personal essay: jon ozias
On March 11, 2020, The World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a global pandemic.
Recollections:
“Last dance!” That was what we said on our way to a small club down the street from us in Hollywood a year ago today. “Last Dance!” It was an honorific we’d given the night without really having any idea of everything the declaration portended; without fully realizing how prescient it was. Earlier in the evening, walking to Black Market Yoga, a ‘breaking news' banner flashed on my phone. Tom Hanks had just announced that he and has wife had tested positive for COVID-19. As uninformed and absurd as it seems now, this was the moment the virus stopped being something happening somewhere else. America’s Dad had been infected and, on that fact alone, the threat was no longer hyperbole. Before class, talk of the news was buzzing all around. But it had more of a, “This is crazy”, quality to it than any real dread. The panic that would quickly metastasize into hoarding was still a day or two off. By the time I left class that evening, other announcements had come through. The government was shutting down flights from Europe. The NBA was suspending its season. Back at home, Lauren, Jenny, Magda and I tried to understand what it all meant. Los Angeles county announced it was prohibiting gatherings of more than 250 people; a threshold that was certainly high enough to accommodate the club Magda was playing later. It was a Wednesday after all. But what about the other party she was set to play on Saturday? What was going to happen? I retrieved the door-clicker I still had from my own days of throwing parties and humorously volunteered to make sure the threshold was upheld, with an ad lib impersonation of a door person. “248… 249… 250… and scene!” I brought my hands down pantomiming a gate crashing shut. We all laughed. But it was a nervous kind of laughter. “Last dance!”, we said and started off for the club. There’s a strange and uneasy energy that’s made when apprehension and denialism vie for dominance and, in the few blocks we walked, that energy felt like it was rising all around us; like water slowly filling a car that had careened off the road and into a river. Jenny talked about flying to Hong Kong. She wanted to get to where her parents were while she was still able to book a flight out. I nodded along to what she was saying, but I silently wondered if she was overreacting. “We still don’t know anything yet.”, I told myself. And of course I did. For better or worse, in the story of the ant and the grasshopper, I’m perennially siding with the grasshopper. By Friday evening, Jenny would be in a car on her way to LAX. By July, most other countries in the world would be refusing Americans entry. Refusing Americans entry… in our collective national hubris, I wonder if we ever allowed for a reality where those words would occupy the same sentence. At the club, Magda settled into her set while Lauren and I headed for the dance floor. I suddenly found myself hyper aware of personal space in a way I never had before. It’d been thirty years since I’d used a fake ID to go to my first club. The environment was a second home to me. I’ve lived for the revelry of nights in packed sweatboxes. There was ample room that night. But, still, people couldn’t stay far enough away for my comfort. I moved to the side, away from the dance floor. It was the beginning of a feeling that would grow in the weeks ahead; the feeling that every strange face could be an unknowing murderer. Sadly, it would be the exemption of familiar faces that would end up creating the largest outbreaks in the year ahead. Later, as the club emptied out onto a side street at 2am, Lauren and I watched a group of early twenty-somethings try to figure out where to go next. Lauren said she felt sorry for them; to have such important and influential years upended by something like whatever was coming. I saw myself at that age; the long nights shoulder to shoulder in a pitch-black room, glimpsed only in fragments with the flash of a strobe, while music pummeled all thoughts save those of the moment out of our conscious minds. I saw myself crammed next to twelve other sleeping bodies on the floor of a tiny one-bedroom apartment in New York while we produced a play. I tried to imagine these moments gone. I couldn’t. “It’s ok.”, I assured Lauren. “They’re just trying to get ahead of it. If everyone does what they need to now, it’ll all work out. It’ll seem a little weird for a few weeks; maybe even a couple months. But things’ll get back to normal before the summer. You’ll see. Don’t worry.” And with that, we said goodnight to Jenny and Magda and made the short walk home.
about the writer: jon ozias
I am an actor, a writer, and a producer. Once upon a time, I was a nightlife provocateur of some note. I’m an artist. That last one is hard. It took me awhile to be able to use the word. There’s an inner Holden Caulfield who feels phony just saying it, to the point of cringing a little every time.
Although not yet live, you’ll be able to learn more about jon here.
