Love In The Time Of Corona

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tune in on: Spotify | RSS

Please visit PleasureMechanics.com/care for updated resources on this global emergency – we love you – stay safe, stay connected.

This podcast was recorded on March 11, 2020, after we were recovering from family illness during the first few weeks of the global coronavirus outbreaks. As we watch this global situation unfold, this episode is a call to arms – a reflection on how we all must learn to act wisely, love bravely and care deeply as we face this, together.

We draw upon the wisdom from the community of early AIDS activists who organized and advocated for their community while immersed in the grief and fear of their own losses. ACTUP, an early community care coalition still active in AIDS advocacy, stands for the Aids Coalition To Unleash Power. With wisdom and love we too can unleash our own power and face this epidemic, together.

Be safe out there, and be in touch with us.

Update and Correction: This episode was recorded in the very early days of the Coronavirus pandemic, and we inaccurately called it “like a flu virus” Coronavirus is not the same as the “flu” virus, and it was inaccurate to name it such. The episode was edited and corrected to prevent misinformation. Big love to @CazKillJoy for the callout and correction! Check out their powerful resource guide for those of us with chronic illness facing this pandemic.

Public Health & Care Work Wisdom Resources

FlattenTheCurve.com – Easy to understand, evidence based best practices for minimizing risk for all

Care Work: by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Prentis Hemphill on Contagion, Consent and Connection

---

Podcast Transcript for episode #368: Love In The Time Of Corona

Chris Rose (00:00):
Welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose (00:05):
I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose (00:06):
We are the pleasure mechanics, and on this podcast we have explicit, honest conversations about sex, love, bodies and beyond. Come on over to pleasure mechanics.com to find our complete podcast archive, over 360 episodes waiting for you and organized by topic in our index, so you can dive in. And definitely head to pleasuremechanics.com/free to join our free online course and go a little deeper with us.

Chris Rose (00:42):
We are back. We had a really intense February of illness, and our whole family was ill and it was persistent. Our daughter was out of school for over a month, and we are now returning to you strangely in a new world, in the era of the Coronavirus.

Chris Rose (01:11):
We are recording in the early days of March, and at this time of recording, this is now being called a global pandemic, but we are still in early days. But we, as we return to this podcast, we, of course have a document with hundreds of topics about sex and fucking and orgasms and ejaculations and erections and all kinds of thing and love and being a longterm couple and all sorts of things we want to talk to you about. And how could we talk to you about anything but this right now?

Charlotte Rose (01:45):
This is top of mind for so many people around the globe right now, and we have people listening all around the world. So we just wanted to speak to this.

Chris Rose (01:55):
And as I was approaching this podcast, we’ve been sitting with it for a few days, as we’ve recovered ourselves and you still may hear some scratchiness in our voice, and we do want to thank you by the way, for your patience as we didn’t produce a new podcast episode for weeks on end. We love being with you week to week and having this ongoing conversation over the years with so many of you, and we appreciate all the emails that came in out of concern when we were ill.

Chris Rose (02:26):
As we got ready to record a new episode and started thinking about where do we pick up this conversation about pleasure, about orgasms, about love, about mindful sex, all of the things we talk about on this podcast, the Coronavirus global pandemic emerged over the past few weeks. Just as our family was regaining health and our voices and sending our daughter back to school, schools were being shut down. Entire countries are in quarantine and we have a global pandemic, a global pandemic of a virus – but also a pandemic of fear, a pandemic of fear, of social isolation and of mistrust, anxiety, worry.

Chris Rose (03:17):
And, we in this conversation, without bypassing anything that is true right now, we want to pave the way back to love. How do we use this moment to source, generate and share more love with one another and more care, because, we’re going to need it.

Chris Rose (03:39):
So we’re calling this episode love in the time of Corona. Love in the time of Corona, both as a nod, a bow to the great novel, Love in the time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but also love in the time of Corona because we believe love is going to quite literally be the medicine that sees us through this.

Chris Rose (04:04):
And we don’t say that in a trite, flippant way. What we want to explore in this episode is how if we center love and care and compassion, instead of fear and mistrust and anxiety, how that actually prepares us to survive this together.

