Things I Hope to Do When This is All Over

Here’s a fun and dreamy exercise for the coronavirus era. Open up a new document in your notes app of choice, or turn to a blank page in your journal. Make a list titled “things to do when this is all over.” Then let your imagination transport you to a happier place and time in the future.

“This” being “all over” is sort of a nebulous concept at this point, but in my case, I’m choosing to imagine that daydreamy future as one in which a safe and effective vaccine has been developed and distributed around the world, and we can once again walk around outside and gather in groups and go to places (remember places?!) without needing to worry that we’re endangering others or ourselves. What will you do when things go “back to normal” – or when we move into a hopefully new-and-improved definition of normalcy? Here’s what I’m excited to do once we kick COVID to the curb…

Hug my friends and family for as long as they consent to be hugged.
Go to a cocktail bar alone, with just my Kindle to keep me company. Sip excellent drinks, make small-talk with the bartenders from time to time, and revel in the cheery din of my fellow bar-goers.
Curl up on the couch in my parents’ basement and watch a movie with my family – probably a Billy Wilder classic.
Go to La Banane (one of my favorite restaurants here in Toronto) and eat an extravagant platter of oysters and shrimp cocktail while swilling martinis and laughing with my love.
Sit in the front row at the Bad Dog Theatre and see an improv show.
Go on a long, meandering walk through the city while listening to podcasts. Stop into any stores that seem cool and take a look around.
Have group sex again, in some configuration, or just sex in front of a modest crowd at a sex club. In the meantime, there’s always VR porn and Zoom orgies. (It cracks me up that one of the most popular VR porn sites is called BaDoinkVR. Can I just start shouting “BaDoink!” every time I touch a partner’s genitals, like some kind of pornographic slapstick foley artist?!)
Visit the art gallery, the Royal Ontario Museum, the aquarium.
Show up an hour or so before the curtain at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, dressed to the nines for a solo date. Order a sandwich and a pint at the lobby café, and sit there quietly reading until they open the house. Take a program from the usher, find my seat amongst polite older couples and rowdy art-school teenagers, and read about the cast, crew, and creative vision of the production.
Walk around a big grocery store buying excessively fancy ingredients, which I will later assemble into an extravagant meal.
Sit on a patio sipping a beer and writing.
Walk around a Sephora, testing various lipsticks on the back of my hand until I find one I absolutely must own.
Get on a plane to New York. Stare out the little window at the big city as it unfolds below me. Walk off the plane half-dazed into the wonderful mediocrity of LaGuardia, and get into a yellow taxi.
Swim in a pool or a lake or an ocean or even just a hot tub.
Decide, on a whim, to ask someone who seems to want to kiss me, “Do you want to kiss me?” and, if so, let them.
Go to a burlesque show; hoot and holler when the dancers cast off their clothes.
Get a pedicure or a Brazilian wax or a massage or some other treatment where a careful, skilled person helps me feel better in my body. Tip them well!
Walk into a darkened movie theatre with a bag of popcorn and a box of peanut M&Ms. Settle into some good seats and watch something silly.
Attend a standing-room-only concert – maybe Andy Shauf or Carly Rae Jepsen or Tegan and Sara – and let the crowd throw me around a little as we all dance in place.
Sit in Trinity Bellwoods Park with some friends, smoking joints and telling stories.
Attend an industry tradeshow and marvel at the latest sex toys to hit the market. Leave with armfuls of lube samples and product pamphlets.
Visit my book editors in London or my literary agent in New York or both. Break bread (metaphorically or literally) with these strong, creative women I am proud to be working with.
Walk around a mall for hours, shopping for a dress to wear to some special occasion.
Eventually, tell my kids (?!) – or somebody’s kids, anyway – about what happened in 2020.