The Invisible String Theory is the idea that people are connected by an unseen, unbreakable bond that transcends time, distance, and geography. The theory suggests that love is not limited by space or time and that everyone has a perfect match who they are destined to find (eventually).
Raul grew up out in the old western town of El Paso, TX and Leslie in Longview, WA, roughly 1,668 miles apart. It took around 24 years before they both made their way to Seattle, WA (to the same neighborhoods) for graduate programs, Raul at Seattle University and Leslie at Seattle Pacific University. Over the next five years, they bopped around Seattle, separately going to bars and parks and concerts and coffee shops and restaurants, but never actually meeting. Raul finished his program. Leslie did not (an important fact)! His would point him in the direction of a PhD program in Nebraska. Quitting hers allowed Leslie to realize her dream of not getting a PhD (and, more importantly, moving to New York City). In 2015, Raul loaded his two-door Honda Civic and headed to Lincoln. A year later, Leslie packed three suitcases and boarded a one-way flight to New York. For the next five years, they led their lives, 1,296 miles apart. In 2021, New York tugged the string once more and Raul accepted an APA approved internship position at Columbia University.
Insistent that it would be a one year stay (and no longer) he, together with his best friend Evan and sibling Kay, viewed several apartments around the city before finally choosing one…0.2 miles from Leslie’s studio on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. And at a tiny dive bar on the corner of 101st Street and Broadway filled with taxidermy and fish tanks, Raul and Leslie finally met. Leslie, usually sitting at the end of the bar with a book, headphones in, quiet. Raul, not so quiet, at the other end with his friends (and Hobbes the golden retriever). “I like your coat,” Raul said one day to Leslie. “Sweet shoes,” he said the next. “Thanks…,” Leslie replied to both, nothing more, keeping the string loose as Raul tried (respectfully) to pull it tighter. As the months passed and summer turned to fall and then to winter and spring and finally summer again, the one-sided compliments turned to two-sided conversations and evenings separately at the bar turned into numbers in phones and softball games (Leslie watching, Raul coaching) and eventually a double feature movie night at Raul’s. Sitting next to Raul on the couch, watching two cinematic classics, The Cutting Edge and A League of Their Own, Leslie realized something she had never felt before. She didn’t want to leave. And the rest, is how they say, history.
So you see, it took a number of years, cities, jobs, relationships, and life events before Raul and Leslie were finally able to prove the Invisible String Theory true. And now they’re zero miles apart, living with two little cats, Belafonte (after Harry) and Senora (after Harry’s song ‘Jump In The Line’) in that same little studio on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, filled with love and stuff and books, and more love, ready to start the rest of their lives together.