(Because when else would this version be read or written?)

Chapter 1: Move to Normal

Thursday, July 1st, 2021, the top of the month, I had just moved into my new apartment on Normal Ave, with the help of 4 friends and 4 different cars full of miscellaneous things people take when they move. I had just experienced a really difficult break up a few weeks prior and was feeling a bit low but optimistic about what my next chapter in life had ahead for me. In my new place I’d call home for several years, I met a whimsically beautiful and friendly British housemate named Zu who not only assured me that life and love was not over for me–as much as I tried to convince her my despair was absolute–and that I really should attend a big 4th of July party that will be filled with lots of really good people, that includes men, who at this part of my story, I believed were absolute garbage and hold humanity back in every way. I told her I’d think about it but I couldn’t promise my attendance.

On Sunday, July 4th, 2021, I was deep into a self-pity party at my mom’s house, watching TV–without my mom, I have no idea where she was but she hates pity parties so it was not surprising that I was alone–and I’m doing the calculations of how worthwhile it would be to attend this 4th of July party with people I don’t know and with one person I met like 3 days ago.

“This might be a good opportunity to get to know my new roommate and her friends,” my optimistic voice says, “but you’ll have so many other opportunities for that,” another voice counters. “But if we don’t like this party we could just fucking leave!” my optimism aggressively says. “Fine! But we leave as soon as it sucks!!” My pity party starts its intermission as I text Zu to double check the address and I rally and head on out! “It’s on my way home after all,” my optimism adds.

I got to the party, it was well in the swing of things, everyone knew each other and everyone also seemed to know that I didn’t know anyone–because they ALL knew each other! But that was not a problem. I was warmly greeted with curiosity and sincerity, until of course someone asked “Oh, are you Aaron’s friend?” and I was like “who’s Aaron?” Others who had overhead this question seemed to gasp from this blasphemous confusion. “Well, if you don’t know Aaron, who do you know?” The surrounding people leaned in to find out who, if not Aaron, could have possibly invited me to this party. “Zu! She's my new roommate, or I’m her new roommate, rather.”

“Ah ok, nice!” the collective reaction, accepting the origin of the outsider, which I didn’t feel like for much longer–maybe Zu was right about these folks, I thought to myself. I shortly found myself chatting in the back room of Castledena–the known name of this house by this crowd–about to head out into the back patio when I got distracted, seeing a really tall, handsome Clark Kent looking fella walk down the upper stairs near the front door to the living room–also noticed he had arrived fashionably late, a very familiar time of arrival. “I’m going to say hi to him,” I promise myself before I leave this party.

The moments between that promise to myself and my first conversation with the Clark Kent guy dissolved into the dimension where time becomes past. I don’t remember how I made my way back up to the living room and next to Austin, but I remember taking the vial of vetiver out of my pocket and asked him “would you like some?” He gave me a smile, both his forearms, and an enthusiastic “yes!”

In our–seemingly brief–time of our first interaction, I tell Austin I’m going to go skating tomorrow and he says, “I have rollerblades!” At this point, I feel it’s safe to assume he wants to hang out again and I also feel open to hanging out with someone 1:1, especially if it involves skating!

“Want to skate with me tomorrow?” I propose.

“YES!” Austin says in that same way he did for vetiver.

We exchange numbers; I put “Vanessa [skate emoji]” on his contact list, and our hangout is set for Monday evening.

Chapter 2: Chevy Chase

Monday evening rolls around, literally, and I meet up with Austin at Chevy Chase Recreation Center. We skate on the wall tennis courts and start to interview each other. I ask very directly, “are you dating?” “No but I’d like to date someone. You?”

“No, not right now. I just got out of a relationship a few weeks ago. I don’t think I’m ready to date, not yet at least,” I admit. A silence filled the air. At this point I see Austin’s hope or investment in whatever our hang out was in his head drop at least 10%. I’m ok with the drop, I just hope he still wants to hang out.

“I want to see you skate at the skate park,” he requests. “Oh? Yeah, let's go!” At this point, I feel like in spite of communicating my emotional unavailability, he still wants to get to know me; I’m feeling hopeful.

