Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night. (Encore)

Summary

Modern Love – “Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night. (Encore)”

Host: Anna Martin (The New York Times)
Guest: Elizabeth Laura Nelson
Date: June 24, 2026

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Episode Overview

This deeply intimate episode of Modern Love revisits the essay and life story of Elizabeth Laura Nelson, whose unconventional, enduring friendship with Jeff spanned more than 16 years—culminating in an unexpected, loving turn as he neared the end of his life. Through laughter, old wounds, shared karaoke, and code names, Elizabeth and Anna explore the moving boundaries between friendship and romantic love, and how sometimes, love waits until the last possible moment to fully reveal itself.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Beginning of a Friendship

• [04:40] Elizabeth recounts meeting Jeff through her then-husband Tom (“He’s an artist, he’s a dad. His daughter’s right between the ages of our two daughters…”).
• Their friendship blossomed through casual neighborhood runs, animated debates, and frequent teasing (e.g., Elizabeth’s astrology, Jeff’s “actually, man” persona).

“Whenever he would say actually, I would just echo it back to him. ‘Oh, actually?’ ‘Really, actually?’ Then he would get mad. Then we’d both be mad.”
— Elizabeth Laura Nelson [01:26]

2. Deepening Connection and Rituals

• [05:30–07:59] Their running routine was foundational, replete with inside jokes and a signature motivational line from An Officer and a Gentleman:

  • “I want your DOR.”
  • “I ain’t quitting. I got nowhere else to go.”

• [10:16] They invented code names (“Blue Falcon” and “Red Sparrow”) to spy on an odd neighbor.

“Red Sparrow, I spotted our target. He’s coming toward you.”
— Jeff (as remembered by Elizabeth) [10:16]

• Karaoke at Shenanigans Irish Pub, always singing “Up Where We Belong”—the theme from their favorite movie, reinforcing their private universe.

“That was our song. Love lift us up, where we belong…”
— Elizabeth Laura Nelson [11:53]

3. Emotional Intimacy with Boundaries

• [13:54] Friends often speculated about a romantic connection, but Elizabeth firmly resisted, citing risk to their friendship and the lack of initial attraction.
• Yet, they navigated playful, vulnerable moments: a mock “pretend sex” exercise where Elizabeth sought body-image honesty from Jeff.

“If my dick is in you right now, I’m not seeing anything else. It feels amazing. You look amazing.”
— Jeff (recounted by Elizabeth) [15:52]

4. Conflict and “Parallel Lines”

• Jeff loved challenging conversations—especially about Elizabeth’s faith—which sometimes grew combative.

“He would just pick on me until I told him to fuck off.”
— Elizabeth Laura Nelson [17:59]

• Their dynamic was cyclical: sometimes inseparable, other times not speaking.

“That’s what I assumed would keep happening throughout our lives—that there would be these times where… the paths were diverging a little bit, and then we would come back together.”
— Elizabeth Laura Nelson [18:15]

5. Illness, Estrangement, and Longing

• [21:28] Jeff’s illness (thyroid cancer) created fractures. His refusal to follow medical advice—favoring “Dr. YouTube” and alternative regimens—angered Elizabeth.

“He stopped eating bananas… doing this diet where you can’t eat anything that doesn’t grow at your same latitude.” [22:58]

• During silent stretches, Elizabeth dreamed of him intimately and confessed to masturbating to the thought, highlighting suppressed desire and unresolved tension.

“I would masturbate… by the time I was, like, having my coffee, I was like, you know what? It’s fine.”
— Elizabeth Laura Nelson [25:40]

6. Crisis and Connection: Their One Night Together

• [27:57] When Jeff was hospitalized in LA, Elizabeth reached out with their old code name game:

“Hey, Blue Falcon, do you copy? I hear you’re in the hospital. Red Sparrow, I fear the worst, my comrade…”
— Elizabeth (reading her own text) [27:58]

• Reconnecting triggered honesty about their feelings, leading Elizabeth to text:

“Maybe we should finally fuck.”
— Elizabeth Laura Nelson [29:19]

• [30:18] Elizabeth describes their reunion in LA, the tenderness and curiosity in exploring each other physically for the first time after years of emotional intimacy.