Chris Rose (04:24):
All right, so deep breaths. Let’s fill those big healthy lungs with oxygen. Let’s first acknowledge all of the people already impacted by this disease, all of the people already deceased, all of the people already infected and suffering with this disease, all of their loved ones, all of the caregivers, all of the emergency and medical professionals who are working their asses off right now. So let’s just hold some love for them as we get started in this conversation.

Chris Rose (04:55):
And let’s get started by acknowledging what is real for so many of us. So many of us are suspended in a state of panic and fear and worry right now. Basically, in every city around the world and spreading now out into the surrounding areas of those cities, this virus, the Coronavirus that’s causing COVID-19 is what most people are thinking about. And what a moment where we have a global moment of shared awareness, but it is an awareness of fear of anxiety.

Chris Rose (05:33):
And we have seen this before, and one of the things I wanted to bring to this conversation was all of the wisdom that has been shared with me in my conversations with my gay elders. I lived in San Francisco and I had a lot of older gay friends, and I worked for Joseph Kramer who was on the front lines of this. And the conversations I had with them about how their community survived the first years of the AIDS epidemic will inform this conversation.

Chris Rose (06:06):
And I want to draw from the wisdom of that community that ran one of the most successful public health campaigns while they were in the midst of their community epidemic. While they were saturated with fear, with anxiety, with grief and mourning, they activated themselves and organize themselves into a force of love and care and compassion, not only on the front lines for those that were ill, but socially with social awareness around the virus, and politically to get laws changed to create more care and health care and rights for their community that was in a crisis.

Chris Rose (06:48):
So all praise to the AIDS activists that show us that this is possible. It is possible to survive this, and not only survive this, but use this moment to come together, care for one another so deeply, that culture itself is transformed by that care. Okay.

Charlotte Rose (07:13):
Yeah. And what we’re seeing now is the early stages of this virus spreading, and the anxiety and fear is so high. We see people panicking and shopping and collecting food and resources, which makes sense. But with that there are also waves of social mistrust, and fear, and racism emerging that we need to be aware of, and try and calm and shift and change, as we move into caring for ourselves and our communities and those that are really important to us.

Chris Rose (07:50):
And so what we’re seeing is an accelerated version of what we have seen in other virus pandemics. And it makes sense that everything is speeding up. Medicine itself, science itself has sped up. And so from the first illness with this virus, to naming the virus that was causing the illness and having its genetic map was only a matter of weeks.

Chris Rose (08:13):
And the panic and the fear has also sped up, partly because of social media, and also partly because of global communication, but also because this is a fast moving thing. This is just this past month, and our immediate reaction has been one of fear and panic. “Let’s hoard resources. Let’s all wear masks improperly.” We’re acting in a panicked way, for the most part.

Chris Rose (08:43):
What we need to do is, as quickly as all of this is moving, shift that into knowledge-based wisdom, and that knowledge-based wisdom will allow us to act with more care and compassion towards ourselves and those around us, who are going to start being affected by this illness.

Chris Rose (09:04):
What I mean by this is when we are in fear and in panic, we do things that don’t make sense. We act inappropriately to the situation. We feel overwhelmed, we feel flooded, we feel our nervous system freaking out into survival mode, and we start doing things. It’s like anything to survive. And this is why people’s news feeds have been flooded with misinformation in everything from the hippy dippy like, “Just eat more garlic and you’ll be fine,” to gargle with bleach and we see images of parents like Lysoling down their kids, the inappropriate use of these amazing tools we have.

Chris Rose (09:43):
So what we can learn here, like from the AIDS epidemic for example, it was in the first few years they treated this like it was a flu illness. Everyone was wearing hazmat suits, but as the knowledge became more accessible that this was a bloodborne illness, we could take off the hazmat suit, and start touching the AIDS patients as they were dying.

Chris Rose (10:08):
Once we knew it was not skin to skin transmitted, once we knew it was not transmitted through sharing drinks, and we all kind of remember this AIDS education that was mobilized, like, “Here are the ways you can catch AIDS, and here are the HIV and here are the ways you cannot.” All of that organization, all of that community education was mobilized from the gay community, itself. As it was being stricken with this, flyers were being xeroxed, handmade [inaudible 00:10:39] were being created. Meetings were being organized in the bath houses, and community activists were starting to tell people what they needed to know to stay calm and not panic.

