Monday, November 30 2015, I came across his profile picture and was immediately drawn like a moth to a flame. My tendency to shoot first and ask questions later nearly led me to send a message without reading his profile first. I stopped myself, realizing that if I wanted even the smallest thing to come of this, I had to find out more about this man: 21 years old, non-smoker, Aries, lives in the Bronx, college student, great work ethic, with dreams of owning his own restaurant someday,all seemed like great qualities to me. Not to mention that he is a huge fan of "Mob Wives", as am I.

I went for it, “Hi there!” along with a smiley emoji and hit send. Judging by the time of night it was, I did not entirely expect for him to respond right away and that was okay. To be quite honest, I did not expect him to respond at all. For some reason or another, I thought he would not even give me the time of day. Tuesday morning, December 1 at 9:30 am, I was in my Music History class in my regular seat at the very front row, half listening to my professor, half thinking about the message I sent the night before.

Like clockwork, my phone vibrated, forgetting to put it on complete silence like I usually do. I took my phone out, set it on my desk, and opened up the dating app. It was him. I was somewhat stunned, but excited. Whatever the professor was talking about became a blur. I heard him speaking in the background but the words were coming out like gibberish. All of my attention was now on speaking to this man on this app. For a while, I wondered if my professor even saw me on my phone being that I was right in front of him, or I was just great at hiding it altogether. (At this point, it doesn’t matter because I ended up getting an A in the class!) Anyway, back to this beautiful man.

We introduced ourselves and I found out that his name is Alex, his favorite color is pink, and that he, like me, was also in class while we were communicating back and forth. I asked him what type of guys he’s into, to which he responded “honest and faithful.” I was a bit taken aback by his response for a couple of reasons. One was the unfortunate reality that when this question is asked, the usual response--especially in the gay community-- falls along the lines of “tall, six-pack abs, hairless, and masculine.” It was a breath of fresh air that this man did not resort to the typical response of listing physical features. However, at the same time, because he said “honest and faithful”, I knew that he went through some hard times romantically speaking. It was not my place to question him about this being that I just started talking to him.

We chatted for a little while longer while in class, until I decided to cut it short. I told him that I would message him once class was over, and if that was okay with him. He replied that it was more than okay with him and he would speak to me in a little bit. A huge smile flashed across my face as I turned off my phone and placed it back into my pocket. I did not even make it out of the building that my class was in before I took out my phone to message him and resume our conversation. I don’t know what it was about this man that drew me in, but I was not questioning it for a second. I was just excited that it was happening at all. We decided to move our conversation over to KIK messenger, where we would continue to get to know each other for the next two weeks.

We decided to mix it up a bit and send video messages to one another, this way we can hear our voices and get a sense of the kind of people we were behind the words that we were sending prior. His voice was higher pitched than I expected, but his sweet and funny personality jumped out at me and I was attracted to him even more than I was before.