“As I had always suspected, he was game. I remember him saying, ‘Oh, I’m so curious now.’”
— Elizabeth Laura Nelson [30:57]

• Their physical connection felt unlike anything before:

“It was truly like we had been apart for so long and we loved each other so much, and I was so worried and he was so scared, and having sex with him that night was just like—we wanted to get as close as we could…”
— Elizabeth Laura Nelson [32:43]

7. Farewell and Grieving

• [35:20–36:51] Back in New York, Jeff’s health declined rapidly. Elizabeth tended to him at home and in the hospital, sharing tender moments even in the final days.
• Jeff’s last night was marked by gentle goodbyes:

“He said, ‘I feel really scared, but when you’re holding my hand, I don’t feel scared.’”
— Jeff (recounted by Elizabeth) [30:18]

• On Jeff’s birthday, Elizabeth, family, and neighbors surrounded him with sweetness and joy, balloons tied to his oxygen tank.
• Elizabeth was lying beside Jeff as he passed away:

“And I said, ‘I love you.’ He said, ‘Love you, too.’ And then he went to sleep… When I woke up in the morning, he was breathing very shallowly. And I put my head on his chest… and she [the death doula] said, ‘I think that’s your own heart.’”
— Elizabeth Laura Nelson [36:51–38:45]

8. Reflection and Meaning

• Anna asks why it took them so long to become lovers; Elizabeth ponders if they were “meant to be” romantic partners or simply soulmates whose physical connection was a final, necessary closeness.

“We were both so stubborn. …Maybe we weren’t meant to be romantic partners. Maybe we really were just such good friends and soulmates, and… having sex at the end of his life was a way of being as close as we could possibly be. And that was the arc of our friendship.”
— Elizabeth Laura Nelson [40:00]

• Jeff’s wisdom in parting:

“I think things happen the way that they’re meant to.”
— Jeff (recounted by Elizabeth) [41:23]

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On playful teasing:
  “Actually, spiders don’t bite. …Actually, the best way to lose weight…” [01:26]
• On emotional safety:
  “I knew that he knew who I really am at this core level, and… whatever I might say, it didn’t change… his understanding of me.” [09:14]
• On coming together at last:
  “Maybe we should finally fuck.” [29:19]
• On their one night:
  “It was very comfortable, very easy, very different than any sex I’ve ever had with anybody, ever.” [32:13]
• On grief and time:
  “That piece of my life that had Jeff in it is becoming smaller and smaller, and I hate that so much.” [39:40]
• On fate:
  “I think things happen the way that they’re meant to.” [41:23]

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Memorable, Moving Final Segment

• [36:19–38:45] The intertwined pain and gift of their last day; Elizabeth holding Jeff as he drifted away, holding onto his memory through her own heartbeat.

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Useful Timestamps

• [04:40] Meeting Jeff
• [11:35] Rituals & Karaoke
• [13:54] Boundaries on Romance
• [21:28] Learning of Jeff’s Illness
• [25:01] Elizabeth’s Conflicted Longing
• [27:57] Hospital Reconnection & Code Names
• [29:19] Confession & Humor
• [30:18] LA Reunion & First Night
• [35:20] Final Days, Homecoming
• [36:49] Birthday Celebration
• [38:45] Jeff’s Passing
• [40:00] Reflection on Timing and Fate
• [41:23] “Things happen the way they’re meant to”

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Summary

This episode delicately traces how friendship, love, humor, and grief can intertwine over decades. Elizabeth and Jeff’s story is a testament to the complexity of loving another person—not always as lovers, but always as soulmates. Their story reminds us that sometimes, our deepest relationships only reveal their truest form with the pressure of time, fate, and mortality.

As Anna Martin notes through laughter and tears, the episode is not just about love found or lost, but about honoring the messy, beautiful, and sometimes heartbreaking ways we move toward and away from each other—and maybe find our way back, if only for one night.

Transcript

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[Anna Martin]

Love now.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

And did you fall in love last fella?

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I love her.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Love, but stronger than anything else. For the love.

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Love.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

And I love you more than anything. You're still up.

[Anna Martin]

Love. Hey, everyone, it's Anna. This week we're bringing you one of our favorite episodes from last year. Enjoy.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I like to tell Jeff all the time that we should not be friends because he's a Gemini and I'm a Scorpio. They're not compatible.

