Every week the Throughline ran a piece of short fiction by a Bay Area writer. It wasn’t just a way to showcase some of our region’s literary talent as they forecast various visions of our future. We wanted to include fiction as a way to explore some aspects of living during, and through, a pandemic in a way that journalism just couldn’t.
Look at Beth Piatote’s “Level 8 Risk” in our sixth week. Her exploration of humans volunteering to be virus antibody farms is a nightmare scenario that feels a little too possible. Or Yalitza Ferreras’ “Contact Tracer” in our fifth week. Her ending, where a character savored the unexpected, physical touch of a stranger was a poignant moment that spoke well beyond that situation.
Fiction doesn’t just entertain us. When done well it allows us to see the unseen, to imagine the impossible. Our Throughline writers helped us to further understand the surreality of our changing world.
They also inspired us. Some, in more ways than others. Here are a pair of short fiction pieces submitted by Throughline readers.
“2050”
By Monica Tapiarené
I continued walking and saw the digital sign at a local bank:
3:00 PM
3 MARCH 2050
And I felt lonelier.
I walked aimlessly until I arrived at the Walnut Creek Public Library.
It was intact! As if wanting to remain a witness to a past overwhelmed by nostalgia — nostalgia of the time when people would read books and get together to have coffee and a good conversation.
The glass door, that knew me well, welcomed me. The books smiled at me and my eyes, clouded by tears, could hardly discern a silhouette. Ho-ling was sitting on a chair in a corner flooded by the sunrays that filtered through the immense glass wall.
He was reading “The Plague” by Albert Camus. Slowly, he raised his eyes and told me, “I just got here too! I didn’t want to leave home because I was afraid people would still blame me for the ‘Chinese Plague.’”
Monica Tapiarené teaches writing at Los Medanos College and foreign languages at The Lafayette Academy. She lives in Martinez. Find her writing at www.monicatapiarene.net
“VIRTUAL HOST”
By Ken Hogarty
“Better than actual bars,” exclaims Shirley Medina about her experience, orchestrated online by 2022’s award-winning tech site, VIRTUAL HOST. Only food and drinks, delivered through a participating local restaurant for those opting for that extra, weren’t online. “I didn’t have to worry about driving after drinking and didn’t feel threatened if some bozo hit on me,” Medina enthuses. “I was in complete control, and yet free to let go.”
VIRTUAL HOST offers a variety of online experiences, running the gamut from staid trivia games to bar nights, local or random. You can opt for sundry drinking venues, from posh country club to dive bar, from singles bar to neighborhood tavern, from Tahoe marina to SoMa club. Other popular VIRTUAL HOST revelries include bachelor/bachelorette parties, reunions, showers, book club discussions and special-event parties (e.g., birthday, anniversary, graduation, engagement or masquerade — with or without masks). The company also advertises and orchestrates New Year’s, St. Patty’s Day, El Cinco de Mayo, Pride Day, Halloween, Independence Day and Super Bowl parties.
“We started VIRTUAL HOST back in March, 2020, when the COVID-19 shelter-in-place hit. We’ve expanded so much in the two years since,” marvels Connor Ryan, who with his life and business partner, Juliana Wilson, thought they were “making a few extra bucks until things calmed down. We ramped up more during the second and third wave, but thought we’d be out of business with the vaccination.”
Chuckling, Wilson continues, “We assumed that would end our business venture, but we discovered, clearly as others had, that some people preferred social distancing.” Ryan sheepishly offers, “And people can attend from everywhere without inconvenience. Actually, we don’t call it social distancing. We call it physical distancing because our experiences are totally social.”
The young VIRTUAL HOST entrepreneurs, now with a staff of 500, started in April 2020, organizing online bingo and trivia games for seniors. Wilson unmutes, “We did everything ourselves. We located interested groups through Connor’s connections as a teacher and mine with yoga classes. We personally conferenced folks to teach them to navigate Zoom before get-togethers, set up online payments, planned and delivered sessions, hosted all revelries ourselves and followed up.”
“I was using Zoom for classes even before the pandemic,” notes Ryan. “At first, I just helped Juliana get her yoga classes online. Positioning cameras, working PayPal, details like that.” It helped as the service took off that Wilson had tech experience. She had worked for Google before leaving “to do something more personally enjoyable for a few years.” Wilson, says, smiling, “I didn’t think I’d get back into it with my own company and hires.”
Ryan speaks of startup days: “We decided not to do children’s parties. Kids thought parties were classic ‘Brady Bunch’ reruns or school. Weddings were a bit dicey at first, too. Getting the whole license thing resolved. Funerals, too. We’ve renamed them ‘memorials.’”
Wilson defended the number of staff lawyers. Most were hired when Zoom threatened charging fees after VIRTUAL HOST became wildly popular. She hired fellow techies to back up the lawyers. VIRTUAL HOST’s I.T. and legal departments threatened Zoom back that it might create its own delivery platform. One lawyer, however, Ryan’s “Uncle Jake,” had been on board since right after the first bar nights. “Yeah, it was just the two of us hosting early bachelor parties,” Wilson smirks, “but there were complaints I showed too much cleavage as the night wore on.”
In a typical VIRTUAL HOST bar experience, participants gather in different groupings set by the host in various chat rooms during the night. During the last hour, they can return to chat rooms with chosen guests. These chat rooms — music, movie, sports, darts and other game rooms — leave critics wondering about propriety. Ryan scoffs: “If people want private time, they can and do formulate personal plans for later.”
Smiling, Ryan discloses, “We hired English teachers and yoga instructors as hosts when COVID-19 was rampant in the spring of 2020.” Wilson, smiling back in her adjacent Zoom box, adds, “Not that we wanted to replicate ourselves. They’re good at drawing people out.”
Strangest requests? “We’ve tried almost anything, from online protests to political rallies to bedside visits with grandma when she was kicking the bucket,” Ryan says. “We use all kinds of visual and aural enhancements and take more care than new competitors. We prime the pump, getting much useful background information beforehand. My favorite Principal held that the most important work for any meeting happens before. She was right.”
VIRTUAL HOST is right, too. Surprisingly, as a normalcy of sorts has returned, socially distant will remain many people’s preference, even beyond health implications. Shirley Medina clearly agrees: “Criss Jami, with a philosophy I love, says, ‘Telling an introvert to go to a party is like telling a saint to go to Hell.’ VIRTUAL HOST is our Good Place.”
Ken Hogarty, who lives in the East Bay with wife Sally, enjoyed a 46-year career as an English teacher/principal at the city’s Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory. Since, he has had two short stories and numerous satirical pieces (emulating Chronicle icon Art Hoppe) published. Local literary journal Underwood just published his growing-up-in-S.F. memoir, “The Mayor, Mickey Rickey, and the Mole People.”
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September 06, 2020 at 06:00PM
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Reader fiction: Throughline inspires short fiction by Bay Area residents - San Francisco Chronicle
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