Ask Consuela, Your Coronavirus Love Advisor

Dear Ones–

The dreaded “coronavirus” has put the crimp in dating, mating and plain old canoodling around, leaving Consuela concerned for the future of advice to the lovelorn columns such as hers.  “Love in the Time of Cholera” is a very famous novel that you don’t have time to read, so Consuela is here to answer your thwarted romance questions, usually in less time than it takes to scan the warning label on a bottle of Tylenol.

Dear Consuela–

I have shared an apartment for the past three years with a woman I will call “Gail,” which sounds really old-fashioned, like from the 50s or something, but that’s what her parents named her.

We became such good friends that at one point we made a “pinky promise” that neither of us would ever try to steal the other’s boyfriend, which I have faithfully adhered to except for French kissing this guy Ian she’s been seeing since 2017 every year at Christmas under the mistletoe we hang in the living room.  Also New Year’s, of course, and maybe a couple of other holidays like Arbor Day, which in my mind is shamefully neglected.

“Gail’s” company had an off-site at a hotel on Route 128–“America’s Technology Highway”–and now they are all quarantined there because some doofus sales rep who’d just flown in from Spain swung by to pitch fish tank cleaner as a miracle cure for the coronavirus, or COVID-19 as it is known in “biotech” circles.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, right after I got the call from Gail who should show up at our doorstep but Ian, he hadn’t heard yet because he turns off his phone when he’s driving, he’s very conscientious like that.  Anyway, here we are, and Gail’s stuck at her hotel, and I’m wondering whether a romantic non-aggression pact applies during a time of national emergency, or if it’s suspended like the Ivy League football season.

Alison Oates, Arlington, Mass.

“Everybody touch the Magic Laptop so you won’t get coronavirus!”

Dear Alison–

I admire your loyalty, but in times like the present it is important that we limit social contacts, “shelter in place” and make do with what we have on hand in the way of toilet paper, protein and eligible males.  According to the World Health Organization, you should limit sexual intercourse with an absent roommate’s boyfriend to no more than one (1) episode per day, which are not like episodes of a Netflix series.  (I am assuming you have a two-bedroom and only one roommate.)  Stay safe out there and have fun!

Where Cheryl works.

Hey Consuela–

Long time reader, first time writer.  I have been dating this woman Cheryl who works at the bait shop over on South Highway 50, and believe-you-me it has been an uphill climb.  She is Baptist, and like they say, Baptists don’t believe in sex because it might lead to dancing.

I have been trying to “get next” to Cheryl for our entire courtship ever since I met her at the American Legion Thanksgiving Wednesday Turkey Shoot, but she has been way ahead of the curve on this “social distancing” thing, never letting me get within 18 inches of her.  I thought I had made a breakthrough last summer, she agreed to let me sit next to her on her porch swing, then this damn Coronavirus exploded and ever since it’s been “Just park your car at the curb and yell out the passenger-side window.”

Consuela, I’m having a hard time hanging in there, a man can only take so much.  Any idea how long this virus is going to last, based on past plagues?

Eldon Donovan, Sweet Springs MO

Dear Eldon–

I checked the World Wide Web, still your best source of information despite what librarians tell you when they go before Town Council for their annual budget request.  According to plagues.com, “the Black Death ran its course about six years and lasted until about 1351!”  That is their exclamation point, not mine, they get really excited about devastating pandemics.

I would suggest that you “drop a hint” to Cheryl by stealing lines from Andrew Marvel’s poem “To His Coy Mistress,” which men have been using for 340 years to talk women into having sex when they don’t want to.  You should probably skip the part where he says he could stare at each of his girlfriend’s breasts for 200 years, she might take that the wrong way.

Dear Consuela–

I have met a man named “Ed” in O’Hare International Airport, I was having a Corona beer while I waited for my flight to Nashville, he made a joke about it, you know “Make sure you eat that lime, otherwise you’ll get the ‘Corona Virus.’”  “Ha, ha,” I said, and he sat down next to me, it turns out we’re on the same plane.

Well, they just announced that our flight is canceled, they are going to give people hotel vouchers, maybe we’ll get out tomorrow, they say.  When he heard that “Ed’s” eyes lit up like he had a bright idea and he says “Why don’t we room together, I know a guy at Trip-o-Pedia, they buy unused travel vouchers and we can split the extra $169.”

I said “You must think I just fell off a turnip truck, why would I share a bed with somebody not knowing whether they had the coronavirus?”  He apologized and said “I didn’t mean to insult your intelligence, I thought everybody knew that if you switch from beer to vodka you are immune.”

Consuela, I consider myself very well-informed as I watch both Good Morning America and the Today show, and I do not recall any discussion of this supposed “miracle cure” that Ed is talking about.  Is there some government web site I can go to in order to verify what he is saying?

Texting is best, the bartender just asked if we wanted another round.

Cyndy Timmons, 629-635-0237

Dear Cynthia–

As it turns out, Ed is right.  I checked the U.S. Surgeon General’s “Fun Facts About Coronavirus!” and there is absolutely no connection between the beer you were drinking and this deadly disease.  In the “drop-down” menu for “What You Can Do to Protect Yourself” it says “use alcohol wipes to effectively kill the novel Coronavirus Covid-19,” and as every high school freshman girl knows, vodka is a colorless and odorless alcoholic beverage that you can drink without detection by your mother as long as you don’t throw up on the bus home from the game at Tri-Valley Consolidated Regional High School.

I would avoid flavored brands, as you never know whether some with migrant farm worker with a communicable disease has handled the fruit that goes into those varieties.  Stick to the trusted original that has touched off many a night of mad, passionate concern for public health and safety.