[Anna Martin]

Elizabeth and Jeff were best friends, even though a lot of the time they annoyed the crap out of each other.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

He loved to give me a hard time and he loved to wind me up. He loved nothing more.

[Anna Martin]

Elizabeth would pick on Jeff for his weird haircut, his acid washed jeans. Jeff would pick on Elizabeth for believing in astrology, which he thought was nonsense.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

My friends started calling him actually, man, she had this big itchy bite and she said it was a spider bite. And he actually, spiders don't bite. I was like, yes, I do. Have you heard of a black widow? Actually, man, actually the best way to lose weight, actually the best exercise for that. Actually. A lot of people think, blah, blah, blah. Whenever he would say actually, I would just echo it back to him. Oh, actually. Really? Actually, then he would get mad. Then we'd both be mad.

[Anna Martin]

But no matter how much he might annoy her, no matter how much they might annoy each other, Elizabeth always forgave Jeff.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

He just had the goofiest grin. It was just so joyful and a little bit mischievous. Like there was always a little twinkle in his eye. And we had this relationship where I could say anything, I could joke about anything. There was no topic. Off limits.

[Anna Martin]

Underneath all that teasing and joking, Elizabeth told me there was a pole, an attraction between the two of them. But they were never quite ready to explore it. They waited and waited and waited.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I just thought that we had time. I just thought we had forever to work it out.

[Anna Martin]

They waited until it was almost too late. From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. Stay with us.

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[Anna Martin]

Elizabeth Laura Nelson welcome to Modern Love.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

[Anna Martin]

It's really great to have you in the studio. Put a face to your essay. We're here to talk about you and your friend Jeff. How did you and Jeff meet?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Jeff and I met through my ex husband, Tom. He said, I met this guy, he's so great. He's an artist, he's a dad. His daughter's right in between the ages of our two daughters. So they were friends and Tom would always come home and he would have something to tell me about. Oh, you know, Jeff doesn't buy his daughter toys, he makes them. He whittles wooden toys for her and you know, for, for bedtime story, he's reading her the Hunchback of Notre Dame and he really, just really liked him and talked about him a lot.

[Anna Martin]

And how did Jeff go from being Tom's friend to being your friend?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I'm trying to think when we started hanging out, just the two of us, I guess it was when we started running. We lived really close to Prospect park, so I decided I was going to take up running. And I think I was talking about that at dinner one night with Jeff and Tom and the kids. And Jeff said, oh, I want to start running. I'll start running with you. He was totally game. And we would text each other,

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I'm

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

leaving in five minutes. And I would run down the block, and he'd be jumping up and down, trying to pump himself up or stay warm if it was winter. And, yeah, that was when the friendship really blossomed between the two of us.

[Anna Martin]

I love that visual of him on the corner, you running to him, you heading off for the park. Were either of you runners before?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

No. This was the first time that I was really, like, getting the right shoes and all the gear and all of that. So we were getting into it together, and it was not easy. We were definitely pushing, and so we were kind of challenging each other on the. There's a hill. So when we would go up that hill, one of us sometimes would be kind of flagging, usually me. And we both loved the movie An Officer and a Gentleman.

[Anna Martin]

I wish I could connect with you on that, but I don't know that one.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I haven't seen it.

[KFC Announcer]

No.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

So maybe you should watch it. You should definitely watch it. I will. So Louis Gossett Jr. Is the drill sergeant, captain, whatever. Richard Gere is the recruit. And there's a scene where he gets in trouble. So Lou Glassett Jr. Is running him through all these hard exercises, push ups and spraying him with the hose and trying to get him to quit, to drop out. And he says, I want your dor. I think it's drop on request or whatever. And Richard Gere says, I ain't quitting. I ain't quitting. I got nowhere else to go. I mean, the story will not make sense to people if they haven't seen the movie.

[Anna Martin]

It's making sense to me.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

But when we were on that hill or anytime when one of us really was just so tired, the other one would say, I want your dor and the other one would say, I ain't quitting. I quit. Nowhere else to go.

