All Comments on 'Distancing'

5/5

How has this story had no comments yet? Excellent writing, you paint an amazing picture.

Here’s a nice little everyday tale about the erotic plights of Western singles in the early days of the Pandemic™ when due to “lockdowns” and “social distancing” the customary streams of casual sex suddenly dried out; in the nameless first-person narrator’s case this dire situation ultimately equaled the “death of [her] sexuality:” not even masturbation was any fun anymore, but rather a “chore” and lead-in to yet another “depressive episode.” Hard times indeed!

Alas, as thematically relevant as all that may be, the present story is lacking some much needed development and—may I say so—reflective or insightful instances. How come the narrator just rebounds from the death of her sexuality by sitting on her balcony in a warm and starry night sipping a glass of Tempranillo? How come she first ascertains that her taste in men “wasn’t about the looks,” but then it is precisely the James Dean-look of her neighbor that entices her? How come that neither of them shows any inhibition at publicly masturbating, although they are supposedly downright encircled by other apartment buildings with countless balconies and windows facing them? Still, neither of them seems to hesitate—if only in thought even—for a second before starting to masturbate to each other right there in front of everybody who just so might happen to pass by a window and take a look outside. The narrator even starts to wonder if her neighbor might not have been watching her all along without even showing an inkling of disconcertment at that idea while at the same time praising her unknown masturbatory partner for taking special care that she “consented to all of it.” That is almost farcical!

Apart from that there is one blunder in the details that really took me out of the story: it is the distance between the narrator’s and her unknown neighbor’s apartments that the narrator gives quite exactly and confidently: “at least 400 yards.” That distance is over 100 yards outside the range at which “a competent marksman can reliably hit a big-game-size critter with a more or less ordinary rifle” (see “The New Long Range: Shooting at 400 yards” by David E. Petzal); yet our masturbatory couple apparently has such owlish eyes that they can make out even the slightest intimate details on their distant partner’s body—in the dark of the night!

All these narrative shortcomings notwithstanding, “Distancing” still offers a sensual and erotic central scene—if taken on its own and more or less disconnected from the greater story itself (thereby ignoring its inconsistencies and the lot of unresolved questions raised by it).

The happy ending fits the story which ultimately refrained from digging all too deep into the erotic plight of the Pandemic™, but—surely, no surprise here—it is hardly a satisfactory ending if you ask me: foremost because it does not resolve anything. Okay, so her neighbor wrote her a postcard revealing his name and asking to come over, but why is she so eager to take him up on this offer and even planning to buy a new pack (!) of condoms? I mean, he’s basically still a total stranger to her with whom she has not even exchanged a single word? If she has no problem with “entertaining” total strangers in her own apartment, why then did she say good-bye to Tinder in the first place? Why then did she not simply skip the local bars and met her Tinder dates instead at her place right away? Hence there would have been no drought of casual sex, no sudden drop in endorphins and serotonin, no “depressive episode”—and no need for ogling and owling distant strangers.

It might have even yielded one or two funny or stirring stories!

—AJ