PANPOCALYPSE

At the intersection of disability, queerness, and the pandemic, one woman’s meditation on loneliness and connection.

Originally serialized in the early months of the pandemic, this work of autofiction is narrated by Orpheus (sometimes called Carley and, briefly, Charlie), a queer disabled professor in her 40s. Orpheus is grappling with twin emotions: a loneliness forced on her by ex-lovers who don’t want to see her and a loneliness forced on her by a pandemic that won’t let her see the ones who do. As she rides through the mostly deserted city on her newly acquired bicycle, she hopes to see friends and her ex-girlfriend Eurydice. What she witnesses is sickness, police brutality, and brief moments of connection between and with strangers. Desperate to touch and be touched, when she gets an invitation through the dating app Lex to an underground club styled after the 1930s Parisian lesbian club Le Monocle, she jumps at the chance to go. Moore has a fascination with time; her nonlinear narrative is peppered with Orpheus' childhood memories of abusive doctors and portals into other worlds and time periods. While Moore does not shy away from the heaviness of her subject matter, the gravity is nonetheless offset by her persistent gentle humor and her optimistic bent: “If nothing else, we have all had to slow down. Some of us had to stop altogether. Sick time is anti-capitalist, revolutionary if you can accept it or even see it. Care and community in the time of the police state are radical acts. Still, to this day.” And while the pandemic permeates every moment of the novel, Orpheus' desperate search for autonomy, relationships, and self-actualization feels perennial.

At once timely and timeless.