. He makes you fettucini alfredo. He says, setting a glass of wine in front of you, “You hear about the COVID-19 virus? It was all a joke by the Soviet government. Ha! Can you believe that? Wanna bone?”
- Imagine a world where Donald Trump has a better haircut. You turn on the TV every day and instead of seeing his pitiful mop, best compared to a hairy stalk of corn in the wind, you see the work of a master stylist. Maybe Trump’s rocking some kind of shave, or looks real good in a rainbow mohawk — whatever it is, your eyes don’t have to suffer through his egregious lack of taste any longer. This way you can focus more on what he’s saying — he’s doing the best job, he just destroyed the virus last night with his bare fists — and less on his need for a comb.
- You call your grandma and she doesn’t ask if you’ve “found a life partner yet.” She’s stopped going to her weekly yoga class and instead stretches with the squirrels in her backyard. She and your grandpa are healthy and order groceries online.
- Every member of the GOP, all dressed “Magic Mike”-style, comes to your front doorstep. They do a fun little dance around a pole that magically appeared in your front yard and tell you that they’re done trying to restrict abortions during this global virus outbreak.
- Your clock reads 11:13 p.m. A 20-something dude on Tinder messages you to ask how you’re coping during the quarantine. After a lively conversation in which no unsolicited penis pictures are sent and you talk about your childhoods, he wishes you a good night and offers to buy you a coffee when this is all over. His name is Simon and he loves his mother.
- Your favorite pizza place delivers a large plus breadsticks for $10. When the pizza man arrives, you notice he’s Idris Elba. He’s shirtless and covered in oil. He has a lighting crew behind him — they fix his backlight and now, when you look at him, all you can see is abs and Jesus. He hands you your pizza, wearing protective gloves, and tells you he adores your Muppet pajama pants.
- You’re a widow tending to your farm in the Swedish countryside. After a long, hard day of plowing the fields alongside your five sons, your husband’s ghost appears by your bedside to tell you about an underground bunker full of toilet paper he made years ago. At the time he didn’t know what inclined him to make it, but now he knows he was a prophet. You share a fleeting kiss before he disappears into the ether.
- The government sends you a check every month for far more than $1,000 — in what kind of world does that even cover rent for you, you young hot New Yorker — but this month, there’s a note attached. The FBI agent that has been watching you through your computer has a crush on you. He proposes that you run away to Amsterdam with him and open a coffeeshop. He knows you’ve never seen his face, but he promises you he’s attractive by conventional Western standards of beauty. He also makes mean waffles.
- In an alternate universe, the COVID-19 virus was an elaborate simulation to cover up the re-emergence of dinosaurs in Wuhan, China. You are sent with Chris Pratt to defeat the novel T-Rex — he falls in love with your lack of character development and unsensible heels and you make sweet, sweet love on a beach. (Does Wuhan have beaches? I know nothing.)
- The pandemic has ended. You put on your favorite outfit and go to your best friend’s house — she’s having a party. Everyone hugs and talks about how much they missed each other. No one wears a mask. You completely ignore the Tinder match you came here with, because nothing is sexier than having friends, and also he’s a little creepier than he seemed online. Who cares — you have an unlimited supply of Tinder men to see now! The world is good.