I Moved In With The Man Of My Dreams After Our Second Date. Then He Made A Request That Had Me Packing My Bags.

On lockdown in the Andes without Grindr, I cooked, wrote and slept too much. Several mornings a week, double-masked, I was allowed to leave my mud-brick cottage to go to the market for eggs and purple potatoes. And I began FaceTiming with Tony.

A self-described gay virgin, he was a butch dreamboat who conducted endangered species surveys for a living. Several months earlier, we matched on Tinder while I was visiting friends in my hometown in Florida. When we met for coffee on New Year’s Eve, he reminded me of the surfers I drooled over in high school. But he was almost five years older, a mix of red panda and Hugh Jackman as the Wolverine, with the salt-and-pepper bearing of a ship’s captain you make excuses to go see on the bridge.

In the noisy coffee shop, he told me he grew up in a staunchly evangelical household, so conservative he wasn’t allowed to watch “The Golden Girls.” He was terrified his loving parents would disown him if they found out he wasn’t straight. After being married to a woman for 10 years, they divorced without children.

“I thought we were soulmates,” he said. “Then one day I came home, and I was served divorce papers.”

He was shattered. In time, he stopped using alcohol to cope, came to terms with his complicated sexuality, and eventually, at age 42, came out to his best friend.

“You’re bodacious,” I murmured, feeling his bravery. Not having grown up in the church, I came out when I was 15 and eventually had to cut ties with my family. I did whatever it took to not feel the ache of my loneliness.

As I sipped my dirty chai and listened, I felt weirdly safe. Was it because I was leaving the country the next day for a semester-long research sabbatical? Was it because I didn’t live in Florida any