Quarantine Coupling: The Diary

3 months B.Q. (before quarantine)

Monday, April 13th, 2020

5:45 AM. I’m a damn freak, but I love mornings. I love the peace, I love the quiet, I love the blessed 2-hour gap between my Quarantine Partner’s (QP’s) rising hour and my own. Like any millennial neurotic, I dive straight into a New Age morning regimen that is, technically, supposed to sprinkle glitter dust and sanity over my day (disclaimer: it doesn’t). Fifteen minutes of transcendental meditation (no, I don’t know if it works, and I probably never will), followed by 17 minutes with Melissa Wood Health (how is she always so zen? does she do transcendental meditation? ). I spend the rest of Me Time deciding between leggings, athletic shorts, and cutoffs (athletic shorts always win), making coffee and smoothies, reading headlines, and looking for dining chairs on the Internet. My QP doesn’t care for dining chairs – I could chop up a tree trunk and he would gladly sit on a stump all day. Which, considering the upcoming recession, might be a viable option.

All The Good Advice You Shouldn’t Follow

Musings of the Mind · by Marina Khorosh

Dear 2.5 readers who keep coming back after nearly a year of my abstinence from this blog, thank you for your unfailing loyalty. While I’m sure you give very few [BLEEPS] as to why I was absent, the explanation actually doubles as my lead-in into this paramount piece. And so, here it goes.

At first, I was Busy. A real, goal-driven kind of Busy, the kind that deters you from leaving your desk all summer, quietly observing all of Instagram using the Mediterranean as their own personal hammam while you and your Havianas slowly meld into the scorching city cement. The kind of Busy that forces you to cut out all social interaction with people who have no interest in feeding you (Busy leaves no room for pride) or breaking booze with you (Busy leaves no room for wellness). Anyway, I was Busy.

Then, I met somebody. I want to tell you that I abstained from blogging because I didn’t want to jinx my blossoming romance, but that would be a lie. The reality is, I was a-still Busy and b-too preoccupied trying to get him to like me via various acts of chivalry, such as watching his dog while he went to New Orleans for one day to party. We are still together, and I no longer watch his dog on weekends while he parties, because he is no longer allowed to party or do anything remotely fun without me. (JK, I’m super chill. SUPER. CHILL.) Also, if you meet him, he will probably tell you that I’m being dramatic and he was just “taking it slow.” Don’t listen!

Can Gold Digging be “Feminist”?

Musings of the Mind · by Marina Khorosh

(NB: Please note that the author of this post took a good week to reflect on whether her “spirited” reaction to this topic stems from her own personal frustrations with her lack of “female energy,” dry fasting skills, and her overall laziness to become a JetSetBabe and snap up a life sponsor. She had concluded that this is probably true; has still decided to move forward with it.)

If you’ve been privy my (mildly unhinged) Instagram stories, you may have noticed that I recently developed an obsession with a blogger-slash-life-guru named Anna Bey. Anna is the founder of the website JetSetBabe and “online finishing school” School of Affluence, which teaches women to become “high-caliber women” and “navigate successfully in high society.” Those of you envisioning European royals and tech moguls, feel free to swap out that vision for greasy oligarchs atop mega-yachts. (Here’s a guide to being on a yacht, btw.)

At first, my fascination was that of pure entertainment. The articles were unapologetic-bordering-on-shameless, with titles such as “How to Look Rich on Instagram” and “Do You Meet More Men In First Class?” Was this a joke? A brilliant piece of satire? It was almost too easy to mock – and yet, impossible to look away.

Ménage à Quatre

I Know How To Pick'Em · by Marina Khorosh

In the hierarchy of creative careers to avoid in your romantic life, actors fall somewhere between DJs (run! really fast! don’t look back!) and restauranteurs (not ideal). And yet, when you are living your best croissant life in Paris and happen to stumble across a hot French actor with an actual AlloCiné presence, you’re allowed to temporarily amend your principles and swipe droite. Also, France is not exactly Hollywood – people are slightly more humble, egos are a tad more subdued, actors are a bit more normal. Peut être.

We will call him Alain, in honor of Alain Delon, whose ego has, too, been known to precede him. Alain and I matched on Raya a couple of days after my arrival to Paris at the beginning of April. It was a cold, rainy Sunday, and so I spent a good two hours wasting my life chatting with him about n’importe quoi while performing an in-depth YouTube investigation of his work.

The guy was talented. There is nothing I can say to undermine this – he was a true triple threat, an actor-writer-director hybrid who had been monikered by a Very Important Newspaper as “the golden boy of French cinema.” He seemed relatively down to earth and domesticated, even sending me photos of a Sunday brunch he had prepared for his parents, as well as a voice note containing three Russian sentences he remembered from his lycée days. Long story short, I could already picture us hanging out in some imaginary Parisian loft, eating homemade quiche and discussing Truffaut… He was going away for a week, but we arranged to meet up when he returned.

New York, I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me (And My Sex Life) Down

Musings of the Mind · by Marina Khorosh

In the past months, I have been trying to break my longstanding European – oh, who am I kidding, French – streak by attempting to date the kind of man my mother has been tacking to her mental vision board of my life since 2005 – “a nice Jewish boy with a stable job and good family values.” (Please keep in mind that my mom isn’t Jewish – she is just that satisfied with her choice of husband.) Mom expressed concern that the world had run out of age-appropriate options in the decade I had dedicated to moody Frenchmen. I calmed her nerves by showing her Hinge, a luxury outlet overflowing with clean-cut boys with Stanford degrees, JPMorgan jobs, Machu Picchu pictures, and cute nephews. My mother would have 90-day-fiancéed me to any of them, but, alas, Hinge has to yet configure that option. (Brilliant. I know. You’re welcome.)

After years of dating Europeans, I knew the sudden switch would come with a culture shock. I truly wasn’t expecting my love life to immediately pan out like some saccharine Andrea Bocelli music video – in a way, I didn’t even want it to. And yet, nothing could have prepared me for the systematic, bland, cheap lack of romance that was waiting for me on New York City dating turf.

The Story of Machete Man

I Know How To Pick'Em · by Marina Khorosh

“You are too old to recount your dates to the Internet,” I decided when I found myself reunited with the single troupes last summer. “You had your fun, now you should grow! Mature! Evolve!” I was secretly hoping that I had tapped into some newfound wisdom that would result in an organic shortage of content for this blog.

Ha. Just like leopards don’t change their spots, I don’t change my proclivity to seek out psychiatric case studies. Enter Machete Man.

It was November 6th and I had spent the morning at my local polling place and the afternoon getting grappling with a 4-hour migraine-slash-medical-mystery (which has since been resolved). I felt sad, story, sorry for myself, in need of love. And so, I did something that has never led to anything good in the past, and agreed to go out with a guy I had just met online, that very evening.