Chris Rose (10:54):
And that’s what we need now, and we have this information just as rapidly as this is all emerging. And so on the show notes page, I’m going to share some of my favorite links that I’ve been gathering that really just lay out what do we know from the science evidence based approach to this virus spreading, what do we know, what are best practices and we can translate those best practices into wise action.

Charlotte Rose (11:24):
The action that each of us take is going to be different, depending on our risk factors or the people that we are in close contact with. We need to hold the complexity that this is a virus that will affect people differently.

Charlotte Rose (11:36):
So for some people they may need to take sick time off and that will create lost income, which will have a certain impact. And for somebody else it could be really life threatening. So we have to hold all of that.

Chris Rose (11:49):
So I want to introduce here the term community care, the idea of care webs and care networks. And this comes to us, both from AIDS activism but also from the disability justice activism and movement over the past few decades. And what this calls on, is this very real human truth that we each have different strengths, assets, weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

Chris Rose (12:20):
So in a moment like this, and I want to acknowledge here again what makes this different from the AIDS virus, and in many ways more scary and more serious, I have to say, is that this is not a bloodborne illness like AIDS.

Chris Rose (12:39):
And so it’s actually way, easier to catch. And right now just to say like the global estimates is that most people will be exposed to this. So we will all be reckoning with this, and this is why we had to bring this into the conversation, and how it has everything to do with our sex lives and our love lives, and we’ll keep bringing that in.

Chris Rose (13:01):
But one of the things I want to acknowledge here, we all have different strengths. We all have different vulnerabilities. So as you said, someone might have an awesome immune system, be really young and healthy, but their restaurant shuts down for closures, or they miss event income and that has devastating effects. Whereas someone else might have all the money in the world, but exposure to a virus could cause devastating illness or death.

Chris Rose (13:26):
And with that knowledge, with acknowledging that truth that yes, we all have vulnerabilities and yes we all have strengths and assets to bring to this. We activate what we call a care web, a care network where we can share both resources and care work. We share what we have to bring to the table, and we share our needs and vulnerabilities and ask for the help we need.

Chris Rose (13:51):
And communities of chronically ill and disabled folks, and people with HIV and AIDS have had to do this out of a survival in a culture that does not provide basic accessibility and care for a lot of people. But there is wisdom and there’s so much knowledge born out of these communities that have had to fight for their own survival. People are now like, “Oh my God, how do I stay at home for a few weeks?” There are a lot of people who are housebound all the time, and they have something to teach us about how to live at home well.

Chris Rose (14:28):
But for all of us, what this means is looking around us, and becoming really honest about what is your care web, where do you fit into that, what are your strengths and vulnerabilities in this moment, who are around you, what are their strengths and vulnerabilities, and how do you activate that web?

Chris Rose (14:47):
Now’s a great time to send emails to all the elderly people you know and love. Just check in on them. “I’m here. I’m thinking about you. I love you. Let me know what’s going on. Let me know if you need anything.”

Charlotte Rose (14:57):
Do you need anything?

Chris Rose (14:58):
Do you need or want anything? Our good new friend introduced this addition to it. Do you need or want anything? Because maybe what they want is social connection, and this is going to bring us to our next point. But we all need to be looking around us, activating our care webs, finding our strengths, like really digging deep and like, what are you bringing to this? What are your strengths, what are your resources, what have you hoarded, whether that be toilet paper and supplies that you might want to share with your elderly neighbors, or maybe you have hoarded health, and you’re in vibrant health and you’re going to be one of the people delivering meals, because you can handle this virus.

Chris Rose (15:36):
So start really taking inventory of what you have to bring to your care web and what you might need to ask for.

Charlotte Rose (15:44):
So this is about finding the people that you care about, that you love and seeing how you can be in service to them, and what you can ask for from other people. This is about caring and connecting with those we love. And this is so important, because this is a disease that is inviting social distancing. It is asking us to create isolation.

Charlotte Rose (16:07):
And so to counter that we must, it is a human need to be in connection with others.

Chris Rose (16:13):
And we have the technology to do it without exposing ourselves.

Charlotte Rose (16:17):
Exactly.

