We’re All Learning the Art of Loneliness
Everyone seems closer now, even as they’ve become more untouchable than ever
Three weeks into isolation, it suddenly felt urgent to watch Tiger King. The Netflix documentary fits a familiar mold: odd true-crime story (private zoo owner hires assassin to kill an animal rights activist), colorful characters (a man who runs a tiger-based sex cult; a zoo worker who is mauled by a tiger and opts to amputate his hand rather than cause any more bad PR for his boss; an animal rights activist who may or may not have killed her own philandering husband and fed him to tigers), and a tone that wavers between mockery and empathy.
It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, and under normal circumstances, it’s probably not something I would watch. Yet a few weeks into lockdown, when going to Wegmans felt decadent and luxurious, I wanted to watch Tiger King more than anything — not because it was good, but because I knew other people were watching it, and because I could talk to them about it once I was done.
Life in a pandemic is stripped down to bare survival. For a while, all my non-work-related conversations were about food: which stores had enough of it, and what items had the longest shelf life. I found myself rationing things for no reason, bulk-buying tampons, reusing paper towels. I…
