nap day
01/18/26
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2026 has been sleepy. at first bc i was partying .. nd 4 nye then seeing friends @ body. cute that me & the dj & the sound guy were all matching in smiley faces for throwback rave night. mine was melting & so was i! candy flip but omg was i depleted afterward. sugar rush sugar crash lol
& then i fell very ill. im not surprised, since everybody seems to have been sick over the ny & i was out in several different crowds. shot in the dark where i might have actually picked it up. its alw a numbers game, exposure & viral load. i mask basically everywhere in my daily life. then try to as much as i possibly can to on the dance floor .. the social pressure around masks is strong both in daily life & an on the dance floor, but that doesnt bother me anymore. the sweat tho .. wifey & i use really high quality masks. part of what makes them so effective is an electro-static layer of fabric that, unfortunately, also soaks extremely fast when exposed to any amount of moisture. then once its soaked, its so much more difficult to get airflow .. so during raves im often running out to either adjust, or swap. often there comes a point in the night when my supply runs out, or i lose my last clean one .. its an imperfect system & high key i need to have more discipline around it this year. if i or we believe dance floors can be revolutionary then i & we should mask. if not literally on the dance floor, then in our daily lives so we mitigate spread between the varying zones of risk/consent that we inhabit. i & we choose to go to parties but my & our baristas & check out clerks & whatever other kind of worker we encounter thru-out our days have no say in serving me/us, therefore have a different level of consent to disease risk than i/we do. masking (and all mitigation efforts) helps those of varying levels of risk & consent coexist, safely, in shared space.
in general attitudes towards masking at the rave r confounding, bc these spaces tend to be so sex/drug positive & educated & harm redux forward in mindset, so it surprises me how excluded covid is from the conversation/consideration of these practices. long-covid is literally an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (aids). im not saying that frivolously or hyperbolically. repeated covid infections severely damage/weaken the immune system. even “mild” covid infections can cause long term damage, and make the body’s response to subsequent illnesses extremely inefficient. this season's “super flu” that everybody has been dealing w thru the holidays & into the new year is a misnomer. theres nothing truly “super” about it, in fact its as normal as any other flu strain. but its spread has been as wide as it has been & many’s reactions as sever as they were (earning its super superlative) bc repeated covid infections have dramatically suppressed many of our immune systems to the point where a virus that would otherwise be considered routine, or “minor”, is now experienced as severe infection. plus nobody masks, which means its spread is completely unmitigated. which is also why ppl have had so many repeated covid infections. the cumulative effect is staggering.
repeated covid infections are also the reason people considered young & healthy are experiencing sudden medical emergencies (heart attacks, kidney failure, aggressive sudden onset cancers) and even dying from them, when they otherwise wouldnt be at risk. their immune systems have been so compromised that theyre now considered to be in an entirely different, much higher risk category for a much wider margin of conditions & illnesses. same reason this season’s flu was so bad. covid is a mass casualty & mass disabling event. still. the good news is theres information out there & lots of mitigation practices that have continued to be refined & developed even “post” pandemic, so the time has never been better to adjust ur response. also will help u catch the flu less, too!
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one of the reasons i miss the warehouse so much is that masking was less obtrusive in that space. nobody gave a shit! but at the club or on an intimate dancefloor it becomes a barrier. i still kiss ppl, & have conversations, & dance af. maskers are often incorrectly assumed to be anti-social. maybe bc theres a widespread misconception that masking inhibits socialization, or is a sign of someone holding on to unprocessed trauma/anxiety, or that theres simply no need to take such precautions “post” pandemic. its frustrating that so many otherwise progressive / sociable / supportive / influential ppl in this scene have a complete non-engagement with masking or (most) ppl who r masked. which is confusing bc re: us matching at throw-back rave night, masks were literally a large part of rave fashion in the 90s/00s! even in the 2010s there were ppl i knew thru the scene who i ever only encountered masked. many whos primary employment was in these spaces saw masking as necessary in order to maintain their health, as to not lose their job from absence or miss out on income (or get their staff / touring talent sick). high key the same reason we now should be masking in public places of employment!! who are we to claim the right to disable our fellow workers 🤔
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in the process of returning to normal there have been so many influential voices (at least in my circles) who loudly advocated ppl stop masking to process their trauma of the “lockdowns”, as the only way to feel comfortable socially again. really what they were encouraging was avoidance & a eugenics mindset. the imperial capitalist system highly encouraged this exactly bc it only served their interests. also do not discount pandemic avoidance as an anti-insurrectionary strategy.
remember 2020?? like really, remember how much of a collective camaraderie there was in dealing with a “new normal”? we live in direly revisionist times bc most associate the personal inconvenience of collective safety measures (vaccine cards, social distancing, masking, etc) with a generalize “trauma” of surviving “lockdowns” .. to be clear there were no lockdowns in amxrica! what did occur, tho, was a complete societal reframing of what collective effort & harm reduction meant as a collective society. and then the riots happened. a straight line. yes the riots were against pig murderers, but the flashpoint was the “new normal” that we were all engaging in / struggling towards, together. thats why the push for a return to normal was so prevalent, so spiteful, so emboldened as cultural propaganda. u are not immune to propaganda. case in point, when was the last vaccine you had? when was the last time you masked in public? do u think the covid pandemic ever ended?
but at the warehouse wearing a mask just kind of fit in to ppl who would otherwise see it as standing out. remember how dusty point of contact 1 was??
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idk i hate talking abt covid & masking bc every time i do ppl immediately tune me out & its so isolating, and generally only compounds the isolation i (we) face from just wearing masks to begin with. ppl call me a scold & maybe thats bc i am a bit. i feel a very deep anger at those around me for not taking the continuing pandemic more seriously (or even simply acknowledging it, or at worst actively enabling the eugenicist mindset that enables its perseverance). especially now 6 years into it, our research & understandings & mitigation strategies have advanced to a point where ppl can individualize their risk factors & mitigation measures to fit their lifestyle, and that if there were widespread adoption of this we could very likely end the pandemic. at the very least we could ensure the safety of our communal public spaces in the present. maybe i wouldnt have caught this illness over ny if i masked more. maybe i prevented the spread to others due to the amount i masked afterward. hard to say but just as with harm redux & safe sex practice, id rather do what i know rather than guess & pray. masks are prophylactic!!!! why do we keep keeping our heads in the sand??
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