How to do the wrong thing right

Let’s just call it what it is: The Lost Summer. Rona, I am so tired of you, bitch. Me and the world. My readers, particularly, during August’s ennui need a breather from your never-ending, Machiavellian malevolence. Just a mask-free respite, poolside, would be nice — a paper parasol in one hand, a tangy cherry Sno-Cone in the other, an accordion opera fan of faded marabou feathers to point at beefcakes’ buttocks: “Grrrrrl, there’s my next husband!” Better take heed, COVID — when even drama queens require a reprieve from your daily, ever-rising death tolls of second waves and third waves, with the living going hungrier, citizens getting angrier and victims becoming victimized, you know their candy floss wigs have finally hit the fan like flamingos sucked through a jet engine!

I’m hardly alone in noticing there’s a frazzled apathy in the air, a sort of malaise of the soul. Not defeatism so much as nihilism. Not quite baleful depression yet, but more serious than mere ennui — an inability to do anything that’s seemingly going to make a difference for the better has settled over us like miasma. Through the grapevine, one hears of gold-star gay parties (code for tina-fueled orgies) in private homes (masks must be left at the door) echoing those meretriciously secretive “seroconversion” parties during the late ’80s and ’90s; after all, with no cure in sight, along with a guaranteed agonizing death, why not just join “the club” and get it over with while young, still, at least?

I see Rona conjuring similar black arts’ magic, albeit, much more slowly and sinisterly. She intends to turn the whole planet into a lunatic asylum — we all know now that nothing’s going back to “normal” again. But what’s to replace our world of six months ago, has yet to be seen. So, bois, it’s anybody’s game at this point in time. “Awaken, Kundalini!” I say, and let’s just get all New-Agey Aquarius right to it.

Dear Howard: Is there really such a thing as love at first sight? Last spring, just before lockdown and the campus closed, I met a fellow college freshman my same age. The second our eyes locked, I saw into his soul and matter-of-fact nodded to myself, “Oh, so this is the man I’m marrying?” Thing is, though, like everybody else trying to cover tuition these days whose family can’t help out, I’m havin’ to sugarbaby on the side (but then so does he and half our entire student body; there’s no stigma attached to it anymore). None of us feel like we’re sex workers or escorting per se, and I know it’s not supposed to happen — falling head over heels in love — considering both of us first have obligations to men old enough to be our fathers, but… can it happen? — E.O.E.

Dear Everyman On Earth: Son, like you said, you’re just doing what you must in this batshit new world to keep from drowning; moreover, your sugar daddy’s no idiot. He knows you’re his but temporarily, that you’ll move on following graduation to better and bigger things, with opportunities at making enough money to survive on your own, if not even flourish, debt free! Are you asking me if the laws of physics can account for two sugar babies falling in love at first glance? Can intuition count on it? What is this nonsense, you ask of me, about intuitiveness versus personal endangerment of the soul? Bottom line: Yes, eternal love at first sight really does exist. You can count on it. Bet the farm, your bottom dollar and Mama’s life, too. But whatever you do, dropping out of college is not an option. Hey, it’s just a dick, slick. I only wish that being a sugar baby was a viable alternative to waiting tables for tuition when I was your age, back in the prehistoric days of no cell phones, computers or the internet.

Dear Howard: During my outdoor morning meditations, mosquitoes have begun landing just above my eyebrows, on my third eye, and, naturally, sucking out my own blood — almost like psychic vampires lured to my expanding energies! My head begins itching, which then leads to my giggling like the proverbial silly schoolgirl. Could a chakra opening, or auric field expansion adjusting to my higher level of enlightenment, result in a physical sensation such as itching, sweating or even cooling of the skin? Anybody else ever experience physical sensations during just their routine morning meditations? Do itches ignite superstition? Or do they make for just a “funny story” to tell one’s transcendental meditations instructor? — Virgin Jay

Dear Va-Jay-Jay: And to think Rona passed over you entirely? Are the hallucinogens you’re imbibing actually pharmaceutically-dispensed, or does your transcendental meditations “instructor” glean them from an alley? Our new Aquarian Age is certainly dawning with “enlightenment” nonetheless, eh? Why, a veritable wormhole must have opened up for you to radiantly see through to the nucleic core of your soul’s inner chakra: I’m getting tingles! Who knew that but a single insect alighting upon the sweet skin of a mortal homo sapiens could send vibrations rippling across our galactic star fields, triggering a black hole implosion, sucking in the very parameters of the universe’s furthest edges? Indeed, one’s future — as foretold by just itches — are, quite literally, myriad: Purportedly, an itchy nose foretells of kissing a fool; itchy palms foretell of money coming your way; itchy feet foretell of a journey; an itchy neck foretells of illness; and an itchy scalp foretells of luck… or, most likely, lice. Howard’s advice? Take it all with a grain of stardust, Jay. Still feelin’ itchy now?

Dear Howard: I hadn’t been on a plane since February, but my first grandchild, of my only child, was celebrating his first birthday last week, and I’d still not even met him yet. So, I said screw COVID-19. Screw this self-isolation bullshit, and hopped a plane for the heart of all snake pits, New York City, where I didn’t have the heart to tell my son, Jack; but, the second I saw my grandchild, Eric, I knew something wasn’t right with him. The kid doesn’t look young. He looks old as I do, wrinkly and withered. Am I wrong, or isn’t there some kind of weird infliction that causes young children to age at warp speed? I think my grandson has it. How do I delicately bring this up to Jack? —
M. Martin

Dear M&M: Hypochondrial tendencies do we suffer from ourselves, Martin? I highly doubt your grandchild is inflicted with progeria. Extremely rare, Hutchison-Gifford Progeria Syndrome is so scantily occurring, it’s labeled as “uncountable” the likelihood of any child contracting it. True, it causes rapid aging in children, starting in the first two years of their life, to die of “old age” by puberty — a genetic mutation due (in hospital lingo) to an inexplicable “eradication of 50 amino acids near the C-terminus,” whatever that is. Normally, levels of the genetic protein, progerin, increase in the body human by 3 percent a year; hence, why we only look 3 percent older from one year to the next. Most likely, M&M, your son simply sired a spectacularly hideous child. Bless his homely little heart.
Keep your masks on, boys, in public: Don’t let Rona win.

— Howard Lewis Russell

Got a question about love, sex, etiquette or anything else Howard can offer his fractured take on? Email him at AskHoward@dallasvoice.com.