For the past two years, our Pop Culture issue has been the highlight of our year, and we hope that you’ll enjoy this year’s issue, but first, we want to address the reality we can’t escape from. We hope and pray that you and your families are safe from the virus, and we grieve with you for those you have lost. 

In February, through a series of events too convoluted to mention here, my girlfriend and her six-year-old daughter came to live with me in the two bedroom apartment I share with my roommate. Not even a month later, her daughter’s school was shuttered indefinitely and we found ourselves huddling together through the worst pandemic in a century. 

Watching the world from the crowded confines of our bedroom, I think about all of the fictional apocalypses I’ve seen. None of them got it quite right. The word “apocalypse” is most properly translated as “revealing,” and this crisis has revealed much about our society. 

It’s revealed how dangerously divided we are, so divided that even in an emergency our elected officials are too busy jockeying for position in the upcoming elections to focus on the matter at hand. As for the rest of us, petty differences, which we’ve turned into our personalities, keep us from listening to the advice of scientists and world leaders, even as an increasingly deadly force sweeps our country. Americans remain a people so attached to their party loyalties, or to their economic philosophies, that they’ll die for it, or, better yet, call upon others to die for it. We’ve discovered limits to our compassion, we’ve made people numbers, statistics, percentage points. 

But above anything, this crisis has forced a reckoning with how we spent our days before the virus. We see what was most important to us, now that the opportunity is closed to us. 

Three years ago, when Kolleen first moved to California, we used to meet at Barnes and Noble in Burbank with Nathan Alan Schwartz of Five 2 One Magazine and trade stories of our experiences in the literary community (in other words, talk shit). I have no idea when we’ll be able to do that again. 

When Chris joined DM, we began meeting in person to prepare the monthly issue. Each month, we meet at Kolleen’s house. Fritz cooks, we watch Vanderpump Rules, we (again) talk shit. We laugh until our sides hurt. Now we’re not even supposed to leave our homes. 

A month before the lockdown, I gathered with my roommate and several of his friends to watch the Oscars. We cheered like rowdy soccer fans when Parasite took Best Picture. Now the theaters are closed, and all I want to do is go to the movies. 

Two years ago at Easter I immersed myself in water and promised my life to Christ. I spent the night after Easter Vigil last year drinking in the parking lot with friends I had made at church, because we’re Catholics and we do that kind of thing. This year’s Easter Mass will be a solemn, live-streamed service. No beers after, and more importantly, no Eucharist. 

These are the moments which made up my life. And those of you reading have your own communal experiences, unique to your own story and identity, which you are deprived of. All that’s left is to hold onto those memories, because if we just focus on the news, we’re tempted to lose hope. The statistics are grim, and each number is not a number, but a human being, gone forever. And any certainty that we, or those we love, will survive this crisis is a lie we tell to get through each day intact. 

I don’t sleep easily, but then, I never have. A lifetime of anxiety and panic disorder have prepared me for the worst, but there’s an enormity to this pandemic which is hard to process. Most nights I lie awake listening to the soft breathing of my girlfriend and her daughter as they sleep. It’s a reminder of all that I have to hope for, and a reminder of all that I have to lose. 

Matt Guerrero, Founding Editor