[Anna Martin]

I love that you were each other's drill sergeant. It sounds like drill sergeant park play buddy. Tell me about some of those runs. What territory did you cover? What did you talk about?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

We talked about everything. We would usually start out talking about how did you sleep the night before? That was Jeff. He was obsessed with the quality of his sleep. So then inevitably, it would go into whatever was on our minds lately, if it was a parenting thing or he was dating someone. My marriage, we did get deep real quick. And I was going through. I mean, I got divorced in 2011 or left Tom in 2011, so I talked a lot of that through with Jeff. He was the one. And he's very good friends with Tom. And still their friendship remain strong. So that kind of gave me the freedom to vent if I needed to vent. I knew that Jeff was still going to love Tom.

[Anna Martin]

I mean, it. It seems like you and Jeff felt comfortable talking about everything. Anything. Why?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Nothing offended him. Nothing really seemed to hurt his feelings. I don't want to make it sound like he didn't have feelings. Definitely did. There was something about the two of us. I knew that he knew who I really am at this core level, and that whatever I might say, it didn't change who I am and his understanding of me. So if I was in a bad mood or if I was angry, I said something mean about somebody or, you know, I didn't even have to tell him, like, oh, I didn't really mean it, or maybe I shouldn't say that he understood who I really was. We. We had this world that was just the two of us.

[Anna Martin]

Yeah. Bring me inside that world. What's something that was just for you and Jeff?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I had a neighbor who was behaving a little strangely, so Jeff and I decided that we needed to monitor his movements, figure out, like, what is going on with this guy. And it was Jeff's idea that we would have code names. And he was Blue Falcon and I was Red Sparrow. He came up with the names. He might say, red Sparrow. I spotted our target. He's coming toward you. And I would say, copy that, Blue Falcon.

[Anna Martin]

Did you call each other, like, Red Sparrow, Blue Falcon out in the world, or was this just a text thing?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Not really, because only if we were in private, because they were our secret code names.

[Anna Martin]

Sorry. Right.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Right.

[Anna Martin]

No one could see.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

No one. No one could know.

[Anna Martin]

When you got divorced, did that change? How did that change your friendship with Jeff? Did it change your friendship with Jeff?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Yeah, I don't think it changed it. We maybe became closer just because I was single. Right. I had maybe more time. I had time when I wasn't with the girls, when they were with their dad. So it probably deepened our friendship. Yeah. So there's a little bar called Shenanigans.

[Anna Martin]

Yeah.

[KFC Announcer]

What?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Shenanigans? Irish Pub. Do you know it? So they have karaoke on Saturday nights, and we would go sing karaoke. We would sing Up Where We Belong, which is the theme song from An Officer and a Gentleman.

[Anna Martin]

Well, it all comes back to that movie. Does it not? The two of you? That was your song.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

That was our song. That was our song. Love lift us up can you sing a little bit?

[Anna Martin]

Just. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Love lift us up where we belong yes.

[Anna Martin]

This one.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Where the eagles cry everyone's like, it's those two again singing. Yeah, yeah.

[Shannon Maldonado]

Um.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

So we were at Shenanigans, had too much to drink, went back to his place, which was a block away, and I was lying on the couch and he was playing guitar. He was teaching himself how to play the guitar from YouTube videos, also a big Jeff thing. YouTube anything. He's like, there's a YouTube video on that, actually. There's YouTube, actually. So he's teaching himself to play guitar. And he was playing Blackbird, classic beginning guitar song. And as he was playing and I was laying on the couch in my drunken state, I felt sick. And I started to feel this vibe that, like, oh, my God. Is. Is Jeff gonna try to kiss me? Is there gonna be, like. It was, you know, when the air in the room changes. So I quickly got up, bolted to the bathroom, and I'm. You know. Then it was the holding the hair, and I'm puking.

[Anna Martin]

Okay, So I. You did not kiss. I know exactly what you mean by the air in the room changes. It becomes charged or. I don't know what the right word is. It's like, sharp. There's a shift. What about that? Shift was so. Had you never thought about it before?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I had thought about it only in that my friends had suggested, you know, you're such good friends with Jeff. Don't you think maybe. And I was always stridently, no, absolutely not.

[Anna Martin]

Why?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I didn't look at him and think, like, oh, he's so hot. And he was my best friend. And once you make things romantic with somebody, like, it's gonna change your friendship, your relationship. And I just didn't wanna do that.

[Anna Martin]

You didn't wanna risk it?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I didn't wanna risk it, but I always had the feeling that I could at any time. I knew. I knew that he was game. Even when he was dating somebody, even when he was the most in love, I knew. And I would kind of think, like, I could just snap my fingers and he would drop her for me.

