Three Mondays ago, when toilet paper was still on the shelf and hand sanitizer a dusty, untouched fixture of my office desk, I rose from the 300-thread count trenches of a depressive episode, my “FUCK OFF”-embroidered sleep mask still strapped to my head for no one but me to heed its command while brushing my teeth. I decided that I would, indeed, fuck off—that is, harness my sadness and power through the beautiful day—once I got some coffee in me. I slipped on my fresh white Crocs and sauntered down the street, weighing the options for caffeine acquisition:
Starbucks: So close to my apartment, but can I go one day without feeding the capitalist beast?
Ultimo: Ok so their espresso drinks slap but their drip coffee tastes like it’s been burning in someone’s moldy Bunn since 1987 and today I want drip coffee and I also don’t want to see anyone I know so yeah, no.
Kfar: Even further than Ultimo. Added layer of temptation (pistachio sticky bun). Constant line out the door. I have a call in 30 minutes.
After walking a couple blocks west, then turning around, then hanging a right, then turning around again, I realized the answer was right in front of me all along: the corner store.
No line. No frills. I paid $2 cash and got $.50 back. I felt clever for withstanding the allure of shiny craft fair-trade alternatives. Like the old Jewish guy in the park complaining about the changing neighborhood, we know something they don’t, buddy. The coffee was rich, hot balm on the emotional wounds of my morning.
It’s just like me to overcomplicate things and feel enlightened upon learning the simplest answer is usually the right one. Occam’s razor or whatever. My joy toward choosing the corner store was reminiscent of a million other times that I’ve struggled to make a decision and went with the jeans and a black v-neck, or the cheeseburger, or breaking it off when it’s just not working. Salt of the earth choices that tend to get missed in the saturated algorithm. There’s a moment of innocent self-satisfaction one relishes after going with their gut. A pleasant certainty that can’t be shaken, no matter how hard the oat milk iced latte around the corner tries to flirt.
All fall, I was dating around pretty regularly. Though my friends might contend I had “seven” men on rotation, it was the first I’d been truly single in 8 years and I didn’t want a boyfriend. This allowed me to focus on my friendships and creative work while meeting people without expectation or desire to blossom beyond relaxed terms. Things felt healthy.
The evening of November 30th, my friend Monica invited me to a party at her co-worker’s place. I was coming off of strep throat, still on antibiotics, and generally uninterested in going, but when she said she wouldn’t go without a friend, I happily obliged. I am nothing if not a dedicated wingwoman. With the help of Instagram story highlights, I can recount my look to a t: My hair was messy and kind of dirty. I wore no makeup but a smudged red lip. Baggy mustard trousers. An oversized men’s black silk button down. Nike Air Max 1s. When faced with the question, “What kind of impression do I want to give strangers with my outfit tonight?,” my answer is usually something like, “I might have a nice body under here, but you’re not worth compromising my drip to find out.” I carried an open bottle of rosé in a New Yorker tote.
Hungover and sleep-deprived (clearly great with antibiotics), I didn’t feel particularly charming that night. My attendance was expressly utilitarian, like a large handbag Monica could rummage through as a conversational crutch. I scanned the room for anyone cute and/or welcoming enough to engage, and sure enough I found a guy. We talked non-stop and even got pretty vulnerable as I slugged wine and contemplated my Irish exit. People popped in and out of our breaks in conversation to chat us up individually, but we continuously returned to each other. Eventually we swapped numbers and made plans for a date a week later. He was a nice guy. Very Philly. Went to Temple. Loves to tailgate the Birds and go down the shore. But it was an altogether uninspired arrangement. I didn’t even let him walk me home because I reserve that gesture for people I plan to see again, and my heart said, “This ain’t it, chief.” Alas, November 30th and its resulting date would escape my mind.
Over the following few weeks, Monica kept urging me to reach out to this guy “Lupo” from the party. She said he kept asking about me, but I couldn’t even put a face to the name. Normally this kind of persistence would flatter me, but when you’re not looking for love, it takes at least white suburban 4th of July bbq level fireworks to inspire action. I brushed it off and said I didn’t feel like meeting any more guys because I was happy doing me… and really not hip to entertaining another date whom I couldn’t even let walk me home.
Then I received a DM from this mysterious man—three weeks after the party and far removed from my memory. He referenced my writing, alleged that he “thinks we might have a lot in common,” and asked to grab a drink or coffee sometime. Lightbulb: on. Suddenly I remembered the guy who awkwardly acknowledged my New Yorker tote and asked if I had a subscription. I’d said I only really read it for Jia Tolentino and he said he only really reads Rolling Stone for some writer whom I should probably remember. Nonetheless, “@ndrewlupo” looked cute and made a thoughtful approach. I decided to reply.
