The coronavirus pandemic has caused so many abrupt changes in our lives. Social distancing has eliminated dining out and many other fun activities. Stay-at-home orders have strongly encouraged us to remain in our homes unless it is “essential” to go out. In Maryland, Governor Larry Hogan has ordered all “non-essential” businesses to close. Additionally, Governor Hogan has ordered that everyone is to wear a mask whenever they’re out in public, such as while shopping. I find a lot of these new restrictions to be rather draconian, and I have been given no reason to think that these measures will actually accomplish the goals that officials are claiming that they will. I get the sense that the true purpose of these measures, rather than actually accomplishing what they’re stated to accomplish, is “security theater” to make it appear that the government is doing something, even if the measures are totally ineffective. Additionally, unlike other states, Maryland’s mandates have no expiration date, and therefore will continue until explicitly cancelled.
The mask order in particular has not sat well with me. The stay-at-home order has holes in it that are big enough to drive a truck through them. I also work in a so-called “essential” job, so I’m still going out on a regular basis to go to work. However, the requirement to wear a mask or other sort of face covering is killing me.
Truth is, I’m into masks and other PPE in the prurient sense. I love gas masks. I love respirators, particularly those with cartridges. I love rubber gloves. We’ve even suited up in Tyvek for play before. My girlfriend and I both can get off to the sight of each other in respirators and other things of that nature. I’m also into zentai suits. I don’t know if zentai is related to my PPE fetish (since they all enclose part of the body) or if it’s a separate thing, but in any case, face coverings and other PPE turn me on. The first time I helped my girlfriend put on a respirator in preparation for some urban exploring, I quickly became aroused – and she wasn’t even my girlfriend yet at that time. Clearly, we were meant for each other, even though we wouldn’t “officially” be in a relationship for two more months.
In any case, it’s not hard for a trip to Lowe’s or Home Depot to lead to purchases for more prurient purposes. I’ve always been more likely to go to a mainstream store over an adult store for purchases of items that are not specifically made for fetish purposes, if nothing else but for price. I get more for my money buying rope at Lowe’s than it is at the local adult store. If I need something that is more specifically made for fetish purposes, then I will buy it from my local adult store (more often than not from Comfort Zone in College Park), but for things with a primarily vanilla purpose that I use for fetish, I can do better shopping mainstream.
But with Hogan’s mandating that everyone must wear a mask in Maryland, I’m finding myself less likely to mask up at all. I think that the mask requirement is terrible public policy, and have gone out of my way to avoid it. I’ve considered going out and seeing how heavy I can do it on the PPE and get away with it. I’m talking gas masks, gloves, goggles, Tyvek, the works. Kind of similar to the woman in Montreal who dressed in a full latex bodysuit and gas mask to go grocery shopping. But I can’t bring myself to actually go through with it because the requirement has taken much of the joy out of masks. It’s no longer fun. It’s no longer exciting. The novelty of it is gone. It’s not fun anymore if I’m now required to wear one just to go about life. Now, looking at the various PPE that we would use for prurient purposes just makes me sad, as it embodies the way that a virus has upended everybody’s life and caused people to do things that would have never been imagined three months ago. Never did I imagine that people would actually beg their government to order them to stay home and put thousands of people out of work because they work in “non-essential” businesses, ostensibly for their own safety, and then beg for the government to continue to hold them under some sort of quasi-house-arrest while the economy takes a nosedive into recession territory. It’s bizarro world. Now, rather than being a bit turned on from seeing someone wearing a mask, my thoughts are now more along the lines of “take that ridiculous thing off” and quietly making fun of all of the people (too many people) who don’t wear their masks correctly.
However, despite all this, I don’t think that it’s completely killed off my mask and PPE fetish. Sure, I’m kind of turned off by it all right now because of the current pandemic situation (and the sooner that this blows over, the better), but I feel that there is hope. Thinking back recently about a few past situations where I had used PPE for various prurient purposes, I still felt that certain special feeling deep inside my being. So apparently, I am still into it, though I imagine that it will be a while before masks and other PPE regain their novelty again and we can get off to it again.
At this point, though, I just want a return to normalcy. Time heals all wounds, but some wounds will take longer than others to heal.