VICTORIA – Stephen Thackston, an absinthe aficionado and self-described ‘weird dandy,’ wants the public to know how hard physical distancing has been on the neo-fop community.
“Do you have any idea how many table rapping sessions I’ve cancelled in the last year?” Thackston said, while gently fiddling with a large hollow ring he insisted hasn’t been filled with cocaine since the late 1980s. “Just the other day I had to tailor my new velvet evening jacket myself. I just thank God my cobbler is still working.”
Thackston and the rest of the absinthe drinking community have been meticulous about adhering to both the required and recommended rules about personal contact during the COVID-19 pandemic, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t eagerly awaiting a return to his usual abnormality.
“You don’t spend a lifetime collecting Victorian mourning trinkets without developing a massive respect for modern medicine and the incredible advances in public health we’ve made since then, and I’m certainly not going to put anyone else at risk just because I’m tired of embarking on solo visits to the Green Fairy,” Thackston said.
“Any nocturnal bohemian gathering just wouldn’t be the same if we were to adhere to proper protocols. Have you ever tried to take snuff while wearing a mask? And don’t even get me started on the difficulties of launching into an impromptu performance of one of the plays of Oscar Wilde while staying two meters apart. There’s simply no whimsical sexual tension at that distance.”
“This is regrettably not the time for communal throwback eccentricity or macabre social amusement,” Thackston lamented. “Maybe next year.”
At press time, Thackston had given up on performing a self reading and was very carefully putting the Tower card in place on top of a house of tarot cards instead.