Within a few exchanges, I, too, had a feeling we might have a lot in common. But time was of the essence. The next day I’d be headed to my hometown for the holidays, and I was already indifferent toward going on another colorless date. So I broke out my tried and true tool for weeding ‘em out: I went full diva, because in my book, if a man really wants a shot, he’ll indulge. I told him the only way I’d hang out with him was if it was that night, and if he could find somewhere within walking distance of my apartment that serves espresso and chocolate cake. Take it or leave it. Somehow not repulsed by my bratty demands to a relative stranger, Andrew made haste and we were on the books.
If I were to describe our first date, I would use some lukewarm adjective like “fine” or “nice.” He came off shy during the dinner portion, but we took a walk afterward and he started to open up. It went sort of like this:
Block 1: Ok he’s stylish and happy to discuss clothes. We’re working with more than some basic ass jean/boot/quarter zip bro here. We like this.
Block 2: Ok he’s into hip-hop. But not the kind of hip-hop I’m into, and he asserts that matter-of-factly without shitting on my (admittedly poor) taste. I love a man who’s unafraid to express differing opinions, especially on a first date when you run the risk of appearing to have little in common.
Block 3: Ok he speaks with that same witty conviction about much more than hip-hop. I take a minute to assess if he’s a dick or just honest and smart. I conclude the latter. I like him. I let him walk me home.
I didn’t leave thinking “that’s the love of my life,” but I loosely hoped to see him again. Days later, Andrew remembered a pizza place I’d mentioned and asked to meet there when I returned to Philly from Christmas. I accepted.
I was unprepared for the effects of seeing this man in brighter lighting than that of our first date; his tall-dark-and-handsomeness became cripplingly apparent. We talked for an hour and a half over al taglio margherita, and each pause made space for my brain to process the terrifying realization that I’d officially met my new favorite laugh and eyes. Ninety minutes of resisting the urge to ask if he even understood his own magnetism, because his journalistic curiosity and general inclination to talk about literally anything but himself led me to believe that he was, and still is, delightfully unaware. It was after that second date that I pathetically asked myself, “is that the love of my life?” I shot him a text that evening saying, “We absolutely cannot get married because my name would be Dia Lupo which is way too close to Dua Lipa,” to which he responded, “Now we absolutely have to.”
Anxious about the prospect of our connection deepening and how that could halt my anti-boyfriend campaign, I kept Andrew on a comfortably distant bi-weekly hangout schedule. I was still seeing other people. And then, the unthinkable happened: my best friend’s cancer barrelled downhill in the dry, snowless winter, taking her life on January 24th. The timing could not have been worse.
When you lose both your sister and best friend of 22 years to cancer within a year and a half, you adopt an atypical fear of the ephemeral. A doe-like skittishness when people get too close because what if they leave me, too? I wanted nothing more than to vanish into the woods of Montana. Or at least to my apartment with the blinds closed for a while. Cut everyone off, Andrew included. If I couldn’t show up clear-headed and confident, I didn’t see the point. But it was too late. Timing lost its arbitrary power when I started missing him the second he walked out my door. When my heart flexed a strange new elasticity any time his name popped up on my phone. When his chest became a welcome sponge for the tears of my bereavement… rich, hot balm on the emotional wounds of my morning. Week. Month. I knew in my gut that choosing Andrew was the simplest answer to every complicated question, and therefore the right one.
Andrew is my boyfriend now. I say boyfriend the way I’d say a baguette is bread: merely for taxonomy’s sake knowing he, like a baguette, is more experience than entity. Andrew is 70 degrees and sunny. The comfort of your parents’ couch after Thanksgiving dinner and the challenge of Infinite Jest. The human equivalent of securing the bag, which I told him once in a fight and he didn’t seem to understand, let alone find it flattering. Andrew is corner store coffee, in all the best ways.
It’s been just over three months since our first date, and just over two months since Kathleen’s passing. For the last two weeks I have been quarantined at his place. Three boys, two cats, and me, sloppily navigating the Everest highs of being newly in love and shockingly good at living together, and the sunken lows of grief and existential uncertainty in the thick of a global pandemic. He waits at the door with water after my runs. I make him two eggs over easy and avocado toast. He gave me the worst manicure I’ve ever received and I gave him his fastest outdoor mile time. We drink too much red wine, keep score in Jeopardy, and I paint his face with waxy pink masks for “luminizing.” Domestic bliss in trying times.
If I had to estimate the number of erratic breakdowns I’ve had in the last 15 days, I would say more than five but less than ten. Like, tearfully pack my bags in the middle of the night while Andrew barricades the door breakdowns. Grief makes me feel like an unlovable burden from which I must relieve him. But each time, he reassures me that it’s safe here. Soon we’ll wake up to a morning sun more dazzling than the fluorescent lighting of Alice Pizza. I count his eyelashes and he periodically moves his mouse.