Doomed 2020: Year of the Rat

God writes a hell of a novel, and it doesn’t need an editor.

I complained to my friend early last year that “there was nothing exciting in the news.” Then bam — we had a global pandemic, nationwide lockdowns, and an economic crisis that rivaled the Great Depression. My life froze instantly. Things took on an apocalyptic weirdness. All my work stopped. No more gigs with bands. No more live music. No more eating out. No more dive bars. No more afternoon merlot at my favorite strip club with the scantily clad Stafania. No more in-person interaction.

It all happened so fast. California was the first state to shut down. My friend Mark called me that night, excited. “Governor Cuomo’s speaking tomorrow. He’s going to close down New York,” he explained The next morning, I watched his news conference nervously and when the announcement came, I made a mad dash to the liquor store, picking up 180 bucks worth of booze — bottles of pinot grigio, Tito’s vodka and Glen Moray, my favorite single-malt scotch. There was fear in the air. No one knew what was going to happen next. I had to be prepared.

In the beginning the shutdown was a novelty. There was an emptiness on the roads and ease of movement that I liked. I took eerily desolate walks on the campus of Syracuse University — not a soul in sight — just me and the moonlight, and the occasional campus cop driving by. It was like living in a sci-fi movie, shopping at the grocery store in my N95 respirator, opening doors with the sleeve of my shirt, slathering on hand sanitizer whenever I touched a surface. But after a while, I started to feel like a prisoner in solitary. I pined for the old life, even the lifeless bar gigs and long rehearsals I used to hate.

I couldn’t go out and socialize, so I went in — to the dusty corners of my mind. It was a time of introspection and reflection. I’d prowl the city at night by car, looking at the shuttered restaurants and bars, wondering when life would be normal again, pondering my next move. I got lost in YouTube videos about the horrors of the pandemic. The zeitgeist was cruel. I hadn’t felt anything like this since 9/11 — and this was bigger. They didn’t close the restaurants and bars after 9/11.

The warm weather brought some relief. I dined outside with friends and relatives. I smoked cigars and drank Diet Dr. Pepper with my pal, Ernie. Things almost started to feel normal again. I even played a few outdoor gigs. But the murder of George Floyd — his throat crushed into the pavement for nine minutes by a rogue Minneapolis cop — ushered in another dark chapter to 2020. Violent protests erupted in hundreds of cities and towns across America. The nightly news was a horror show with images of cities on fire, Neo-Nazis and anti-fascists battling in the streets, journalists being shot with rubber bullets in clouds of tear gas, and cops brutalizing innocent protesters.

I found myself in the middle of a protest on an evening drive here in Syracuse. I pulled up to an intersection downtown and saw a mob gathered at the park across the street from the police station, some in vehicles, yelling out of windows. “Holy cow,” I thought. Glancing to my left, I saw a wall of cops lined up like chess pieces, with shields, helmets and long batons, standing silent and motionless. Things felt like they were about to erupt, and I was sure rocks and bricks were about to start flying. When the light changed, I hit the gas and roared the hell out of there. It was a close call. It got uglier later that night, with rioters shattering windows, and ransacking businesses.

Politics got downright insane in 2020. For the first time in my life there was fear of widespread violence on Election Day. People were talking about another civil war, which could still happen. And then we had an unhinged president declaring victory before all the votes were counted. Trump’s denial of reality continued and almost all Republicans went along with it. Just this week, Trump called Georgia’s Secretary of State, pressuring him to find 11,000 votes in a doomed attempt to overturn the election. Georgia has since elected two Democrats to the Senate for complete control of Congress, with the tie breaking vote belonging to a Black woman, Kamala Harris.

It’s funny how life can turn on a dime. Like Houdini, Trump defied gravity for years. Last February he was doing a victory lap at his State of the Union speech, bragging about the greatest economy and soaring stock market. A second term for the bastard seemed certain. Then fate intervened, whacking him in the head with a cosmic two-by-four. By the summer he was dealing with more strife than any president since Abe Lincoln. But it was his mishandling of the Coronavirus that finally did him in — a welcomed silver lining to this vicious pandemic.

The Coronavirus pandemic brought the world to its knees in 2020. It was the most significant global event since World War II. I remember checking Johns Hopkins’ Covid Map in March, when we had under a thousand cases. We closed the year at 20 million with nearly 350,000 deaths — more than the US military lost in World War II and Vietnam combined. We’re currently averaging 400 cases a day in my town, with another holiday surge anticipated. Two musicians I’ve known all my life died last week from the virus. And the more contagious UK strain on the virus was just detected in Saratoga, a short drive from where I live. I resolved to be a hermit this year until I’m vaccinated.

2020 was the Year of the Rat, according to the Chinese zodiac, a fitting epitaph for the foul and rancorous year that it was. The normalcy and fun in my life slithered away like a rat down a dark pipe in 2020. I had my own struggles and my own Covid scare, but I made it through. If you’re reading this, you made it too.

So let’s toast to 2021 in hopes that it will bring better things. It has to, right? Perhaps it already has.