the care and keeping of luke

endgame

I have a bad habit of likening my lovers to angels, Luke most of all. He has a good name for it — biblical — and a good look for it, too: glassy eyes that fold like a crescent moon on its side; a full flop of salt and pepper hair; a mottle of boyish freckles; shapely, uniform chiclet teeth. Looking at Luke is like looking at a baby bird; something inside me swells.

Luke is palatable in almost all regards: small town kind, big city sensible, brand name smart, poor kid humble. He’s thoughtful, with the type of well-flexed perspective that accompanies early proximity to suffering. He fits in anywhere: electronic festival, Broadway musical, Volo dodgeball, metta meditation, nude beach hang, gossip sesh with the girls, Ranch 99, Lighthaven. He’s responsible but unstructured, sensitive but tenacious, understanding to a fault. He cares deeply that you have a good time.

We met on Cuties, TPOT’s premier dating platform. Or, more accurately, I met Luke on Cuties; he ignored my message and met me months later when he attended a circling workshop I co-hosted. I “liked” Luke (as in, pressed the button) because of his hot face and top-tier dimples, which the ticket booth operator at the Duquesne Incline called “the cutest she’s ever seen.” But I liked him (as in, was endeared) because of this killer line in his bio: “I am not good at holding back my love.”

We clicked immediately. One of the earliest photos we have together is a mirror selfie in which I am visibly ill, cupping Luke’s face with my left hand while he hugs me from behind, unperturbed by my active germs. It’s fun to reflect on how easily comfort came. It’s fun to reflect on what blossomed into the most profound, triumphant, healing, frustrating, full-throated relationship of my life.

In the end, Luke and I didn’t actually date for very long — around nine months. But to our credit, we did spend the full year thereafter breaking up and getting back together again. Amidst this tumult, I invented shorthands to spare my friends from a relentless stream of on-and-off updates — it was either a “Luke up week” or a “Luke down week,” which I reported with the light gloss you might use to describe an interesting weather pattern. It’s La Niña this year! Luke is disappointed in my actions today!

At the height of our tension, fights played out like movie scenes: Ubers where I’d jam myself against the opposite door, ignoring the plea in Luke’s attentive silence. Barbs that he bore primary responsibility for my decline in self-esteem. Tight-jawed insistence that I used to be vivid and endless, and now I was just a girlfriend. Truly, I have never said the words “recursive” and “untenable” so many times in my life. I have never slammed a door with such intent.

Luke wouldn’t mention all this, I’m sure, because he’s kinder and more resilient than me. But I was frequently dramatic and impolite, and it feels important to confess that.

To the extent that I made clear my grief, though, I also asserted my adoration. Here, I’ll do it again right now: I love Luke with tremendous and unmistakable clarity.

I have never birthed a child, but I hear from new parents that the arrival of a baby evokes a brand-new caliber of love, as if one’s whole life was mere preparation for more perfectly loving this incredible, infallible being. That’s kind of how I feel about Luke.

Together, we were silly and gushy and needy. We went to restaurants and parties and shows. We hung out with our friends. We cooked dinner. We asked each other for help. We enjoyed intense psychological safety — arguably too much — which permitted us to engage in horrifically couple-y behavior like speaking in katakana-ized baby voice and sneezing into each other’s mouths. I wrote fanfiction about our hypothetical child, who I named “Plum” during an acid trip. Luke adopted education reform as a special interest, then attended an information session for the elementary school he wants her to attend. We spent two full days ferociously addicted to Bloons Tower Defense 3 (Okay, maybe those last few were specific to us.) We got to be awful and gross and too much. We got to be excellent and interesting and beautiful. We got to matter.

