Listen Here: Interview with Joey

Introduction:

Joey is a 33 year-old gay Portuguese-American male. He is a retail manager at a supermarket, so living through the Covid-19 pandemic has been quite the whirlwind. Working with customers on a daily basis, he is pointedly frustrated with how the general public has been behaving throughout the pandemic. As for his social life, it had already been minimal by choice. As Joey gets older, he feels he has less patience for ephemeral connections. He maintains a small core circle of friends, many of whom are scattered around New Jersey. Since the pandemic hit, keeping in touch with his friends has meant an increase in electronic communication. Joey feels that, compared to others, his sex life has only been minimally affected by the pandemic. The frequency of his sexual encounters has decreased, primarily because he is being more selective when seeking prospective partners. He looks for conversational individuals, because learning about their lives and their habits through organic conversation helps Joey feel more comfortable with the prospect of sexual intimacy. In terms of safety, as a supermarket worker, he feels that he is more of a risk to potential partners than they are to him. If sex happens, it happens, he says. Joey sometimes attends hotel sex parties, but they have become less frequent and less frequented since the pandemic began. He has also cultivated some new friendships that, sometimes though not necessarily, involve intimacy. As for dating, Joey feels that safety guidelines for public spaces like restaurants and coffee houses are not conducive to getting to know someone.

Notable Quotes:

HOW HAS THE PANDEMIC AFFECTED YOUR LIFE GENERALLY?

“It's been quite the whirlwind. I work in a supermarket, so retail setting. Seeing the degeneration of human decency has been quite interesting.”

“How [customers] act and react in a situation that requires social distancing and mask wearing, it's been quite a trip.”

HOW HAS THE PANDEMIC AFFECTED YOUR SEX LIFE?

“It's been affected. I would say minimally compared to other people that I've interacted with. Alot more in depth conversations on like, social dating apps such as scruff or grindr.”

“In terms of like, frequency of activity, it's been impacted simply because I've been more selective.”

“There's still the huge number of, how else can I put it, horn-dogs, that send you three words in a message looking for sex. And there's other people that just, engage in a conversation. So, you figure out their habits, you make a choice. Like, I feel like I'm more a risk to anyone else than anyone's a risk to me since I already interact with 4000 people a day at work, six days a week.”

“It hasn't been that big of a deal if I don't have sex. You know, if it happens it happens. It's usually someone that I've connected on a more intimate personal level, conversationally, intellectually. And so it's like, you kind of gleam information in your conversations about your day to day activities, you know, shooting the breeze. And so it's like, hey, you know, I feel comfortable meeting up with this person, and getting naked and romping around.”

“Since I only get one day a week off, I tend to maximize my, you know, enjoyment of my free time. So, there was a hotel group I would go to that would have... ...six or seven guys including myself there, over the course of two hours, you know, coming and going as, you know, the activities, you know, commenced and ended. And, you know, now, it's not going every week. Maybe going twice a month at most”