The Joy of Unmasking in Florida

On my cab ride from the airport, the driver tells me he thinks it’s a shame, that according to him, many women in Miami choose not to breast feed because they don’t want their titties to drop. Sensing my discomfort, he transitions to his dislike of gay people. He quotes passages from the bible and earnestly asks why I think his middle daughter still has no children or boyfriend to speak of. I was in Florida.

Despite the fact that our views on literally everything (except our mutual dislike of know-it-alls) differ dramatically, I had to admit this was the most colorful cab ride I could recall in a while. In Canada, most of my Uber rides include characteristic silences truncated by EDM or worse, public radio, and of course, the odd complaint about the weather— “Snow in April?!” The rather muddied territory of identity politics was unheard of, if not unofficially forbidden.

I didn’t notice at first. My thimble of water courtesy of Air Canada had left me rather parched and dizzy. In the hotel lobby, encumbered with luggage and sweat, I made my way to the elevator and that’s when I came to. The old familiarity of seeing chapped lips, freckled chins, a Cupid’s bow: nobody was wearing masks.

My Canadian mind was blown. I just didn’t get it. But then I remembered this was Florida. I didn’t have to get it. I removed my mask and boarded the coffin-sized elevator with maskless strangers.

I guess this was freedom.   

Had I lost my mind? Entirely possible. I adapted to Florida’s unofficial no mask policy with shocking ease. I don’t expect other Canadians to understand. Something came over me. Was it the humidity?

When I walked into the CVS utterly maskless, flanked by a teen in a Guns Make Me Happy shirt and a man watching Fox News on his iPad without headphones, a strange feeling of relief came over me. It was bizarre and wholly unexpected coming from an NDPer of the great white north who just weeks ago could have been found at a Wet’suwet’en solidarity rally.

Me! A Canadian who just wants to shut up and do what they’re told. Me! The person who frequently forgoes their own safety for fear of offending someone. Me! The person who has already started Googling about the fourth booster. What could possibly be comforting about these gun-loving-Fox-watching-bald-eagle-worshipping-maskless Floridians?!

Was it their bold refusal to comply with CDC health advisories? Was it their love of individual rights and freedom? Or was it merely the predictability of their behaviour? Was it a comfort just knowing there would inevitably be an anti-masker from Florida on my flight who would be dragged off the plane?

Was it the familiarity of what we have come to expect from the right? Is it possible too, that my leftist ‘radicalism’ was now a point of fondness for them? Perhaps my cardboard Defund the Police and ACAB signs had become endearing in the same way their appropriation of Fred Perry fashion had endeared me? Or did I admire their brazen disregard of rules and mistrust of government and secretly wish it for myself?  

It was, admittedly, all of the above.

Let me clarify. I do not want to cause a scene. I’m a Canadian, which means I’m a vegetarian who has eaten pork tenderloin at a Christmas dinner for fear of rocking the boat. In other words, I’d rather swallow glazed non-kosher pig flesh than voice my personal opinion in a public forum. So, will I continue to wear a mask and get COVID boosters and follow all the regulations put forth by my government?

Of course I will.  

Will I also continue to have illicit steamy humid fantasies of my brief maskless time in Florida, where, maybe in that fantasy I demand a meat-free moussaka and yell at somebody in public at the top of my lungs for no reason?

Of course I will.

The unabashed-ness of America’s right—particularly from a Canadian lens—is something to behold. Perhaps it isn’t exactly the flavour I’m looking to bring home. I mean, realistically it wouldn’t make it through customs. But perhaps there is a lesson here—wedged somewhere between the no masks and the refusal to stand in *clearly marked* line-ups.

On the plane ride home there was an announcement. A few passengers on our flight had tight connections. Everyone needed to remain seated so those passengers could disembark first. And sure enough, as soon as the seat belt sign blinked off, about half the plane stood up like total jerks and started futzing with the overhead bins.

Meanwhile the passengers with connections languished at the back of the plane, unable to get off. They were glassy eyed, strained, and worried. Some of them had kids hanging off their weary limbs.

Like a decent human being, I remained seated, flashing the connection passengers sympathetic glances and quiet grunts of displeasure. But then, something came over me. I fumed. (I really think in hindsight it was the humidity). I started hollering at the jerks in the front. “Hey!! Let them through!!” Suddenly, I had the intensity of an unhinged anti-masker at a Trump rally. “MOVE!!!!!”

They made it through! And I got my first—and realistically last taste of yelling in public.

I’m going to miss Florida.