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My pal Gladys the cat has been visiting me in the backyard since October. We share almost-daily tête-à-têtes of petting, lap sitting, chasing stuff. And then we both move on to the rest of our day with a wave and a promise of more the next. Occasionally, I’ll spot Gladys out the front door stepping along the sidewalk. The first time that happened, she was right outside our patio and I stepped out happy to see her on new turf. She froze, flashed me a look of panicked unrecognition, and did a dash so fast it was like I was going to grab her and throw her into a kitty labor camp where she’d be forced to learn how to swim and endure constant scratching in that place that felt so good you eventually wanted to kill someone. As I stood there watching her tabby tale disappear into the bushes across the street, I was shocked. What the hell? We were such good friends. How could she not know who I was and treat me nice? I rolled the question around and came up with this: who we are in the backyard, metaphorically speaking, is not always who we present ourselves to be once we step out the front door. (I know. I’m at a thought-point where very little actual physical interaction has led to me forming theories based on the flimsiest of premises. If it doesn’t actually break through the ice and drown me, then I go with it.) It’s not like this is a new theory around who we are inside our own homes/minds versus who we present in public/socially, but this past year’s isolation has, I think, brought about an acute sense of what it feels like to be outside among people. What our social responsibilities are to each other (mask up, mutherfukers) and how our interactions with each other have altered (move any closer and I might have to scream).

It’s all incredibly fumbly, this pandemic dance we do. When I walk out the front door these days, not only is the bottom half of my face covered, but it seems to me that my observations—sight and sound—are lasered up as a trade-off. Like how they say when you lose one sense, the others sharpen. (Wonky quote from Neuroscience Institute at Stanford: “Since certain signals will not be reaching the brain, the other senses will expand out of their usual locations in the brain and into the area of the missing sense. Thus, these senses are overrepresented proportionally in people who lack a certain sense.”) So there I am not smelling, not smiling—which I realize is not actually one of the senses—and I’m watching and listening. To be honest, there’s a great relief in not having to smile. To all my urban ladies, how much of a relief is it to not be told to smile by passing strangers? I do feel like a bit of a social outlaw as I pass (very few) strangers on the street and know I can scowl if I want. I’d never dare do that without a mask. People are also avoiding eye contact as if it’s NYC in the bad-old days. It’s a bit of the playbook I learned when I first moved there. I don’t know if it was the era (80’s) or the idea that there are so many people all around that you don’t make eye contact because A) give the people their privacy, B) you are too busy going somewhere/I’m trying to walk here, people, or C) oh shit, that person actually seems bananas so best not to acknowledge unless I’m in the mood to hear about the end of the universe/the elf living in their shoe/the radio waves controlling our thoughts. Currently though, on the flippity-flop, there does seem to be a sense of loss in the manners department i.e., no thank-you’s for holding doors and what-have-you. Maybe because in the early mask-wearing days, everyone’s eyes looked slightly guilty, as if they didn’t want you to think they’d left their house to spread the COVID and would rather you just didn’t even notice they were there. They’d be sure to do the same for you. Now, after thirteen million months of mask practice, folks seem a little more comfortable with smizing.

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Surprisingly (but not), I don’t see so many people out and about during my near-daily run/walks (ralks?) in this land of car culture. If I go early morning or late afternoon, there are the dog walkers and they’re fun, but I’m not one of them. My normal time is elevenish, when the humans are most-probably working. So I pass a lot of houses with no outward signs of life and make a lot of things up about who lives there. What their backyard/inside lives are like. I mean, I can normally see their front yards, so I have something to work with, which I take full advantage of. One place that fascinates me is a house a few blocks away on a corner surrounded by a variety of old Victorians, some classic California stuccos, and a couple of standard-issue Brady Bunch–style places. It’s a clapboard structure and there are chickens roaming the lawn. There are also oversize structures in the shapes of bicycles, windmills, and a giraffe all fashioned from plywood and wire (really truly). I don’t think these lawn ornaments are for the entertainment of the fowls, when I’ve paused to watch them, they seem to take very little to nonexistent interest in anything but pecking the grass, but I have certainly wondered and subsequently made up whole-cloth stories about who lives inside. They are mid-thirties, whimsical, have dreams of living off the land, and are currently pricing out solar panels. I wish them well.

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When I walk past the Southwestern–style adobe place with the Buddha fountain and little free library out front, I know that the dwellers have a vast knowledge of California wine, own a collection of flowing, artisanal silk scarves that they wrap around their slightly mature necks, receive weekly organic CSA produce deliveries, and practice daily vigorous-yet-forgiving yoga, perhaps around their fire pit out back. I have complicated feelings about them.

Of course I’m fully aware that all our neighbors have—if they’ve cared to—created a narrative around Dennis and me with our Biden/Harris banner that went up in 2017 (alright, in end-August) to our funky bicycles to the shoes we wear on our feet. I know Gladys has made a few snap judgements as well. And in that, I realize how our indoor selves have taken on even more partitions as we let people into our homes via technology. I have a friend who I appreciate (for all sorts of reasons) because every time we FaceTime she’s located in a new part of her apartment. Now, I’ve never seen her apartment first hand. One of the things about living in NYC is that you can be fast-friends/love them dearly/know inner-most secrets that neither of you will share with anyone else, yet you’ll have never seen where they lay their heads to sleep just because there are restaurants and studios and other locations that have more room than where you actually live. So anyway, I feel since the pandemic and because I’ve moved across the country, I now have a general sense of her inside vibe. I’ve also pushed into Judy Woodruff’s place and maybe Tom Hanks‘ as well. Yeah, I don’t know them personally, but I can now see what books they read, the kind of flowers they display, and that they have cluttered kitchens just like the rest of us.

As we cautiously negotiate what it may mean to step out our front doors again, ever so slowly, as vaccines roll out, I figure I’ll continue to make plenty of things up about the people around me while still keeping my backyard self somewhat separate from my front-patio person. But the possibility of even entertaining my outfacing iteration at a nice restaurant someday soonish is pretty damn exciting. Here’s to us all moving in that direction together!