Chris Rose (16:17):
So just as the erotic massage community learned how to give one another erotic pleasure without exposing themselves to the fluids that carried the virus, and thus created this incredible web of love and pleasure. And Annie Sprinkle in New York city, started hosting healing circles where they shared love and presence and listened to one another as they grieved, but also breathed together and share touch.

Chris Rose (16:45):
We need to figure out how can we deeply connect, while keeping ourselves safe? So social distancing, this is what’s going to be one of the most painful parts of this virus, and I just want to name it now so we are prepared for it and we can start strategizing together. Social distancing, both because workplaces and schools will be closed, cities and countries are and have been and will continue to be quarantined, and we will be asked to stay at home.

Chris Rose (17:15):
Not because you yourself might get sick, but because you might be a carrier for the virus that exposes the vulnerable populations. And when this kind of virus that is so nasty gets exposed to such a wide, when we talk about vulnerable populations, that’s elderly, but that’s also the chronically ill, like me. So I also want to say you’re ableism is showing if in these conversations you’re like, “Well it only affects the old people, so fuck them.”

Chris Rose (17:46):
It affects old people, people with chronic illness, people with organ transplants, all sorts of immunosuppressed people, immunosuppressed children. And no one should have to justify their humanity to be counted here.

Chris Rose (18:01):
Onwards, we are going to be asked to socially isolate, either because we are actively sick and thus need really intense quarantine, or because your whole town is kind of on lockdown and you’ll be asked just to stay home as much as possible. And there is social isolation in the fear and anxiety about how this is being transmitted. And so the masks we’re seeing people wear improperly, the gloves, we are becoming touch phobic at a time when isolation and loneliness are already being named as public health crises.

Chris Rose (18:39):
So what is the medicine for this? How do we leverage this moment? I want us to look around and first name the fact that we’re all interconnected. We see it now, with like no rose colored glasses needed. It’s not like, “Oh, we’re all one, kumbaya.” We are all one species on this globe.

Charlotte Rose (19:02):
We see how interconnected we all are. It’s amazing.

Chris Rose (19:04):
Phew. We’re a fast moving species, like we are one organism.

Chris Rose (19:11):
Okay. Reigning it in, time to unify, time to look around and be like, Wow, I’m really deeply connected. I am never alone.” So even if you’re in social isolation, even if you’re in quarantine, you are as connected to the entire human species as the rest of us. We are all one in this, and you have your place in that. So welcome to humanity. We see it now as this global species, and we all need each other.

Chris Rose (19:36):
We’re all going to need each other in these really intense ways. And so, one of the counters for this, and we’re going to start with communication, and digital technology is amazing. Thank God for video conferencing and email and all of those things right now, right, while we still have them, satellites, please stay up.

Chris Rose (19:58):
We all need to reach out to each other. So we’re socially isolated. Let’s activate these technologies we have, and go through your contact list and text everyone you know. Think about everyone you know, start doing age reverse process. Everyone you know who’s 70 and up, write to first, and then go into the sixties, the fifties.

Chris Rose (20:20):
Think about the people you know and love, maybe a professor from college you haven’t talked to in 20 years, or the guy that works at the grocery store that you really like. Next time you’re in there be like, “Fred, how are you? I’m thinking of you. Stay safe out there buddy.” It is time to make deeper contact with one another.

Chris Rose (20:44):
And in some ways, we can use the technology to go global and really love and like tell one another, “we’re thinking,” but it’s also going to have to go really local and this will be a challenge for us, and in time where many of us don’t know our neighbors. Do you want to introduce yourself to the people that live around you or not? We’re all going to have to make these decisions, but let’s really approach this with a wisdom that if we are being told to socially isolate, we must counter with more connection, with more love, with more deliberate acts of social connection, sharing the emotions we’re all feeling in this moment.

Chris Rose (21:24):
Get on a zoom call with your four besties, and feel this together. Talk about the anxiety you’re having about your aging parents. Talk about what’s going on. This is a time to not isolate and lock down your emotions and feelings and feel alone, because actually this is a time where we’re all feeling the same thing together.

