Jonathan and Elizabeth
In early March 2020, I was 34 and had been single for a little more than two years. I had moved to Nashville from St. Louis to escape a horrible six-year relationship. For the first time in nearly a decade, I felt like myself again, and I was ready to take another risk. Then the pandemic lockdown was announced. Bad timing.
Scientists said to buckle in for a long and bumpy ride, which meant my chances of meeting someone organically had just dropped to nil. I picked up the dating apps again, hoping to find some good conversation that might lead to something substantial when it was safe to venture out again. Nothing really clicked. On the surface, I was looking for a woman 30 or older, non-smoker, non-religious, intelligent, kind, caring, ambitious, tidy, goofy, funny, nerdy — and with no cats.
When June rolled around, I quietly celebrated my 35th birthday and stayed focused on my new job at the Scene’s sister publication Nfocus Magazine. I settled into quarantine life nicely. A couple weeks later, I was mindlessly scrolling through Hinge while watching the Dungeons & Dragons web series Critical Role, and I saw a profile that wrenched me out of my stupor.
Following Hinge’s “I geek out on” prompt, she had written: “Star Trek, Star Wars, Studio Ghibli, Pokémon, Adventure Time, Doctor Who. I’m terrible at FPS video games, but I’ll kick your ass at Mortal Kombat. [live long and prosper emoji].”
For “I get along best with people who,” she answered, “clean as they cook, are kind to service workers, and agree that the thermostat should be set to 68 degrees at all times.” A photo of her in a Vault suit from Fallout 4. A photo with a spotless, uncluttered apartment, with a movie poster behind her — the Japanese release of A New Hope. A photo of her cat. Damn it. But it was pretty cute, for a cat.
I “liked” her Vault suit photo and closed the app until a week later, when I got a Hinge notification from Elizabeth Meade. June 23.
“Hi hey hello! It seems like we have a lot in common!”
Oh, snap! She responded. OK, play it cool. Don’t be a dweeb.
“Hello howdy hi! It does, indeed.”
Well, I just fucked it up.
But apparently I didn’t fuck it up. We kept talking. We talked about the fun stuff and the serious stuff with utter (and sometimes painful) honesty. She turned out to be genuinely hilarious, goofy and caring. She’s spiritually agnostic, owns her own business, volunteers with Planned Parenthood and participated in protest marches after the death of George Floyd. She cleans her apartment (every inch of it) every week and is sharp and witty and brilliant with a spirit that I’ve never encountered in another person. She knows and is fully confident in exactly who she is, which I found extremely refreshing.
She asked me to send her a video of me reading a story, so I recorded myself reading “The Princess and the Pea.” And she sent one of herself reciting “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod” from memory. For the next few weeks, I sent nightly videos of myself reading stories. We texted and talked constantly, but we needed to meet to see if we had chemistry in person. That’s a questionable move during a pandemic, but a co-worker suggested that single people could consider going to get tested, quarantining while they await results, then meeting up. So we did.
At the testing site, I could see her car in the line, but I couldn’t see her face. We waited impatiently for a week for our results. Both tests were negative!
Our first date was on July 18. I went to her apartment, where we sat on the floor and listened to records, drinking wine and watching the lights on the ceiling from her star machine. We played board games, and she kicked my ass at Mortal Kombat. We spent eight hours talking that night, and we did the same the next night. I recalled a New York Times article about journalist Mandy Len Catron’s personal experiment with psychologist Arthur Aron’s study, in which he claimed that anyone could fall in love if they ask each other 36 specific questions and then stare into each other’s eyes for four minutes. We tried it on our third night.
A week-and-a-half later, we took a weekend trip together (still respecting the quarantine), and we survived it! We had difficult conversations and even got a few arguments under our belts. We learned how to communicate with each other better. We learned our quirks and foibles. Back home, I fell head over heels for her cat Calcifur, who loves me back. We clicked with each other’s families. In November, we got an apartment together. We loaded our Christmas tree with the nerdiest ornaments we could find.
It’s certainly not the story I was expecting, but I couldn’t have asked for a better opening chapter. And I guess I’m a cat person now.