We skate over to the skatepark and I instruct him to wait out by the fence, ensuring it’s safest to stay there. He convinces me he understands my instruction so I leave him and start skating around the park ramps and ledges. A few minutes into my skate I notice he’s gone. ‘He’s so tall, how am I not seeing him?!’ I think to myself. Suddenly I spot him at the top of a ramp. “Austin!” I call out urgently. He’s not ready for this, why did he do this?! I thought he wanted to just chill and watch me, is he insane?! Austin doesn’t look towards me. He is completely concentrated on rolling down. I’m too late. Austin rolls down and immediately goes down. I skate over as quickly as I can. “Austin! Are you ok?!”

“You made that look so easy,” he says completely embarrassed and disappointed in himself. “Yeah that whole thing you did is something that takes months to learn!” I emphasize. We decided to put on our shoes and head out. Austin walks me to my car and before I get in I see a couple of guys hang around my car with tools and one of them points out a slight dent on the driver’s side of the door. I validate this observation but then somehow get convinced to pay these guys to fix it and I end up getting talked into paying them $200, meanwhile Austin watches this whole thing and doesn’t intervene–which I weirdly expected him to do and I can see he wanted to as well but refrains from doing so.

“Well, this is not how I expected to spend the evening,” I admit to Austin. “Yeah what a weird situation. Your car looks fixed though,” he says not sure if he means it. “I actually think it really is fixed and I’m surprised I wasn’t completely swindled!” I say, taking the little win of the moment.

“I’m going to go get some dinner, want to come?” I ask. “I don’t think I will tonight, but let's skate sometime.” I didn’t expect a no, but I understood if he was spooked by the no dating interest, the big fall, and the impromptu car repair session. At this point I’m confused if he wanted to see me at all after this interaction and because I was in emotional limbo from my previous break up and all the changes that I’ve been going through, I sorta chalk this up to be a one off kinda story. “Sure, yeah, let’s hang again soon,” I bookend the conversation. We hug briefly and part ways. I get in my car and let my engine run a bit, like usual, before taking off. As I adjust my music and make moves to leave, I see Austin running towards my car from my rearview mirror. ‘Did he forget something?’

“Wait!” he yells. I roll down the window. “Actually, I would love to get dinner, if that's ok?” I immediately feel relieved and rule out the idea that he never wanted to see me again, but I respond, “Yeah dummy, get in the car, I’m hungry!” He laughs and climbs in.

We go to All India Cafe in Glendale and we laugh at everything that happened in the last couple of hours. I look at the time and realize I’m running a little late to Monday Night Hang. “Hey do you want to come to my friend’s house? It’s Monday Night Hang tonight.” “Sure, what’s that?” “It’s a thing I’ve done for over a year straight, every Monday some friends and I meet up and just hang out. “Yes!” he says, with enthusiasm like the skate proposal, like the number exchange, like the vetiver oil offering.

Chapter 3: The In-Between

“I can skate” could more accurately be phrased “I have skates.” I spent the morning wobbling around Echo Park Lake in my old pair of rollerblades to confirm that I could at least stay upright, and made an impromptu trip to the store to pick up some wrist guards. I wasn’t sure if this was a date, but it seemed worthwhile to find out.

Having made a fool of myself on the bowl, and having been caught totally unprepared for the novel social politics of accompanying a new acquaintance through an unexpected car repair scheme, I’d said “Ah thanks, but I think I’ll head out from here,” with the mindset that it’s always wise to leave your audience wanting more. Seeming disappointed by that reply, Ness turned and walked back and got into their car. As though prompted by some external force - perhaps my future self reaching back in time - I had the immediate sense that I was missing an opportunity I ought to have taken. “Actually-” I jogged up behind them. “Yeah, I would love to get dinner.”

What followed in the coming weeks was more and more of inviting each other along to whatever we already had going on. It quickly became our pattern that we would never part ways without knowing the next time we’d see each other. Ness kept showing up to things I attended - first ostensibly as Zu’s guest, then as mine - and I kept appearing places I wouldn’t otherwise, just because Ness would be there too. (Our first photo taken together was a group shot at a Little Tokyo dance skate meetup.)

