I still think about the night before I left Los Angeles: the way Matt and I finally stopped pretending we were just friends and how his pitbull, Jesus, slept curled up on the edge of the bed while we held each other, fully clothed, knowing we were running out of time. It wasn't a great ending. There were no fireworks or cinematic statements. Just the quiet hum of the city outside and two people trying to stretch out a single night forever.
I had met Matt years before, when I first moved to Los Angeles and the city seemed determined to break me. He had been looking for an apartment for months, a process that had led to a series of minor humiliations. The owners' smiles would fade the instant they saw my brown face. Decent apartments (those with working showers or refrigerators) were always “just rented.” The ones I could get were dark, smelly or unsafe.
I was beginning to think I had made a mistake leaving New York. Then my friend Shannon sent me a Craigslist listing that seemed, miraculously, normal. “Hollywood/Little Armenia,” he read. “Located downtown, two blocks from the 101.” The rent was not exorbitant. The photos didn't make me shudder. I pulled out my Thomas guidebook, plotted the route to Lexington Avenue, and drove there with more hope than I cared to admit.
The building exceeded my expectations. It was white, mid-century, with quirky castle touches that gave it personality. The street was lined with Armenian markets and family-owned bakeries. For the first time since arriving in Los Angeles, I could imagine living in a place that felt like a community.
Then Matt showed up.
He was tall, clean shaven, with red hair and warm brown eyes that made you feel immediately seen. “Are you here by the apartment?” asked. I prepared myself for the usual disappointment. Instead, he smiled and said, “Let me show you around.”
He was the superintendent of the building, but that word seemed too small to him. He was also a documentary filmmaker who had studied at UCLA, spoke three languages fluently, and had an easy charisma that attracted people. His dog, Jesus, a striking black and white pitbull, followed him everywhere, wagging his tail like a punctuation mark.
The apartment itself wasn't perfect, but it was a palace compared to what had happened. It was a studio with a big kitchen and real sunlight. I signed the lease that week. Shannon warned me, half-jokingly, “Don't be fooled by your building manager.” I promised I wouldn't.
That promise lasted about two weeks.
The first night I moved in, I noticed that my bedroom window was broken; not just cracked, but open enough to make me feel insecure. I knocked on Matt's door, probably sounding more gruff than I intended. He had been through too many slumlords to expect much. But he listened patiently, agreed, and fixed it the next day. That small act (his professionalism, his firmness) disarmed me. It was the first time in months that someone in this city made me feel cared for.
So we were both smokers. The building had a small courtyard where residents gathered, and before long, Matt and I began to meet there. These meetings became conversations about cinema, queerness, art and the strange loneliness of being transplanted into a city obsessed with dreams. He told me about Costa Rica, where he grew up, and how he loved and hated Los Angeles for its contradictions. I told him about New York, how it shaped me and why I had to leave it.
Our connection slowly deepened, marked by cigarettes and laughter, and those long suspended silences when neither of us wanted to say goodnight.
When the holidays came, I stopped pretending that I didn't want to see him. As a thank you for all his help that first year, I bought him two bottles of Gray Goose: lemon and orange flavored because I noticed he liked citrus. He invited me to help him drink them on New Year's Eve.
We spent the night talking about everything and nothing: music, travel, ambition. Midnight arrived. We hugged each other. And in that long, lingering embrace, I felt the spark we'd been trying to ignore. But we let him go, careful not to cross the border that had silently become sacred between us.
For years we danced around it. We shared a beer, a cigarette, a late night chat and we retired back to our corners. I respected his professionalism; He respected my space. But beneath all that restraint there was something undeniably alive.
Then came the accident. A driver crashed my Volvo on the way home from work on E! Networks, and I was left with two herniated cervical discs and a terrifying warning from my doctor: one wrong move and I could be paralyzed. I decided to return to New York to recover.
The night before I left, Matt came to say goodbye. We knew it was our last chance to stop pretending.
“I love you,” he said softly.
“I love you too,” I told him.
We finally kissed with the kind of tenderness that comes from years of self-control. But we didn't get any further. We lay there, holding each other, holding on as if the stillness could save us.
After I returned east, we kept in touch for a while and then drifted apart. She eventually married a Frenchman and moved to Europe to make films. I stayed in New York and wrote my stories.
Sometimes I think about that broken window, the one he fixed the day after my first night in the building, and how it set the tone for everything that followed. Love is not always announced with drama. Sometimes it's about the silent repair of something broken, the small acts of care that build something profound.
Matt taught me that. It made a city that once felt hostile finally feel at home. And even now, years later, when I think of Los Angeles, I don't think of rejection or struggle. I think of him.
The author is a freelance writer. He lives in New York City and is working on a memoir. He is also on Instagram: @thebohemiandork.
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