Inspired by Mandy Len Catron’s piece in the New York Times, Herald Culture editor Jordan Coley, SY ’17, and Yale Daily News Print and Design editor Marisa Lowe, PC ’17, put the 36 questions to fall in love the test. Printed below are excerpts from their conversation. Can Yale’s two rival publications find love? Read and find out, and maybe you, too, will fall in love.
Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
ML: George Clooney—good to look at, great conversation.
JC: Rihanna—we’d get high together and then have an amazing conversation. (Later he said Tupac.)
Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
ML: I’m going to die in a terrorist attack.
JC: Riding out with the homes. In the whip. And we see this girl at the side of the road, her sleeve is sort of ripped. We ask her if she needs help, and she’s like, “No, I’m good, I’m fine.” And I’m like, “Why are you out here?” And then I get bulldozed by a tractor-trailer. But then I’m fine. Then the girl gets in our car and she’s riding with the homies now. And we go to Six Flags, and I don’t fasten my seatbelt. And I land on the ground. And I’m fine. JK—I died at the tractor. I died at the tractor.
What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
ML: Wake up. Flawless. I have an omelet with some kind of avocado. It could be a scramble. Bike ride in San Francisco. Maybe I stop at my favorite Vietnamese resataurant. Then I win the lottery. I just chill. I go home and watch Hugh Grant movies and bake some cookies.
JC: Wake up. Flawless. Go to class. Flawless. Eat lunch in Saybrook on chicken tender day. Flawless. Fuck around for a couple of hours. Flawless. Meet Marisa at Blue State to do the 36 Questions to Fall in Love. Flawless. Watch 3 Hours of Parks and Rec. Flawless.
If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
ML: Ask for evey hot guy’s address. Go off the grid. Got to Latvia. Travel the world. Send post-cards to all those hot guys and my parents and maybe some friends.
JC: I would. I would just do whatever I wanted to do. I would go around tripping strangers. Tripping a lot of strangers. Taking people’s phones while they are in conversation and continuing the conversation. Go up to someone and kiss them on the forehead and walk away. A naked run at least twice a day through Bass. I would hit on my Russian film class teacher.
If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.
ML: Very blunt. I’m so friggin weird. I talk alot about San Francisco. Also, I have a really big bed.
JC: I tend to roll around when I sleep. I eat an unhealthy amount of Chewy bars. I just do spontaneous push-ups. I’m a spontaneous push upper.
Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
ML: We both have teeth. We both show our teeth when we smile. We both own Hanes t-shirts.
JC: We both clearly have a taste for mid-2000 rock. Because we are both sitting here in Blue State. We both clearly like looking like we’re working. We’re both clearly 20-year-old black males from Hamden, CT.
Following their conversation, the two reflected on the experience.
Before embarking on this journey to fall in love, I already knew Jordan Coley to be a guy I admired—mostly for his overall swag and style. Within 36 questions, one hour and 42 minutes of discussion and three minutes of staring into each other’s eyes, I learned far more about Jordan Coley than I could ever infer from a Chris Melamed photo. Between funny stories, clever quips, and comments about Blue State’s choice in music, the 36 questions felt like a simple discussion between friends.
But I left Blue State with the realization that I now knew JCole intimately—not in the Biblical sense but in the personal sense—and he now knows me. Want to know what I learned about Jordan Coley? Run through the 36 questions and you will know what tidbits I now know about the man. Want to know how I feel about Jordan Coley? I love him—not in the 3 a.m. booty call sense, but the more enduring kind of love that involves personal respect and understanding. Sometimes knowing where a person comes from and how they came to be is enough for LOVE, or at least the L-O-V-E of the Nat King Cole song.
—Marisa Lowe, Yale Daily News
As a debonair bachelor who has skirted true-love’s grasp for 20 years, I figured it was high-time I sat down and finally put myself in cupid’s line of fire. I was tired of running.
I found a home in Marisa Lowe’s eyes. I felt things I never felt before—mainly her palms (we held hands briefly). In our 36 question journey together, we discovered things about one another that we thought we’d never know. Happiness emitted from her California smile, and I was hooked at first “okay, how do we do this?”As Blue State emptied, my heart filled.
—Jordan Coley, Yale Herald