I knew very quickly that Ness was one of the world’s very special people. A kind of shooting star that had streaked through my orbit, with a shininess and gravitational pull that demanded my attention. A friend for life, I thought. Someone who I’d want my kids to know.

Unsurprisingly, a whole lot of other people cherish Ness too, and friendship with them unlocked a world of top-tier new chums. There’s a mathematical thought experiment called the Friendship Paradox, which observes that the average person’s average friend has more friends than they do (because a node in a network with arbitrary connections will statistically be connected to other nodes with the most connections). In any finite network there must however be a single node with the most connections - one person in the city who has the most friends - and that person is Vanessa Romero.

A lifetime spent in the vicinity of LA combined with preternatural welcoming charisma has left them with a network of admirers that would make Santa jealous. If you’re looking for someone who Knows A Guy, Ness is your guy.

Somehow, despite so many friends, fans, and followers, Ness kept finding more and more time for me. What followed was eight months of simply becoming best friends. The signs were there for anyone paying attention. Ness invited me to be their plus-one at a wedding in Romania. They were the only person I spent my birthday with that year. We quickly became each other’s go-to companion for anything we happened to be doing anyway. I noticed that when I was off having adventures of my own, I would often contextualize the experiences in terms of how I was going to tell the story to Ness.

This is a person I couldn’t get tired of. Someone I really never run out of things to talk about with - all our conversations feel more like one ongoing conversation. Someone who makes me glad to be wherever we are. Sharing life with this person made me realize I wanted to share the rest of my life with them.

Chapter 4: The Beginning

We are set to meet up at Elysian park Sunday March 20th, 2021 around 10 AM.

To practice juggling together, one of the many delightful new activities my life now includes thanks to Ness.

That Friday, just a few days before, we’d gone to an overnight camping meet with the Glow Flow folks and our friend Chloe. We stayed up almost the whole night juggling under the full moon–a cosmic event we would continue to look forward to and even make a whole wedding revolving around!

The Saturday in between included two parties–one where I was Ness’s guest, one where they were mine.

I remember texting Austin just to confirm, just in case he was getting tired of me.

I was not.

And Austin made that clear when he gave that same enthusiastic “YES!” to confirm our Sunday hang. We really spent the whole day together juggling in the park and just hanging out. At some point we took a phone call with our friend Catie (who was also going to be in Europe that summer to attend another wedding at a different castle) to plan our joint excursion to Morocco.

Morocco is not halfway between Portugal and Romania, but it’s close enough.

When it became dark and we got hungry we ventured out to Stories in Echo Park, perusing and passing time waiting for our Masa pizza to be ready. I remember telling myself ‘I think I’m going to kiss him somewhere here.’ At this point I had been seeing Austin every day for 3 days in a row and somehow I already missed him, knowing eventually the night and our hang out would end. I didn’t end up kissing him in the bookstore– I got nervous and decided to look out for the next opportunity. Once we did get our pizza, we walked around sunset, scouting for a nice table to eat on. Sometime in that walk I remember boldly deciding to tell Austin, “well when we have our kids we will have to teach them” something I forget what, but basically that was the first time I ever alluded to us being not only romantic but committed and responsibly together and Austin looked a bit surprised to hear this comment, but very happily supported it and elaborated.

Conversing with Ness always involves unpredictable turns of topic and whimsical thought experiments, but this phrase “our kids” sure got my attention. We strolled back toward Elysian and wandered up and around the slopes, till we heard music floating over a hill. We followed our ears and stumbled on a free concert happening in the valley. We sat for a bit, danced for a bit, chatted some more, and slowly realized we were reaching the end of our day together. Ness was pontificating at length about something neither of us can recall, when I took off their sunglasses and said, “Kiss me.” And we did.

And did again. Up until this moment Austin had neither interrupted me nor commanded me to do anything, so I was quite taken by surprise, but incredibly happy to oblige.