Mia Schachter

Written by Mia Schachter. Photo by Susan M. Gordon. I went to the doctor last week. My body was screaming at me not to. I thought of my cat’s reaction to her carrier because of her own medical trauma; she knows we’re going to the vet and her whole body spasms in resistance (unlike her calm, healing body against my abdomen right now, her purr penetrating to my bones). I was my cat that day, but I was also my own parent, determining that going to the doctor was in my body’s best interest.

Can pornography be art? I circle that line on a page of my script for “Muse” — the new feature, now-turned multi-season series by Kayden Kross for Deeper.com — as I wait for my daily COVID-19 swab. It’s one of 600 lines I’ll say in Season One of this innovative project and my seventh swab in eight days. There will be more. That question is the script’s most important one; it is central to every storied vine.

This lockdown has been trying for most of us. We can’t work, socialize or exercise the way we are used to, we face career and financial uncertainty, we lost access to things we love (for me, opera and meeting my D&D homies), we have been stuck in our homes without travel and most difficult of all, I think, is that we don’t know what is going to happen next. But for me, some good has resulted from the lockdown.