Nonfiction | October 07, 2026

No Anguish in This House 

I found Glen on a dating site called Green Singles. It was 2002 and Green Singles was one of the first dating sites that appeared as the internet began to take hold of our world. I chose Green Singles over others that were starting to pop up because I recycled, rode my bike, and imagined becoming a vegetarian. I set up my profile—no photos at that time, at least not on this dating site, only messages, back and forth in an unassuming chat room. When I went to the public library once a week for books, I also checked my recently formed Hotmail account. There was a note in there one day from the Green Singles site, from someone named Glen. We chatted about a radio show we both loved called This American Life (podcasts hadn’t come out yet). We talked about how much we both felt most at home in the mountains, and I shared a quote with him—something about the journey being more important than the destination. We decided to meet in person. 

Glen was waiting outside the restaurant when I arrived. He was wearing his favorite hat, a light-green fleece jacket, and jeans. He had a small gold hoop in one ear and a curly brown beard. Five-foot-six and fit from his years of rock climbing and surfing. Most importantly, he had a beautiful smile that came quickly and generously.  

We said hi, went inside, sat down, ordered: chana saag for me, chicken masala for Glen, and samosas with mango chutney to share. Immediately we started talking. An easy conversation about my dancing and Glen’s woodworking. His family, my family. He told me about his friend who had just had his first child the night before. How excited Glen was for this friend, and how he couldn’t wait to meet the baby.  

We talked about where Glen lived, which was in an off-grid log cabin up in the mountains. Talked about his wood shop, which he had finished building a month before. How every morning, while drinking his coffee, he’d sit on his porch in the summer, or next to the woodstove in the winter, and read. How after his morning reading, he’d make himself a second cup of coffee and then walk to his shop to begin his workday. How he worked on commission building furniture for clients. How he worked with hardwoods: cherry, maple, oak, walnut.  

Talked more about the kind of dancing I do—improvisational with a bent toward the avant garde—and talked about the dark skies Glen saw because there was no artificial light where he lived, at the top of a dirt road, in a canyon in the mountains, on the edge of town.  

A few days after that first date, I called and asked if he wanted to take a walk. He did. We met for another dinner, another walk. Another and another. On my first visit to his place, Glen picked me up at the post office in town because he lived on a rough, single-track mountain road that was narrow and winding. About halfway up, there was a steep drop-off to one side. As he drove, Glen kept checking to see how I was doing with the drop-off. I was fine. The road didn’t faze me.  

When we got to his cabin and out of the car, what I remember is the feeling, and the feeling was, I know this place. I’ve always known this place. We took a hike, and then Glen showed me around his shop, where he was working on a claro walnut cabinet for a client. As I marveled at that cabinet, I also marveled at him, but I still didn’t know whether we were friends or more than friends. It wasn’t clear yet what sort of portal would open between the two of us: endless and forever, hair flying, a mess? Or more polite? That’s where we were the first time I went to his cabin and saw his shop: the place of not knowing, before touch and before sound. Before the madness that comes from falling in love.