Is this new pandemic freaking out New Yorkers?
January 30, 2020 | 3-minute read
The tall man with an anti-coronavirus mask got on the Bx7 bus at 231st Street near Dunkin Donuts and Riverdale Vape and Candy. The white mask drew a lot of covert looks and outright stares among the 9:24 p.m. commuters. This wasn’t just a gauzy blue hospital mask familiar to riders coming home from the NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital thirteen blocks to the south. It was a contraption you might strap onto the face of Cyrano de Bergerac: Smack in the middle was a small black respirator with an exhale valve to trap airborne particles ready to speed the coronavirus into the lungs. A Google search reveals that low-end models cost between $7.99 and $16.99. If you want the precise mask this guy wore, you have to wait a month for delivery. The demand is high and the supply is limited.
Say what you will about New Yorkers being so jaded they wouldn’t blink if they saw an elephant fly. When you’ve got an ordinary citizen with a space alien face mask on a Bronx-bound bus, people are going to gape. And yet for all I know, this man is in the vanguard of self-care, and within a week or two, every woman, man and child on the Bx7 bus line will be wearing the same goofy mask.
I wanted a photo of him. But he was too tall and I was in a seat too low to the floor. Even if he turned his head, I couldn’t angle my phone inconspicuously to get him in the viewfinder. I pretended to fiddle with my phone as I prayed for another opportunity. Unlike the subway, where people really do not want to meet your eye, the bus is an eye-meets-eye environment. I could not get the shot without being obnoxious.
An Al Pacino-Lefty Ruggiero lookalike a couple of seats ahead of me tried to catch my eye to say, “What a friggin’ freak, right?”
All it takes is a Mr. Social Norms and an attempt to lure me into condemnation — and I go all I-love-freaks on you. What’s so demented anyway about anticipating a virus that has jumped from birds and mammals to human beings? It’s already gotten 8,000 people sick and killed more than 170 of them. What if the coronavirus does descend upon the Bronx? Are you going to call the guy a freak then, Mr. Get-Me-One-Of-Them-Masks-Pronto Formerly-Known-As-Mr.-Social-Norms?
Coronavirus Zorro got off at my stop. @&*^%#$! How was I going to get a photo of him walking in the dark? I could not see myself bobbing and weaving around the guy, who, in addition to breathing through his Cadillac of masks, was lugging two paper bags full of groceries. Instead, I slowed down to overhear a conversation between a chirping five-year-old boy and his world-weary mom: “Aren’t I really good at this, mom? Mom! Look at that star! It’s blue!”
“You really are good at it,” his mom said as I lost sight of the masked man.