Chris Rose (21:45):
So how do we feel that? Audrey Lord talks about the erotic as feeling deep feelings together, and even this can be deeply felt, and yes can even be felt as erotic, because we are touching the core of life here, right? We are talking about our own survivability, which in many ways strips the sexuality out of the room. How many of us have been horny in the past few weeks? I’d actually love to hear that. How is this impacted your gender? Some of us might be fucking like it’s the end of the world, and we kind of want to talk about that too. How do we leverage eroticism right now? How do we flood our bodies with feel good hormones from orgasms that actually strengthen our immune systems, because fear and isolation depress our immune systems.

Chris Rose (22:38):
So even if we’re just talking on a scientific, epidemiological public health level right now, in our social isolation, we should all be having a lot more orgasms, a lot more touch with those of us who we are in a shared biosphere with. If you are in home lock down with the person you love, now is a great time to be deeply loving and touching one another, safely with protocol.

Chris Rose (23:04):
How do we do this? What are our survival strategies to get through this, loving and caring for one another deeply and sharing the fear and grief that is here and coming?

Charlotte Rose (23:17):
And I’ll add to that when we’re at home, how can we be kind and loving and caring to ourselves? How can we meet the other people that we are living with if we are not feeling like having wild crazy sex because we are feeling stressed? Can you cuddle on the couch and give one another a hand massage? How can we let ourselves touch and be touched, and connect and increase the amount of oxytocin in our system so that we can counter the fear that is everywhere? How can we intentionally make ourselves feel better in ways that feel authentic and right to you, whatever that is?

Charlotte Rose (23:56):
There is so much fear and anxiety that is everywhere right now. So trying to find ways where we can come back to a moment of calm in our own bodies, in our own homes, reset ourselves to a state of feeling loving and caring and connected-

Chris Rose (24:12):
… and safe, right?

Charlotte Rose (24:13):
… and safe.

Chris Rose (24:14):
We’re not feeling safe in the world. That’s part of the masks and the gloves, is that the panic responds to not feeling safe. And when we come home to one another or to ourselves, our sanctuary, how do we restore a sense of safety? And again, this is using the knowledge we have, developing protocol, and using that protocol and trusting yourself so then you feel safe. Right? So this is like using condoms to fuck.

Chris Rose (24:39):
It’s like if we use the tools we have, we can then return a sense of safety, or at least risk management, risk reduction. And that’s the other huge lesson is no one is safe from this. We are in a global communal practice of risk reduction. And there’s, communities that know a lot about this.

Chris Rose (25:00):
And so, I’ll link again to what are the practices that when you come home it’s going to now be, they’re going to be rituals of kind of like stripping down. And Charlotte, you actually, you have a lot of wisdom for this, because you lived with a sick partner in a state of fear and anxiety and had to return yourself to love constantly for years. Thank you. Like, right, you were a caretaker of the person you loved. But also you’re a little germ-phobic and a lot of the practices you have been doing naturally, are now being suggested.

Chris Rose (25:38):
So things, like Charlotte has indoor clothes and outdoor clothes. So she comes home from the outdoor world, and she strips down, a glorious moment, I might add. She strips down and she gets in indoor clothes. And those are the outdoor clothes, and they get washed and they’re going to be washed more often now.

Chris Rose (25:55):
We have a lot of insight to this because we were erotic masseurs, touching thousands of peoples, of genitals. So protocol becomes really important. How can you do that without risking transmission? You use protocol, gloves, hand washing protocol, but you learn to use them properly, right?

Chris Rose (26:13):
So as sluts at sex parties, with all of our trainings, I learned how to use gloves and lube and all of the tools so I could put my hands in 10 people in one night with zero risk of transmission. And I could have fun within that, without spinning out into anxiety.

Chris Rose (26:33):
And so using the tools we have properly, and this is why I’ll rail on the masks one more time. Masks are really important tools that are now in shortage, but because people aren’t using them properly, they’re actually increasing the risk of transmission. Just like wearing two condoms increases the risk of that condom breaking. Two condoms is not better than one. A mask worn improperly, is not better than no mask at all.

Chris Rose (27:00):
And so what we need to do is come into real alignment with what are the protocols and strategies that we can trust, because they’re evidence based, like we trust them. And then with that trust, we can relax.

Chris Rose (27:13):
And this is where it’s kind of deeply erotic, folks. Like, just like to do a big SM scene, you need to have enough trust that you can relax into the intensity. We’re going to all have to generate practices that allow us to find safety and refuge within this viral crisis.

