Now playing: “Dance Yrself Clean” by LCD Soundsystem

Hello from New York City, where the summer of this lifetime continues with more outdoor World Cup watch parties than I can count. This is my 22nd consecutive weekly edition of this newsletter.

As I said last time, "We give time meaning as our bodies age, anniversaries serve as reminders, homes and locations change, bonds improve or decay, and opinions evolve." So once I realized we were nearly upon the halfway mark of the year, I started to look at what 2026 had been so far.

It's time to talk about how I went mask off.

We all know how 2020's first months of the COVID-19 pandemic months went. How masks were once ... well, I can't say popular, but at one moment years ago many more people (at least in New York City) were wearing them than are now. I, for reasons related to my privileges that allowed me to work from home rampantly and my desire to make sure I didn't play a part in getting someone close to me sick, decided to just mask as much as possible. Coffee shops, supermarkets, movie theaters, elevators, the office, public transit, and many other places.

2021 taught us how COVID-19 could be dangerous to those with pre-existing comorbidities¹. I would realize that my local Trans community masks because of their increased Long Covid risks. Unmasking in crowded indoors and public settings just feels like the right moral choice. Note I said “feels,” because it still does. Hell, I still feel guilty when I see someone masked when I'm not. I can think of at least five people off the top of my head who stay vigilant, and I have accepted that I’ve let them down.

Just so we’re clear, I’m not looking for (or expect) absolution. I just felt like this was something interesting enough for a newsletter.

Still in 2021, I was mostly masked in Las Vegas during my first vacation since the pandemic began. There, my friend I was traveling with (who was also masking) got it, and it took me a while to confirm I did not. And that led me to suspect I had it and sneak around the hotel like I was in a video game. 

Back home, for the years that followed, masking was my normal, and it stayed that way for long after it was for others. I saw it as a part of a social contract. So, even in the summer of 2024, in the UK, the first place I went to that was truly 99% done with masking, I stuck to my guns.

I was also staying masked because of when I got COVID for the first time, which I hilariously could not remember the date of until I searched "Paxlovid" in my phone. It was May 2022. I got it at a standup comedy show², and that led to an odd hospitalization that lasted more hours than I care to remember.

Fortunately, the second time I got COVID (March 2025, shortly after I wrote about the 5th anniversary of the disease here and weeks after I posted mask on grid) I was far more ready for it, had a lighter reaction to it, and it just was something I waited out. I was kinda sure I got it at a Bushwick dive bar, and I felt weird about it. The trauma of the initial infection may have been healing, though.

Three short months later, I saw my body ready to take a risk. On my last night in Mexico City, during a trip I was relatively safe and masked when indoors, I was running out of fun ideas, and the only cool bar I was hyped about that I could get a seat at was a hidden speakeasy named Hanky Panky. Of all of my photos, I think this is the best at indicating how packed it felt.

And it was amazing. I made friends at the bar, who came and went as most do. I enjoyed my time with the bartender enough to leave a glowing review with his name in there on Yelp or whatever platform he suggested. The drinks and food were divine. I actually felt relaxed. This would not have happened a couple of years prior. And I thought about that on my way back to my Airbnb. I knew I was changing. But I still masked on the flight home and the office and most other indoor places for the rest of that summer and beyond. 

Fast forward to a social event earlier this year I wanted to attend, even though I was realizing it didn’t make sense for me to mask there. What I didn't realize was how it was going to be an elbows-to-elbows-level crowded room. As much as I wasn't a fan of these terms, I was there and I wasn't running from it. I even had a good time. 

And, then, I noticed when five days passed without any signs of infection. That was the window that I used to think symptoms popped up in, or as I would put it "how fast it takes this thing to hit." Now, we're told it could be between two and 14 days.

That next week, I found myself out for dinner, and a hilarious run-in with a friend I haven't seen in a few birthdays set me in a good mood. But while I expected to be walking to and from the restaurant, back to my place that night, that wasn't how it went. And before I knew it, I was on a train without a mask for the first time since the morning of March 20th³, I was trying to travel light. I didn't even think to pack a "just in case" mask. And I took a train home that same night, feeling eerily naked in a slight way.

Again, time passed, no infection. 

Soon, I realized how my favorite mask was too much to wear when I was running 4.8 mph on the treadmill, so I stopped masking at the gym. This was one of the last places I still got heinous reactions to masking, and it was always from the same boomer. Ever since I unmasked, though, I felt more like a member of the community there. I’ve got a few people I always exchange pleasantries with.

Later, I found myself in movie theaters, both lightly attended and crowded, without a mask. I notice when a particularly cough-heavy patron at a theater is there, and if I have a mask in whatever bag I'm carrying I might put it on. I even attended a wrestling show (an action that's more of an anomaly than anything else) without wearing a mask. 

Again, when I see a masked person in a space where I used to be masked, a jolt of guilt runs through me. I abandoned the cause.

I’ve quietly realized something obvious: there was never a meeting where I signed up for this. Nobody really expects masking from anyone. I most certainly did not.

Of all the differences that have happened this year, the biggest and most obvious is "I began feeling less nervous being unmasked." I can't claim my newfound focus on my physical fitness and health makes me any more protected against a bad infection — that's not how this works. But something's changed in me about how I feel or fear it. I know that to some extent I'm spitting in the wind. I know of someone who got Long COVID in 2026, I know how bad it can get.

Was it that I heard the argument that "Living is already risky, why be preoccupied with this?" enough that it stuck? I'm not sure, but that could have been it. 

I was already teetotaling by having meals indoors, I was already understanding the concept of acceptable risk. Some situations don't work with a mask on. Whether you want to eat or drink or it's social gatherings where shouting is too much. And then, well, there's the cases where a mask is socially isolating.

So, yeah therein lies the other thing. I am tired of voluntarily making myself an outcast, the "ew"-tinged gazes and the weird comments in a city where we're supposed to ignore each other. As uncomfortable as a mask can be⁴, the social unpleasantness was always the tougher friction. I try to believe I'm the kind of person who can live with scrutiny or judgement from people I disagree with, but I got tired of it around 3-5 years after most already had.

I can’t say for certain that you’ll never see me masked up again. My next plane trip? Maybe. If I see or hear folks who sound sick, and I just so happen to have one on me, I might mask up. I don’t know, which is an uncertainty that’s quite new to me compared to the last six-plus years. I used to keep two masks on me: the one I’d wear and an unopened backup. This morning, I’m getting on a train to a farmer’s market and a grocery run that I did all the time last summer. The only difference is I have zero masks packed.

Or at least the first quarter of it, I’m taking my time.

So, it turns out I’m not exactly done with the COVID-19 pandemic, as author/comedian/podcaster Jamie Loftus’ book is a summer of 2021 American road trip that shows the past and present of the hot diggity dog. From what I’ve read so far, I can confidently say Loftus has fantastic voice in her writing and a way of letting you feel like you’re traveling with her, her not-yet-ex, and her pets on this weird adventure. If you’re not going on a trip this summer, this might be the next-best thing to logging miles between gas stations.

And, all along the way, you get an unfortunately timeless critique of capitalism, because what is the hot dog if not the snapping and sizzling hood ornament of exploitation. As much as you can love the hot dog, we must appreciate the effort that goes into presenting her, from both the laborers who serve the tubesteaks and the animals whose parts (as we learn very graphically) make up the summertime classic. Loftus is so much better about writing about the hot dog and its many variations that she encounters than I am about praising the book, but I can confidently say you could gorge yourself on her writing and keep your composure while doing so, unlike hot dog champ Joey Chestnut.

Thank you for reading this far.

Next time? Who knows.