Like Martine, they usually sat in their bedrooms. These conversations were a strange combination of awkward and intimate. Over the past year, Martine, who is twenty-nine years old, had had serviceable conversations with about twelve men whom she’d met on dating apps such as Coffee Meets Bagel and Hinge. It wasn’t much, but it had made pandemic dating bearable. (She found that they made for good conversation starters.) Then she’d take a deep breath, apply some red lipstick, and fire up her computer for a date. She’d change her Zoom background to something festive, or straighten the paintings on her wall. Next, she’d pull out her essential oils, open a bottle of something nice, lavender or peppermint, and take a sniff.
“Music, TV, laptop, chat.” She’d sit on her floor, cross-legged, and meditate for twenty minutes. It was a series of small actions that changed the mood in her Queens bedroom, so that she could contemplate making flirtatious chit-chat from the same space that she’d been using to perform her sales job, take online classes, exercise, and sleep. By this summer, Martine had her dating ritual figured out.