Chris Rose (27:32):
Another big lesson I want to highlight from the AIDS epidemic and the community response to that epidemic, when the president of the United States was unwilling to say the word AIDS for years, while tens of thousands of people were being infected, the community that was burdened most by this virus, who were holding group funerals, who had dozens of friends in the hospital at once, they were the very people that mobilized into the activists, that in many ways got control of this virus. And it’s been named now in retrospect, one of the most effective public health campaigns.

Chris Rose (28:15):
And one of the big groups to form was a group called ACT UP. And what that stands for is the AIDS coalition to unleash power, ACT UP, the AIDS coalition to unleash power. And they hosted amazing protests and demonstrations and brought public art into it, and social awareness campaigns pre-internet, I add. And they put their lives and bodies and souls into advocating for their own community, for saying, “People are sick. We need medical care, we need more access to pharmaceuticals, we need faster drug approval processes. We need policy for the care that this crisis demands.”

Chris Rose (29:09):
And this is a moment, where globally we will see how government responds to this global crisis, creates disparate results for its citizens. I hope that especially, here in the United States, there is a huge movement born out of this for healthcare, for all, for recognizing that health is public. It’s a communal group event, and it is not something to allow private companies to hoard billions on.

Chris Rose (29:41):
This is just wisdom, based on what this public crisis demands, and healthcare in this country has been a crisis for a long time, but I hope the scale of this will accelerate the conversations about recognizing that health care and the love and care that is manifest in healthcare, it’s too easy to think about insurance companies and pharmaceuticals. And as a type 1 diabetic, insulin dependent, I am now relying on pharmaceutical companies and my health insurance, which just got incredibly more expensive.

Chris Rose (30:18):
By the way, please support us at pleasuremechanics.com/love. I am so aware of this in my own life, that to keep loving my family, to keep loving the people in my life, to show up for you all on this podcast, week after week I need medicine. I need care. And that’s not a character flaw. It’s time to stop treating healthcare like something people need to earn.

Chris Rose (30:46):
Healthcare for all allows all of us to show up with all of our strengths, and all of our assets for one another. And this is another huge lesson out of the chronically ill community, is some of the people who are struggling with the most intense disabilities have such incredible offerings. And if we give them access, if we give them the care to live, we then gain access to their offerings, right?

Chris Rose (31:16):
Community care, and this is going to become so visceral in this pandemic. It’s going to become so clear, crystal clear how we care for one another, who has access to care and who does not. And I hope and I pray that we all can generate way more, and I think maybe next week this has gone long enough, next week, let’s talk about generating love, what that means, what are the practices there?

Chris Rose (31:45):
How do we generate quite physically on a very practical level? How do we generate more love to share with one another as medicine? Love, meaning attention and care and presence, just connecting with someone and being like, “I feel you. You feel me? We’re feeling this together.” That is love. That is medicine.

Chris Rose (32:09):
Love is medicine. Cooking for one another and using our time and resources to nourish one another’s bodies into wellness, because illness often, what it needs most is rest, nourishment, care, tenderness, time. How do we give that to one another? How do we generate that for one another?

Chris Rose (32:30):
So I think this has gone on long enough. Love in the time of Corona, part one perhaps. I’m going to throw this back to Charlotte to bring us home with some love here, but I do want to say, we are here for you. We can keep doing our job from our home, and we will keep doing it as best, as we can. Please connect with us at pleasuremechanics.com. Please connect with us at pleasuremechanics.com/love, and show us some love, so we can keep being here for you. And talk to us.

Chris Rose (33:05):
We’re going to keep this conversation going. We’re going to keep talking about sex and pleasure and love and relationships, like all the things that we’ve been talking about. And I don’t think we’re going to rename the show, How to Fuck at the End of the World. But we’re going to be talking about how to be in this together, fully as erotic beings, as sexual beings, as feeling beings, as emotional beings. And we are here with you. All right. Charlotte, how do we move in this from fear and anxiety back home into love and compassion?

Charlotte Rose (33:43):
I think we see that we are in a time of fear and anxiety, and that it is an active practice to shift ourselves into a state of love. And from that state to take action, to care for ourselves, to care for the family, or the people that we are living with and then to care and connect with those that we love and care about, and want to be safe and well, and those that are immediately around us that might need our care.