[Anna Martin]

I just knew the glint in your eye. I mean, how did you know we had.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Okay. When I was. So. I was very nervous to start dating again and to have sex again with a new person. Right. It had been years since I'd been with somebody new. I was very nervous. And I went over to his apartment one day, and I said, jeff, we have to have pretend sex, and you have to tell me the truth about my body.

[Anna Martin]

What does pretend sex mean?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Like, I stripped down to my underwear, and he rolled out his yoga mat, and he said, should I take off my clothes? I said, no, he took off his shirt. Anyway, he loved to take his shirt off. And, yeah, we just got down. I did all these, like, went through a little kama sutra of different positions. And I would say, okay, look here. See how my stomach is hanging right now? What about this? What about that? What about this? This cottage cheese on my thigh. What he said? He said, you look great. You're amazing. At one point, you maybe can't put this on.

[Maurice Shama]

We'll see.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I was on top of him and I said, look at my stomach right now. You're not even noticing this. Do you see? It's like punch down bread dough. And he said, if my dick is in you right now, I'm not seeing anything else. It feels amazing. You look amazing.

[Anna Martin]

I mean, it's so. But it's. What a deeply and playfully intimate thing to do. And I don't actually mean, like, the sex act of it all. I mean, the. Like, you felt insecure about your body, and you were voicing that to him in a pretty vulnerable and open way. Like, do you see this? How do I look? And you trusted him to be able to hold that. But then also, like, the fact remains that Jeff is an opinionated. He's an actually guy.

[Apple Card Advertisement Voice]

Right?

[Anna Martin]

And you were bumping against each other. So tell me about, like, was there kind of like a classic fight between the two of you?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

He loved to talk about religion. That was the main thing, is that I go to church a lot. I'm pretty into. Pretty into God, kind of a Jesus freak, but I'm not. I don't love to talk about it. It feels very personal to me. And I definitely don't like to debate about it. I'm not interested in defending my beliefs to anyone or even explaining them particularly. It's just kind of my thing. And Jeff, I think he was very curious about spirituality and faith and really wanted to know. But the way that he would ask me about it came out in this very teasing, slash, challenging way. And it really felt like he just wanted to make me mad. And I would say, jeff, I don't want to talk about this. This is not fun for me. But he loved to argue. He loved to play devil's advocate just to kind of get someone to debate with him. And he would just pick on me until I told him to fuck off.

[Anna Martin]

Was he good at apologizing?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

No.

[Anna Martin]

I could have guessed that. Even though he was saying this kind of like, ostensibly dumb and hurtful thing, were you able to be like, this person still knows me and sees me and this doesn't matter as much?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I think toward the beginning of our friendship, yes. And toward the end, no. And that's where the fight started to feel more serious. It was like, how can I do this? That's not visual. But when they're two parallel lines and they get closer together and further apart and closer together. And that's what I assumed would keep happening throughout our lives, that there would be these times where we, you know, the paths were diverging a little bit and then we would come back together. Even toward the end, it's hard to jump, but when we were fighting, when we weren't speaking, I knew that we had this deep connection that was never, ever going to go away.

[Anna Martin]

After the break, Jeff gets sick and their parallel lines diverge again before coming back together in an unforgettable way. Stay with us.

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[Maurice Shama]

is Maurice Shama, host of the Last 12 Weeks, a new podcast from Serial Productions, the Marshall Project and the New York Times. A couple of years back, I got an email from a defense lawyer who wanted me to write about his client. The client, David Wood, was on death row in Texas, had been there for more than 30 years. The lawyer was writing because David Wood had lost all of his appeals. He was set to be executed. The lawyer's plan to stop the execution was to try and prove something that nobody had successfully done in three decades, that one of Texas most notorious serial killers was actually innocent. It wasn't that the lawyers didn't have a case to make.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I know two people fabricated testimony to

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get a guy executed.

