Hello Wonderful Readers,

Late last Thursday evening, I felt terrible. As I walked with my two friends through the dark, tree-lined streets of Mexico City to a cocktail bar, a giant, hollow pit was growing inside me. Not because I was hungry. I had just eaten two slices of my favorite pizza in the whole world: the Picante Pep from Hanks. But not even that salami, basil, and sweet, spicy honey could comfort me. Arturo, my new love interest, had promised to meet up at Casa Franca. And I still hadn’t heard from him.

My phone lay message-less in my purse. I ground my teeth in this godawful purgatory. My heart had sunk somewhere between my knees and my feet. Part of my disappointment and hurt was oozing with my anxiety into a mixture as toxic as nuclear waste in my mind.

Maybe I won’t meet with him for jazz music and dancing like we planned? Arturo isn’t interested in me, is he? Why can’t I date a nice guy like him without scaring him away? What’s wrong with me?

I felt like a fool for dressing up, looking hotter than I had looked in weeks. I wore a crimped red dress and dark purple turtleneck top, black tights, and big, clompy black boots. My dark, purply red lipstick matched my dress, which was the same length as my black blazer with gold buttons. Whatever, I huffed to myself. None of this mattered if I wasn’t going to see Arturo.

But what do they say? When God closes a door, he opens a window. Well, don’t even start me on the concept of God being a male. At least Ariana Grande was right about something.

My friends and I arrived at the cocktail bar, Salón Palomilla. I kept trying to focus on what they were saying, but I still felt too distracted. It was hard to divert the course of my thoughts when the destination of Arturo was seared into my brain. We walked down the mirrored corridor, passed gold bottles of expensive alcohol, and climbed the back stairs to the rooftop.

Our surroundings transformed. Serpent-green walls were interrupted by low-lit, quirky paintings of women’s bodies, something between Picasso and Miro. The starry sky stretched overhead like we were in the top capsule of a spaceship filled with Mexico City’s hottest and coolest bright young things. Just arriving there, I felt slightly elevated. Do I sound entitled for feeling self-important when I walk into a room of exclusivity, pomp, and snobbery? Probably. I gazed at couples whispering to each other and groups of friends sitting on velvet couches around black onyx coffee tables. They talked and checked us out as we passed. But much like the stars in the night sky overhead and the bubbles in some clientele’s cocktails, I too, felt like I had risen.

On the way to our table, I suddenly caught sight of someone strangely familiar. He was sitting in a high-backed armchair with a female friend at his side. I believe they were friends because they seemed utterly uninterested in each other, at least compared to the other couples in the room who were sitting much closer together and seemed more enraptured in each other’s physical and personal business. But as you know, I have been very wrong about this in the past.

I only caught sight of this man for a split second. I couldn’t be sure. Was it him, though? If it was who I thought it was, well, then it was Guillermo García Garrido, one of the hottest and most successful internet chefs of my generation. His initials should not be confused with GGG, a tagline some men use on dating apps to proclaim themselves as “good, giving and game” (good in bed, willing to give equally to their partner and game for anything). Perhaps Guillermo, if that’s who he was, was GGG. A conversation about Guillermo’s supposed sex life, for me, would be a whole other situation.

Now, I’m not one for cooking shows. I don’t give a s**t about cooking recipes at home, and I have never used my oven in the two years I’ve lived in this apartment. But the truth is that Guillermo could feed me s**t-stew, and I’d eat it. The man is like a small walking god. He had a beautiful, rounded nose and luscious locks of brown hair. And when I say luscious, I mean a little long in places, but the kind that he would curl down in front of his face when he made his cooking videos. I don’t remember how I had come across him on the internet. But this beautiful man, born in Chicago to Mexican parents, had achieved something that I thought was impossible. Guillermo is so attractive that for a brief moment in time, he convinced me that vegan food is sexy. Known as “That Vegan Guy” (this is not his real handle, of course, I have anonymized him), since he moved to Manhattan, his career had exploded, and he’d soared to more than 400,000 followers on Instagram.

Of course, once I stumbled across his work, I began to salivate over the vegan things he was cooking. Well, not for the food. I was there for the videos of him being hot and cute, biting into a deep, juicy mushroom burger, and rolling his eyes back in his head because he was enjoying his own food so much. The pleasure of it all, just watching him chop, stir, and devour, was enough to keep me on my toes as I looked into his equally dashing dark brown eyes through my screen. What else can I say about him, except that he was so hot? And just like any fangirl on the internet, I quickly developed a crush on him the size of Mount Everest. I formed a strange, para-social relationship with him, wanting to touch and lick this man who was touching and licking so many delicious things in his videos. Well, that’s the weirdness of the internet for you.

Yet, in 2021, I soon became very disinterested in his vegan cooking. And so, in an act of stupidity or genius (I'm not sure which), I decided to troll him on Twitter. Now, I know I’m being a complete hypocrite here because I believe trolling is bad and it’s not a nice thing to do in general. What I did was wrong, I admit it. But at the time, it was the pandemic, and I didn’t give enough of a f**k about anything. And I honestly didn’t think he would reply. So, here is the interaction that we had on Twitter:

If you can’t speak Spanish I flit from trying to sound cool to the immediately desperate reaction of:

“Seriously, tell me when you don’t have a girlfriend. Maybe we’ll meet someday. Who knows.”

And who knows, indeed? Had I just finally met That Vegan Guy in real life? Had I prophesized this meeting three years earlier? Or was I just fangirling and salivating over nothing and no one?

My friends and I indulged in rounds of cocktails and passion-fruit kombucha with a salt rim, which I quite liked. Despite the chance of seeing Guillermo, I still felt down about Arturo, and I turned to my friends for consolation. But when I mentioned to them who he might be, of course, we erupted in giggles and quickly came up with a new challenge:

I had to determine whether this man was indeed Guillermo García Garrido, and then I had to do whatever was in my power to talk to him.

Rather than being normal and mature adults, my friends quickly dared me to walk back to the entrance to try to catch his eye. I got up and dawdled back to where I had seen him, pretending to look at the art. But based on where this guy’s chair was sitting and facing, it was impossible to look properly. He also now seemed even less interested in talking to his female friend, and he was on his phone, which meant it was even harder to look directly at his face. I returned to the table with my friends, unsuccessful.

But then, about 20 minutes later, this Guillermo-lookalike got up from his chair and walked beside us to the bar at the back of the room. He disappeared behind some curtains into a cornered-off section. I whispered to my friends,

“Okay. What should I do?”

“Go for it!” my female friend said, “I mean, you miss all the shots you don’t take.” She winked at me with undeniable excitement and cheekiness. So I took a deep breath and stood up. Yes, I thought to myself. I had nothing to lose again.

I tried to walk as normally and coolly as I could. Soon, I disappeared behind the curtains. I found him there next to the bar.

“Excuse me,” I said in my most confident and British English, “Are you Guillermo, That Vegan Guy?”

Guillermo gazed at me, and as if he was posing for a TV camera, he twirled the lock of luscious brown hair dangling over his forehead.

“I am,” he said. Was that a smirk? A smile? Was Guillermo García Garrido flirting with me?

“Oh, great,” I said, again trying to play it the coolest of cool. Guillermo's beauty was a little more understated in person. Still, I liked his rolled-up corduroy trousers. “I don’t know if you remember me. I trolled you on Twitter once. I’m Tash—”

“Tash Doherty,” he said.

I almost choked on my tongue. I was clueless as to what to do, so I kept talking, pret...