Charlotte Rose (34:12):
So we activate ourselves as agents of care, kindness, connection and love. We educate ourselves and we take informed action. And that in and of itself, is medicine. That is helpful to our systems and to our communities of care. So let us remember, we really truly are deeply connected as a globe. This shows us this. Let us register and notice that our wellbeing is literally tied up with individuals that are on the other side of the globe that we will never know or meet.

Charlotte Rose (34:45):
We truly, deeply, literally are a connected unit on this globe. And so how do we act accordingly? How do we let this moment change our consciousness that we are a globe, and we need to take care of one another urgently? So let us do this. Let us do this together. We need each other. We need each other. Let us dissolve the illusion that we are individuals that can only take care of ourselves, and that is what will make life work. That is a story that has to just be dissolved and go. We are a community, and we need to take care of each other. Let’s do our best.

Chris Rose (35:28):
Here, here. So let us know. We are a community too, this pleasure mechanics community. You all don’t know each other, but we are connected through this conversation. We weave your emails and questions and testimonials into everything we do. So we are also one pulsing community.

Charlotte Rose (35:48):
So we are aware that people are isolating at home. People are staying at home, and we believe that touch is so important for your emotional state, and for your physical state. So we want to make sure that as many of you as possible have access to our courses, to be able to support you in getting through this time. We want you to feel supported and cared for by us and to generate the ability to be able to love and support yourself and your lovers.

Chris Rose (36:24):
Join us. Join us at pleasuremechanics.com. Check out our online courses. Use the code care, C-A-R-E for 50% off, and we’re just going to keep this sale open until you know this crisis is over, until the Corona crisis is over, maybe until we have a vaccine, maybe forever. I don’t know.

Chris Rose (36:45):
And we have always had, and I will reinstate here a policy that we want everyone who is ready to explore our courses, we want you to have access. We never want finances to be a barrier. So as always this has always been true, but as always, if you want in on our courses, and even with the 50% off discount code, they’re still inaccessible to you, we try to keep our prices as low as possible so we can keep the lights on and serve you. If it’s still inaccessible to you, just email me. Just be in touch and say, “hi.” You don’t have to explain your situation. Just say, “hi.” You want in. We’ll work it out. We always do. All right.

Chris Rose (37:23):
We do not want to be running a Corona sale. We want to acknowledge that our resources are available to you. We want to make them accessible. We want people to come home into their bodies, and touch one another with love and tenderness now more than ever. So let’s do this together. Care for 50% off.

Chris Rose (37:43):
We’re going to trust, it’ll work out for us longterm. And we’re going to explore as a community how we can come home to pleasure, how we can use pleasure to generate love and energy to get through this. We say pleasure is fuel. Now more than ever, we need to explore this together. So let’s do this as a community. Use the code, care for 50% off. Email us if you need more access, and let’s be in this together.

Charlotte Rose (38:11):
And we’ve just made a commitment to ourselves, to each other, and now to you that 1% of everything we generate, not just from that code, but from everything we will be sharing with an organization that is focused on community care, so whatever is most urgent at the time.

Chris Rose (38:29):
And again, we’ve been doing that already. I really believe that the only function of generating resources is to live and love one another, and then to share it with others. So we’ve always tried to be generous as this business-

Charlotte Rose (38:44):
… grows.

Chris Rose (38:44):
… just grows, and has just begun to really full-time support us, is the truth of it too. While we’re all being vulnerable in the time of Corona together, like this business is just starting, after 13 years, to be enough income to support us in a pretty modest lifestyle. So we do need your support. We need your love to keep our lights on. And this is now true for all of us, right?

Chris Rose (39:09):
We’re going to figure out that we are a web of care and there’ll be a give and receiving flow that will be more and more visible between us. It’s already there. It’s always been true. It’s how humans survive. It’s going to become more palpable.

Chris Rose (39:24):
So let’s feel into it and become a community of radiant beings of love, and calm, and care for one another and for the world right now. Yes?

Charlotte Rose (39:38):
Yes.

Chris Rose (39:39):
I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose (39:40):
I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose (39:41):
We are the pleasure mechanics.

Charlotte Rose (39:43):
Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure and good health.