[Maurice Shama]

It's just that they had so little time to make it the last 12 weeks. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts,

[Anna Martin]

Okay? So years pass, you and Jeff still have this very close friendship, but even though there are these moments of flirtation, nothing ever happens. And then at some point, Jeff finds out that he's sick. Can you tell me how you got that news?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I remember he came over to my apartment and I remember exactly where I was standing, where he was standing in my living room. And he said, I have cancer, thyroid cancer. I cried. We both cried. I cried, we hugged. I told him he was going to be okay. And I'm not going to remember exactly things, but I feel like he had had it for some years. They told him that he had probably had it for many years and it was very slow growing. And he was supposed to have surgery, you know, take the tumor out, but he was too stubborn. And he put off that surgery until he really almost couldn't breathe or swallow. Like he had to have it.

[Anna Martin]

Why did he put it off?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

He thought that he could treat it himself. He did not trust Western medicine. Jeff had a younger brother who died when he was. His name was Victor. Victor was four and Jeff was, I believe, eight. And Victor was having a routine procedure. He had a droopy eyelid, I think, and something went wrong with the anesthesia and he died. And I think that that affected him for the rest of his life in some mistrust of the medical world.

[Anna Martin]

Doctors. Yeah.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

And maybe that's part of why he thought that he could use Dr. YouTube. He tried to tell me about all the YouTube videos he was watching, and I didn't really want to hear it. He stopped eating bananas for a while. He really loved bananas. And he was like, I'm doing this diet where you can't eat anything that doesn't grow at your same latitude. There was this high dose cannabis oil that he ordered online and that he took too much one afternoon and he called me. I didn't pick up and I saw that I'd missed a bunch of calls from him. And then I had this frantic voicemail. He said he thought he was going to die because he was too high.

[Anna Martin]

When he told you about these things he was doing, when you saw the things he was doing, the no bananas, the cannabis oil, and not following it sounds like the doctor's orders, which was to get surgery as soon as possible. It sounds like. How did you react as someone who this is your best friend, how did you react to watching?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I was so angry. I was so angry. And I stopped talking to him. And I told him, I said, I will talk to you again when you do what the doctors are telling you to do. You need to get surgery. If you call me with any kind of symptoms, any kind of complaints at all, I just. I wouldn't hear it, because I said, well, you need to get surgery. I was furious.

[Anna Martin]

I get it. But what was the. The anger was because. Why?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I loved him, and I wanted him to be okay, and I thought he absolutely could be okay. And he was fairly passive about that always. And in the times when I would stop talking to him, what I wanted was for him to pursue me, to love me enough to fix it, to say, like, oh, Elizabeth's angry. Let me talk to her. Let me fix this. And that wasn't his way.

[Anna Martin]

When you weren't talking to him, were you thinking about him?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Mm, yeah. Always. Every day. Every day. I started to have dreams about him. I had been angry with him. We weren't talking, and I started to have these really intense sex dreams about Jeff. And I would wake up and be so turned on, and I would think, all right, this is. I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna call him up. I'm gonna go over there, and we're just gonna act out this dream. We are. It's on. Like, I can't. You know, it's like I don't care if I'm mad at him, but then I would be so turned on that I had to just take care of it myself.

[Anna Martin]

Yeah.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

So I would masturbate and then get up. By the time I was, like, having my coffee, I was like, you know what? It's fine.

[Anna Martin]

I don't need to call him. I handled it.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Yep.

[Anna Martin]

I mean, when you would go through these periods of not talking sometimes really extended periods of not talking, did you worry about your friendship ending? Like, did it ever feel that way?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

It didn't exactly. Only because we always kind of went in and out of hanging out every day, and we'd be caught up in our separate things. So I never, never thought that we wouldn't come back together. I felt like I was his person. I was his just life partner, just doing life together, including when we were mad at each other. Mostly me mad at him. But I also think there was an element of. That the tension was building between us that I think the pretend sex was sort of the pretend sex and the sex dreams, it was kind of all heading toward this. Our friendship is becoming something else.

[Anna Martin]

During a time when you and Jeff were not talking, he took a turn for the worse. Can you walk me through what happened?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

So it was the end of May, May 29, and our friend Ellison texted me a screenshot of a text from Jeff saying he was in the emergency room at Cedars Sinai. I didn't even know he was in Los Angeles. We had not been in touch for some time. And Ellison said, why don't you give it a day or two. I will find out what's going on. I'll let you know. And I said, okay. And then I think maybe five minutes later, I texted John I was not going to be able to wait. I texted him, you know what? Actually, I could. Look, I mean, I could. Can I pull up?

