When something sacred happens, it feels like you shouldn’t talk about it. But this story is too good not to share (at least parts of it) and though I can’t write well enough to do it justice, I will try.

Moscow, Late 2017 –

So one day I meet this Italian guy, Stefano, in an underground nuclear silo - an interesting place - which is how you meet interesting people. Turns out he was from some kind of aristocratic family near Milan. He once confided in me that he wished he was born a century earlier because in his grandfather’s days if you had money you could get away with doing literally anything you wanted. So this guy was a bit dark, but he seemed to know things, so I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to know him.

A few months later, I fly to meet him in Lithuania to start our sex tour of eastern Europe. He was several years older than me, and had a bad haircut, but his persistence hitting on girls, combined with my reluctant “I don’t want to be here” act, turned out to work pretty well. Plus I was learning rare things so it was worth tolerating his slight creepiness. But just a few days into the trip, something unexpected happened.

"ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn't have fallen in love with?" — Liepa

We were on the main boulevard of the beach town where everyone goes in the summer to party, and while I was talking to some girl, I noticed this slim skater chick smiling at me from across the road. I never believed in love at first sight before I understood fashion, but I could tell from her style and chill but lightning sharp eyes that this was literally the best girl I had ever seen. But I’d (recently) learned not to rush these chances, so I returned my focus to the other one. Later that night, I found Stefano talking to the skater chick. Fortunately, she wasn’t into him and I later ended up ditching him to get a beer with her and her friend. I felt guilty about that, but am eternally grateful that I put myself first that time.

When I first met Liepa, she was a popular but troubled girl: from the most suicidal country in Europe, tortured by sensitivity and depth, mind-breakingly beautiful, yet foolish enough to tolerate my advances – she would be the culmination of everything I had done, the place to bet it all. Seventeen and helpless to conceal her feelings, razorsharp yet adorable, she was a bundle of opposites, a dark treasure from one of the last untapped corners of northern Europe. Despite her youth, she possessed some ancient wisdom that the supposedly more mature American man in me could only faintly perceive. I had to free this injured bird, the goddess within. I set upon her a relentless assault of compliments, nearly all of them genuine and easily sourced. I told her she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, repeating it frequently, to make it true.

One time, she opened her mouth too wide while talking and I saw the pink inside of her cheek and my vision shattered like a broken mirror. Maybe she short-circuited something in my brain, because the picture glitched like a bad TV. She had this Kurt Cobain quality: the nihilism and infinite chill of a beachside cigarette. There was nothing to prove, only hyperreal youth to discover, and this new thing called: Europe.

In case you can't tell, I was extremely in love with her. My brother interfered, I never spoke to him again.

Some may try to cast a false light on my feelings for this girl, but nothing was ever more pure. What else happened in the years to come may have to remain a mystery, but any who'd try to explain it in a simple way — couldn't be honest. Though this relationship didn't last, it was the best thing that ever happened to me, and led to something I never would've expected, and cannot yet explain.