See you in my dreams. Screw the You! It’s me I need to see. It’s only during those nightly travels I recognize myself; knowing it’s actually me that’s alive and having a sound mind. All right, maybe not so much of a sound mind. Realistically, I never have a sound mind; always lost, missing a bus, getting on the wrong subway, anxiously looking for my office that no longer belongs to me because I’ve been fired. Then, the dreams I’m buck naked, running across the street in a freaking blizzard; terrified I’m going to catch hell because I haven’t called my wife to tell her I’d be late. Forget the fact I’ve been divorced thirty years, those are the best dreams because, damn my eyes, I know for sure I am Bernard Max.

It wasn’t always so. It was COVID-19; it was the Coronavirus that stole my identity and made me unrecognizable to myself. Then again, maybe not, you be the judge.

It all began innocently enough when Gerry, a childhood friend, bragged about a website that had already provided him with a bonanza of raunchy hookups.

“I don’t understand? Aren’t you—these women—listening to the mayor, to Governor Cuomo’s daily Coronavirus Briefings?

I didn’t want to come off as a FraidyCatPussyWussySnowFlakeRentBoy, one of the several unflattering monikers Gerry hurled at me when he thought my anxieties got the best of me, and put us at odds with each other, but I couldn’t stop myself.>

“I think the news is pretty scary. The warnings are clear. We should shelter in place and only go out for the essentials.”

“Sex isn’t essential? You tellin’ me you don’t need it, want it and have to have it. Shit—women want it even more.”

“They write that online? For a good time call 1-800-fuck me?”

“No Bern, I know you miss it, but we’re not talking about the bathroom stalls at the Port Authority.”

He broke out into hysterics.

Since childhood, Gerry always thought the best person to entertain Gerry, was Gerry.

“So, what are you saying?”

I needed him to be more specific if I was going to risk catching COVID-19, and at my age, end up in the hospital and on a fuckin’ ventilator if they even had any.

“I’m sayin’, you have to know what sites to look for.”

He paused for dramatic effect.

Yep, Gerry was also big on timing.

“Code words, Bern! It’s all about the code words.”

I told him he was full of it.

He named the closed businesses on First Avenue where he’d gotten BJ’s and given head.

“Gerry…?”

“Come on Bern, aren’t you hands beggin’ to stop the abuse? Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I already got the makins’ of the carpel tunnel.”

“Gerry—Gerry!”

Of course, the truth hurts, but sometimes, okay most of the time, it’s better left unsaid.

“Bern, I needed a real woo-man. Tell me, what were my options? Play it safe—stick to my condo? Not when half have left the city; the rest—either already hit on ‘em and struck out or they don’t like dick.”

I put the phone on speaker, laid it down on the coffee table and nodded. He had a point.

“So what’s fuckin’ left? Go out? Where—bars? Closed tighter than a crab’s ass. Curbside at liquor stores with all dem other alky-haul-ics? Whole Check Foods? Take off your mask for a sec and the broads freak— shove freakin’ avocados down your freakin’ throat—screamin’ you’re tryin’ to infect’em with da virus.”

Obviously, he had war-gamed it and played out all the scenarios. I had nothing to say.