Phase V: The proper response to a stranger deliberately sneezing on you will once again be a lighthearted “Only in New York!,” instead of the paralyzing fear that you have only seconds left to live.
Phase VI: All of the rich people will come back.
Phase VII: All of the rich people will leave again, upon remembering that August in New York isn’t very pleasant, regardless of whether there’s a pandemic going on.
Phase VIII: It will resume being socially acceptable to remove the words “normally” and “but” from the phrase “Normally, I don’t like Andrew Cuomo, but . . .”
Phase IX: All pledges to start looking for housing options in the suburbs will be completely abandoned and forgotten.
Phase X: CBGB will reopen, but just for three hours, and you’ll only be allowed in if you know the password or are Patti Smith, and no one will tell you the password, so you’ll have to settle for reading tweets about it and pretending you were there.
Phase XI: The standard and appropriate response to the question “How is New York City?” will once again be “Morally and culturally superior to all other parts of the world.”
Phase XII: Talking for more than three hours about how upset the Knicks trading Kristaps Porzingis to the Mavericks made you will no longer be viewed as a sign that you are not focussing on the actual biggest threat to the city.
Phase XIII: That baby shower in Staten Island you really didn’t want to go to and were kind of hoping the pandemic would end up cancelling will officially be allowed to take place. It will be much longer than expected.
Phase XIV: The U.S.N.S. Comfort will return to Manhattan, but, this time, it will be for a giant dance party, at which all attendees are required to be touching at least three other attendees throughout the night.
Phase XV: I guess you can maybe stop doing the 7 P.M. cheer for essential workers? I mean, it’s not like you don’t appreciate essential workers anymore, it’s just . . . well, I don’t know, are we just doing this forever now? No one gets applauded for doing their job every day, do they? Not unless they’re hugely important people, like professional athletes or late-night talk-show hosts or members of Mötley Crüe. You know, on second thought, just keep doing it.
Phase XVI: People will be allowed to enter lotteries for Broadway tickets again. No one will actually be able to go see the shows, but entering the lottery is half the fun, right?
Phase XVII: Giant, apelike creatures will once again be permitted to scale the city’s skyscrapers in tragically misguided attempts to possess the ingénues they have fallen in love with.
Phase XVIII: You will start to run dangerously low on excuses for why you don’t feel safe attending your friend’s improv shows and may just have to admit that you don’t think her troupe is very funny.
Phase XIX: Highly questionable nostalgia for quarantine life will set in as you begin to remember that your life was not exactly perfect when things were “normal,” either. And, now that things are finally close to normal again, all you can do is think about how you should have used your time in quarantine more effectively. You should have written more; you should have read more; you should have got to know yourself and your loved ones better. Instead, you watched “Tiger King.” Twice! And no one even cares about that show anymore! Ugh, what a waste of an opportunity for self-improvement.
Phase XX: The second wave of the coronavirus should begin around this time.
