Ro Anya
A Pandemic Story
Sitting in a smoke-filled biker bar, alone in a corner, I have my eyes closed in an attempt to zone out and let my mind wander away from the current space. Thoughts bounce in and out until I am suddenly jerked back to the present by someone pulling my mask down to my chin. My senses focus with the boisterous chatter and music spilling out of the jukebox speakers. A leathery woman with dyed black hair stands inches from me and in a quasi-flirtatious drunk stammer asks “what’s wrong, you scared of the air?” I yank my mask back up over the bridge of my nose and turn my face and simply say “no.” The woman glances over her shoulder making direct eye contact with the friend who brought me to this place. The friend smirks back. The two have obviously become quick acquaintances over drags of cigarettes and shots of the bar’s special syrupy sweet green tea concoction.
A Full Circle Love Story
My parents’ love story is by no means an epic romance, or a romance at all really. Their marriage was in fact something that probably should never have happened. But it is still a love story. They met as fresh-faced 20-somethings, both off on very different ventures into adulthood which, by happenstance alone, brought them to the same geographical location at the same time. My mother was a post-college graduate seeking literary inspiration from mountains, an ideal that was instilled in her early on in the stories of Heidi’s adventures in the Alps. My dad, a rebel, was seeking to escape to a place where the road was open and adolescent legal troubles would not follow. Both wannabe hippies in their own rights led them to Santa Fe, New Mexico in the late 1970s.
Try a British Twist With Your Nostalgic Teenage Binge
Us millennials, we are going through a bit of an identity crisis. We are grown-up and, depending on your formula for determining generations, are well into our thirties. I personally have millennial friends who are currently raising actual young adults. But I think we also grew up a highly stereotyped generation that for a long time tied us stagnantly to our own young adulthood. It was put on us, and whether it be correlation or causation, I think more than a few of us still live it.