[Anna Martin]

You have it.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I can totally pull them up here. Okay. Okay. Yeah. May 29th. Hey, Blue Falcon, do you copy? I hear you're in the hospital. Red Sparrow. I fear the worst, my comrade. What are they saying? Are they keeping you in the hospital? When are you supposed to come home? And Jeb said, well, everything went sideways so fast. I came here feeling more or less okay, but everything got worse day by day until I couldn't really function. Then there was some more about how he was feeling. And then I wish I could say I'm not scared.

[Anna Martin]

You're texting him. He's in the error. What was going through your mind? You're texting him during this? Like, what are you guys. What are you telling him? And what are you thinking?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

What I felt was I couldn't believe I had let so much time go by without us being in each other's lives. And that was that same night that I texted him. I really do miss you and wish we were talking and sharing all year.

[Anna Martin]

That's him. That's.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

That's Jeff.

[Anna Martin]

Yeah.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I'm sorry. We will have a lot to catch up on. And Jeff said, I'm sorry too, love. And to that I said, maybe we should finally fuck.

[Anna Martin]

Why? And I truly mean this. Like, why? Why now? Did you mean that maybe we should just fuck?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Yeah, I meant it. Why I meant it. I think I just knew, like, all of this was just ridiculous. I think I knew that I wanted to for a long time, but I couldn't go there.

[Anna Martin]

So you're sending these back and forth. You've clearly broached this topic in a funny, but in. You really mean it. You're really, like, have sex. So when you get to LA and you see Jeff for the first time in nearly a year, what's that like? How did he look?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

He looked really good. He looked really handsome. He was thin, kind of haggard. So handsome. And we just hugged. I just like fell into his arms and he was just holding me. Yeah, I think I knew from the moment I saw him at lax, that this was. Something was different and we were going to be together. Together. Even though he had been sick, it was like he had gotten us this really cute Airbnb. And, yeah, I went in and there was a queen bed and then a kind of a sofa bed. And I said, do you want to sleep in the big bed with you? And he said, yeah, I need you to be the big spoon. And he said. He said, I feel really scared, but when you're holding my hand, I don't feel scared. So we got into bed and I just could feel like he felt so warm and his skin was so smooth. I just knew I was like, I'm not gonna resist this anymore. So, yeah, I took my nightgown off, I cuddled right up, and as I had always suspected, he was game. I remember him saying, like, oh, I'm so curious now. And he's just like. I think we both were just so curious to explore each other's bodies. This person you've known for almost two decades but, you know, had never seen completely naked, had never done these things or touched parts, and now we were. And it was very comfortable, very easy, very different than any sex I've ever had with anybody, ever.

[Anna Martin]

How was it different than any sex you'd had before?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I didn't feel self conscious. I didn't feel worried. I didn't feel like I had to be somebody else or, you know, be cute for him or. Or be anything other than who I was. We just wanted to be close. It was truly like we had been apart for so long and we loved each other so much, and I was so worried and he was so scared, and having sex with him that night was just like. We wanted to get as close as we could to each other and finally know each other as well as we could.

[Anna Martin]

Did you feel like you learned anything new about him by being intimate with him in this way?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

We already knew and loved each other so much. It was sort of like our bodies were just catching up to where we already had been emotionally, but, like, physically maybe. There were things that he had talked about that I was like, oh, I see now. Things. Skills he had talked about having.

[Anna Martin]

Was he right? I mean, what was it like being intimate with someone? I mean, he was so sick. Did it feel more fragile in some ways or.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Or a little. His stamina was probably not as great.

[Anna Martin]

Did he talk about it? Did he say, like, did he apologize? I'm just trying to.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

He said the next day, he said, I wish we had done this before I got sick, because then you would have really seen what I can do. And it was when we got back home, he wasn't well enough.

[Anna Martin]

I was going to say, when you got back to New York, were you a couple?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Yeah, I think. I mean, we didn't officially say, but yeah. So we flew back to New York. We got home in the middle of the night, and then I went and spent the afternoon with him. I picked up some groceries for him. He seemed all right. So I went home and texted with him. And at that point he said, you know, you can come over anytime. And I wish that I had, but I really wanted to think that he was going to be okay. And I would go over in the morning. And then I didn't sleep with my phone next to me. I should have. I had missed texts from him at 3:00am, 5:00am he'd said, Are you up? Hey, are you awake? And then at seven, he said, whenever you get this, my neighbor's taking me to the emergency room. And then I went to the emergency room that morning.

