Freddy and Julian's connection is ineffable and omnipresent through time and space, but it could be said that it began with a Facebook message about Christina Rosetti's The Goblin Market in April 2015.

Freddy was in Paris, studying abroad. He had heard of Julian through mutual friends ("single", "gay", "bearded"). Julian was in Chicago, eager to learn more about the handsome trapeze artist and painter who had taken a risk in messaging a near-stranger about a weird poem.

After months of messaging over Facebook with a six-hour time difference, they decided to meet in-person in Chicago in June 2015. The date was decided, June 19th: Julian would be returning from a week doing lake sediment work in Minneapolis; Freddy would be returning from Paris. They met at a sushi restaurant in Chicago's Hyde Park, then returned to Freddy's apartment...to find that his subletter had left his bedroom window open for days in the buggy Midwestern summer. His bedroom ceiling was covered in gnats and flies. Freddy was mortified. The two spent the better part of two hours smushing insects with paper towels balanced atop brooms. Freddy was sure that this would be the first and final date with Julian. But what Freddy didn't know was that Julian needed a bed to crash on that night. His own subletter never returned his apartment keys and thus he had nowhere to sleep.

Ten years later, Freddy and Julian have committed to spend the rest of their lives together. They have survived a month of being separated by a fourteen time zone difference, two years of bi-coastal long-distance, and a global pandemic.