I wonder what John B is doing right now

 And then when you find yourself writing about something as seemingly simple as your first car, that magenta Saab that you've written about a million times, the lemon that dad insisted on because of the great deal he was getting for a foreign car perched for early birds like you on the corner lot of that used car place on Sawtelle that you named after Magenter from the Rocky Horror Picture Show and that broke down on nearly every hill, miraculously making it all the way to The Evergreen State College, only to die in the rain forest upon arrival

and when you are halfway through writing about this for the who knows how manyth time, you find yourself back there, in 1988, driving to West Hollywood with Susan to John B's apartment  and writing about all that went down, the dream and the tragedy, both as you now see it for reasons you never saw before, and somehow, you are liberated and brought back to life, long after the last time you saw John B, long after Majenter went unwillingly for a dollar into the arms of your exotically gorgeous roommate, your lover-not-lover, girlfriend-not-girlfriend who damn, if only I was into women... and the deeper you wrote, the more you began to wonder about her, and John B, and so many others you have wondered about during Covid: are they still here?