There’s this photo, taken with Snapchat’s timer, of our first non-virtual encounter. It was September 2020, on the second floor of the Port Authority bus station. Our nervousness is palpable: he barely dares to put his hand on my back and I am all smiles in front of the camera.
For this first meeting, we had each carefully chosen our outfit: me, a navy blue jumpsuit, bought in extremis a few days before, and him, a striped shirt and canvas Bermuda shorts. The mask covers half of our faces, but barely conceals the radiant smiles hidden beneath, as we strike a pose in one of the least romantic places in the whole city. He had just returned to New York and I had come by bus from my parents’ house in New Jersey.
Two months before, in July (six days after I turned 19 and at the height of the pandemic), I had downloaded Hinge, out of boredom, but also out of curiosity. I had always made fun of my friends who downloaded these dating apps. “to have fun”but, swallowed up by the black abyss of confinement, I allowed myself to do the same.
An immediate connection
To my surprise, I immediately received a message from Bryce, who had had the good taste not to choose a shirtless selfie for profile picture. He was at home in Virginia, but was due to return shortly before the start of the school year to his university residence near Lincoln Center, just a few subway stops from New York University, where I was studying. Between us, everything happened very quickly: we stopped Hinge to send each other strings of texts (with daily good morning and good night) and spent hours laughing on FaceTime.
Our favorite topics of conversation were our families (we both have a little brother and a doctor father), whether we wanted children (yes), and our childhood as Asian Americans (my family is from Korea and his, Vietnam and the Philippines). He had been the only Asian student in his school in Appalachia, whereas I, in New Jersey, was always surrounded by people who looked like me. He also warned me that he was 1m67 tall: with my little 1m65, I replied that it was not serious at all. But what we talked about the most was what we would do when we got back to New York.
“Have you ever tasted dimsums? he asked me.
– Only once, I replied, embarrassed by my lack of culinary curiosity.
– O. K., then we have to go to Jing Fong’s, in Chinatown. Their buffet is huge, you absolutely have to see that.”
I had written a complete list of the adventures that we would share together: eating d
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