Luke thinks a lot about love, and his big conclusion is that it’s a verb, not an inert feeling. That philosophy underscores his actions. Here are a few of them that made feel especially loved:

• On a bumpy 6 AM SEPTA ride into Philly — a ride that I insisted we squeeze into our half-day layover because I needed to eat a soft pretzel in the city where they were invented — I was starting to get tired-cranky after a particularly painful redeye. Every time I started to fall asleep, my head lolling forward would cause me to jerk back awake. When we reached our destination, I woke up and realized that I felt surprisingly rested. It turns out that Luke had held my head up with his hands for the remainder of the journey. This, of course, prevented him from getting any sleep himself, but he prioritized it anyway. Because Luke valued my rest above his own, I am now the keeper of a stunning, 4K memory of biting into the best soft pretzel I’ve ever had, complete with a level of fidelity that only a well-rested brain can capture.

• For a long time, I was spending $16/month to host my blog on an outdated Weebly site that supported neither mailing lists nor RSS. I had a huge ugh field around moving to Substack because there was no automated porting feature, and I was irrationally worried I’d mess something up and accidentally lose my last two years of writing. Upon learning about this dilemma, Luke spent his day manually copy-pasting, formatting, and backdating my entire blog for me. In the process, he (re)read every single one of my posts. He edited the last dozen or so. Past partners have largely ignored my writing, so Luke’s careful shepherding of my thoughts really touched me.

• After several years of healthful serotonin production, God smote me by suddenly increasing my propensity and capacity for despair. For the first time in my life, I started to experience genuine, concerning hopelessness. I felt like I was locked in a perpetual wince. Sometimes I had the intense urge to ram my head into a wall, which I only held back from because I lacked the requisite energy to deal with the consequences. During these times, Luke came to stay with me or let me stay with him (even though it was technically against the rules of our new platonic state of affairs) and made me pasta and bought me tissues and punctuated our workday pomodoros with long, comforting hugs. I’ve lost track of the number of times Luke has picked up the phone, listened to me vent, and talked me off a ledge. I can’t think of a time when he counseled me with anything other than compassion and patience. By seeing me at my worst and still choosing to come closer, Luke cleansed me of all suspicion of self-defect. His open-armed support bolstered my sense of deep okayness, and his steadfast enthusiasm for sharing in my life has helped me return to joy, over and over.

Getting soppy now, so bear with me — before Luke, I didn’t view myself as someone who could inspire head-over-heels love. I just wasn’t the type of girl who warrants wifeguy behavior. Sure, I was cool, respectable, nice, good even. But I wasn’t worthy of obsession, nor sacrifice, nor adoration. Luke changed that. Luke loved me to pieces. Luke took it for fact that I was special.

Do you know that TikTok couple with the redheaded woman and charmingly submissive boyfriend? How he slips on her heels and looks so damn happy just to be with her? That is how I experienced Luke’s disposition toward me — devotional, almost, but sans the humiliation kink. Just undoubtedly happy to be there.

There’s a Barbara Streisand lyric that goes, “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” I didn’t really get this until I allowed myself to need Luke. In the past, I was independent as a defensive measure; after being loved by him, I am independent as a side effect of liking who I am. Being the recipient of such defenseless, proud adoration — being able to request that level of affection — helped me trust that I am worthy of love. Luke didn’t make me feel perfect; he made me feel valuable.

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I once described Luke on a first date, to which my date responded, “Why aren’t you just married to that guy?” I liked that, because I think there are worlds where we are.

To answer the question, Luke and I aren’t married because he wants a monogamous life partner and I do not. Luke and I remain best friends because we are cosmically linked. My favorite poem, In Lak’ech, includes these lines, “You are my other me. When I love and respect you, I love and respect myself.” Luke is the most me of all the other me’s. Loving him amplifies all other loves in my life.

If you’re also someone with a lot of love to give; if emotional intensity excites you; if you like your eggs fried on cast iron; if you like your chocolate chip cookies salted; if you’re vegetarian for the animals; if you enjoy mischief and wordplay; if the acronyms ACX, 4-HO-MET, and BCS3-L1 mean something to you; if you want to touch souls; (if you believe you can touch souls); if you want to raise happy, secure, genetically engineered superchildren; if your perfect day involves friends and movement and heart-to-hearts in the park; if you, too, are bad at holding back your love — if you’re anything like me — you’ll adore Luke. You might even fall in love with him.

Photo courtesy of Samhitha :)