Day 12 Yoni and Mere

There wasn’t an exact point at which Yoni and Mere met. This non exact meeting point happened in their junior year at the University of Michigan. At this non exact time, they were both dating other people.

Yoni thought of Mere as someone you have a good friendship connection with, you know, the type of person you meet who you’re sure you would be great friends with. Mere thought of Yoni as the soft spoken, Israeli long-haired kid whose name means vagina and worked behind the film equipment counter.

Mere held a porn and fondue party, a party where you watch granny porn, tranny porn, lesbian army porn and eat fondue of-course. She invited Yoni, who was friends with her girlfriend at the time. She remembers him reacting wonderfully – relaxed, curious with a good sense of humour.

But they didn’t become friends. Not then anyway. They became friends a year later in their senior year, and then Mere left for Ecuador for 18 months. They exchanged a few emails over the next year and a half about film making and cultural identity ideas.

Around the same time that Mere got back from Ecuador, Yoni started making a documentary about Ecuador. It was a no-brainer. He called her up and Mere became co-director of his Ecuador documentary. At this point, they were both living in Chicago because everyone moves to Chicago eventually. For the next two years, they worked on several documentaries and film projects together.

There was an attraction between them, but it was the kind of attraction you feel for someone while being in a long-term relationship. An attraction that you know is there but you know you won’t act on. Until Yoni’s seven-year relationship ended.

Yoni and Mere got together under a clear, deliberate agreement of an open relationship, which lasted for eight months. “I think it was eight months, Mere might tell you it was longer”. During the eight months, they saw other people, had mini romances and experimentations. Yoni wanted to be sure that what he was feeling wasn’t just infatuation for Mere. And Mere wanted to give him the space necessary to heal from a break-up of a major relationship.

It was summer 2007. Mere went to Alaska to fish and work on a salmon tender boat for two months, and Yoni went to Prague to study art history and insect animation. Yoni never gets culture shock and he never gets homesick, but he missed Mere and would think about her all the time. Mere missed him too.

They made an appointment to talk on the CB radio phone while Mere was out at sea and Yoni in Prague. They decided to start officially dating when they both got back to Chicago. Yoni picked Mere up at the airport and remembers their embrace as a resolution to start a committed relationship. That day they got two parking tickets and one speeding ticket.

Their first fight was about conspiracy theories. Mere was repeating what she had heard from her boat captain in Alaska – crashing a plane into a building will not raise the temperature of steel to melting point. Yoni thought conspiracy theories were counter-revolutionary.

Yoni and Mere are living happily in Chicago.