Chin up, extroverts: we will crowd again!

2020 has been canceled. In unprecedented-in-our-lifetime acts of closure, everything — concerts, parades, sporting events, Broadway, zoos, museums — has temporarily shut down in the name of social distancing. This is a necessary and important effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

2020 is also the year of the introvert. Across the internet, the introvert jokes are coming on strong. “I have been training for this day my entire life,” crow the voices of Homebody Twitter. “Finally,” they say, “something I’m good at: staying at home and avoiding people!”

Then there’s me, an extrovert. As someone who enjoys the discomfort of being compressed by other people — crowded into the back seat of a car or piled by the dozen into a hot tub — mandated social distancing feels unbearable.

I’m not criticizing the measures taken to keep our communities safe: I support the outbreak control efforts; I understand the reasons to distance; I’m complying, staying home. But I’m heartbroken.

I’m not writing to make light of the severity of the virus or the necessity of this distancing. I’m writing to remind everyone that social distancing is not the same as social isolation. I’m writing to mourn the (temporary) absence of corporeal forms in the same physical spaces.

See, the thing about me is, I love a crowd. Crowds are rowdy and joyous and noisy. I love many bodies herded together in contained spaces. I love a spectacle. I love a lot of noise.

There are two places on Earth where I feel able to scream my words without considering a need for silence: mountaintops and large gatherings. Everyone shouts in a crowd, and no one cares. I live for these moments of chaos and disorder and noise: concerts, convention centers, parades, amusement parks, live performances. They are my favorite places on the planet.

The most recent large crowd I was part of was at a Jonas Brothers concert in September 2019. I was in a stadium full of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people — all breathing on one another, pressing into one another. It was messy and rude. It was hot, germy, disgusting.

I understand that for many people, even some extroverts, this kind of hot wild mass of bodies so close together is their version of hell. But to me, it is sacred. To be surrounded completely by other humans, to not want to be anywhere else but where you are — that is holy.

It is nearly spring — my favorite season — and the world is supposed to be coming alive.

Right now, I wish I were in a packed stadium waiting for a live performance to start. Standing in a long queue for a roller coaster. Moshing in the front row of a concert. Jostling against other bodies for a prime piece of sidewalk at a parade. Or even squished too tightly on an airplane, a subway, a train. Anywhere but where I am, which is alone in my house canceling plans.

Here is a sad, heartbreaking fact: Everything ends. The music stops, the lights come on, the confetti falls. People leave sweaty and shaky, strangers again.

After my last concert, I couldn’t stop shivering. It was warm, even in late September, but without the calm, comfortable press of a dozen humans against me I felt cold. Everything ends, even the nights in a crowd that feel like they will last forever.

But this fact also gives me hope. Because yes, everything ends — even pandemics.

So chin up, my beloved extroverts! We will crowd again. I’ll see you there.