140 CHARACTERS OR LESS
It was a month after my book, Home Is Burning, came out. The book is a memoir about my crazy siblings and me caring for our father, Bob, who had the neurodegenerative disease ALS. It’s funnier than it sounds. Writing about such intense personal stuff took it out of me, so I hadn’t been dating much. I was living a pathetically lonely life. I’d wake up around 8am, check all my social-media apps, write until 5pm, go for a run, then eat dinner while “Netflix and Chilling” by myself.
I thought once the book was out that all of my personal problems would suddenly disappear and I would have a life. That wasn’t the case. Then one morning during my routine socialmedia check, I found that a cute girl had tweeted me. She said, “I’m reading your book and I’m pretty sure we’re soulmates, so figured I’d find you on Twitter and let you know.”
I’m bad at flirting, so I tweeted back a generic: “Thanks for reading! Always nice to meet a soulmate.” I blew it. But luckily I followed her back and we soon started chatting.
She lives in New York, and I’m based in Los Angeles. A relationship or hook-up seemed like a long shot. But I was going to be in New York for Christmas with my family, so I decided to meet her for a drink. I was nervous it was going to be a Misery situation – she’d chain me to a bed, break my ankles and make me write a weird book. But I rolled the dice and met up with her. To my delight, she was awesome. “Maybe she was right about the soulmate thing,” I thought. “Maybe I won’t be Netflix and Chilling by myself forever.”
I have a rule that most of my friends tease me about: if I see potential for a relationship, I won’t sleep with a girl right off the bat. Sex makes things weird and pushes things along faster than I’m comfortable with.
So we didn’t sleep together right away. Instead, we started to lay the groundwork for a real relationship. It was the sex we didn’t have that was transformative and may have changed my life. We got to know each other in a way we wouldn’t have if we had jumped right into bed. After my trip to New York, we decided to try to make a long-distance relationship work. So far it has, and thankfully, she hasn’t chained me to her bed and broken my ankles.
“SHE SAID, ‘I’M READING YOUR BOOK AND I’M PRETTY SURE WE’RE SOULMATES.’ I’M BAD AT FLIRTING, SO I TWEETED BACK A GENERIC: ‘THANKS FOR READING!’”