[Anna Martin]

How did he look?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

He looked the same. Tired, thin, having trouble breathing, still smiling. We were still joking around, clowning, you know, I was getting in the bed with him and snuggling up, and we were joking around. But Jeff knew. I think he knew what was going on in his body. And he told me, I don't want to fight this.

[Anna Martin]

How did it feel to hear that?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I wasn't surprised at all. I knew that he was done. I said, all right. I think he said, I think we need a death doula. So I called up an acquaintance who I knew had just become a death doula. And then they let him go. The night before his birthday.

[Anna Martin]

Wow. How old was he turning?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

He was turning 59. And normally there's a lot of red tape to get checked out of the hospital. And they said, we know it's your birthday tomorrow, so we're going to push this through, even though it's kind of late at night. Got home and it was his birthday the next day, so his neighbor got him a cake. My daughter went and got balloons. We texted just a few people. It was a very sweet day.

[Anna Martin]

Really sounds really beautiful.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Tied the balloons to the oxygen tank, but also I couldn't fully take in even though I knew what was happening. And the morning after his birthday, the morning of the 12th, that's when he woke me up real early before the sun was up, and he said, I'm done. That night I was. I was in the bed with him and he Said, are you okay? I said, yeah, I'm okay. Are you okay? He said, yeah. And I said, I love you. He said, love you, too. And then he went to sleep, and I went to sleep. And when I woke up in the morning, he was breathing very shallowly. And I put my head on his chest and listening for his heart and just stayed there in bed with him for a few hours. And I don't even know exactly when he passed. The death doula came in at some point and told me that he was gone. And I still had my head on his chest. And I said, no, I still hear his heart. I still hear his heart beating. And she said, I think that's your own heart.

[Anna Martin]

I know this is still very fresh. And so I appreciate it's very difficult to talk about this kind of stuff almost immediately after. So I appreciate you going there.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Thank you. I'm happy to talk about it. I love to talk about Jeff. But, yeah, it is very, very soon. I mean, even walking here and it's such a nice day today. And my first thought when I walk outside and it feels like summer is, oh, no, it's summer and Jeff's not here, and it's going to. That means it's going to be a year soon. And just the passage of time has been so difficult in that, like, it feels like it's shrinking. The time that we had together, as my life goes on, that. That piece of my life that had Jeff in it is becoming smaller and smaller, and I hate that so much.

[Anna Martin]

Can I ask, like, why do you think it took you and Jeff so long to come together in this intimate way that you did at the end of his life? Like, why do you think it took so long?

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

We were both so stubborn.

[Anna Martin]

I think

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

I also wonder if we were meant to be romantic partners. I think maybe we weren't. Maybe we really were just such good friends and soulmates. And having sex at the end of his life was a way of being as close to each other as we could possibly be. And that was the arc of our friendship. We'd always. Both of us wondered. We had maybe not always at the same time. We had both thought about it a lot. And if he had died before we got to. That'd be a lot of. And that's what Jeff said to me when I said we were kissing in his kitchen that last morning and I was crying, and I said, we could have been doing this the whole time. I'm such an asshole. Why am I so stupid? I didn't know that we were supposed to be together. And he said, I think things happen the way that they're meant to.

[Anna Martin]

Oh, Jeff.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

And I think he was right.

[Anna Martin]

You make me cry, cry, cry, my friend. It is beautiful. Elizabeth Laura Nelson, thank you so much for talking to me and for sharing your story about Jeff.

[Elizabeth Laura Nelson]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Anna Martin]

This episode of Modern Love was produced by Amy Pearl with help from Davis Land. It was edited by Lynn Levy in our executive producer, Jen Poyant. Production management by Christina Josa. The Modern Love theme music is by Dan Powell. Original music in this episode by Dan Powell, Marian Lozano, Sophia Landman and Rowan Nimisto. This episode was mixed by Sonia Herrero and Daniel Ramirez with studio support from Matty Masiello and Nick Pittman. Special thanks to Mihima Chablani, Jeffrey Miranda and Paula Schumann. The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones. Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. If you'd like to submit an essay or a tiny love story to the New York Times, we'll have the instructions in our show Notes. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.