My apartment usually looks like a bomb went off in a RadioShack. That’s the first thing I tell people when I actually manage to drag myself out on a date, which, to be honest, isn’t often. I work in logistics—high stress, sixty-hour weeks, and a constant stream of crises that need managing. By the time I get home, my brain is fried. I don’t want to watch Netflix. I want to build things.

Specifically, I build modular synthesizers. To the uninitiated, it looks like a wall of confusing metal boxes connected by a chaotic spaghetti of rainbow-colored cables. To me, it’s therapy. But in the dating world, it’s usually a conversation stopper. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen a woman’s eyes glaze over as I tried to explain the difference between a low-pass filter and a ring modulator. Eventually, I just stopped bringing it up. I’d hide the gear in the spare room and pretend I was into normal things like hiking or craft beer. It was easier, but it felt like hiding a limb.

A few months ago, after a particularly brutal quarter at work, I realized I was becoming a hermit. I missed connection, but I didn't miss the pretense. I wanted to meet someone who wouldn't just tolerate my quirks but might actually have a few of their own. I wasn't looking for a soulmate; I was just looking for someone who made sense. I signed up for naomidate on a whim one Tuesday night while waiting for a render to finish. I liked that the profiles felt detailed, less about curated Instagram moments and more about actual personalities.

That’s when I saw Kenna’s profile. She didn’t have a photo of herself on a beach or holding a wine glass. Her main picture was her, focused intently, holding a soldering iron, with a caption that read: "Currently trying to fix this 1980s drum machine. Send help or coffee."

I stared at the screen for a solid minute. I didn't send a pickup line. I messaged her: "Is that a TR-707? Check the solder joints on the output jack."

She replied ten minutes later. "It is. And I did. It was the power supply capacitors. Good eye."

We didn't meet up immediately. We spent two weeks just swapping photos of our workstations. It turned out she works in high-frequency trading—another high-stress job—and decompresses by restoring vintage audio gear. She understood the specific kind of tired that comes from corporate life, the need to work with your hands to feel human again.

When we finally met for coffee, I was nervous. Online chemistry is one thing; physical presence is another. But when she walked in, she just handed me a small bag. Inside was a rare patch cable I’d mentioned passingly that I was looking for.

"I had a spare," she shrugged, grabbing a menu.

There were no fireworks, no cinematic swells of music. It was just... easy. The conversation flowed from work grievances to the best type of solder to use. We skipped the awkward small talk about siblings and favorite colors and went straight to the things that actually lit our brains up.

Last Saturday, she came over to my place. I didn't hide the cables. I didn't clear the dining table of my half-finished sequencer project. She walked in, dropped her bag, and immediately started inspecting my Eurorack setup.

"You have the Maths module," she said, grinning. "Can I patch something?"

We spent the next four hours making absolute noise. It wasn't music, really. It was drones, bleeps, and rhythmic static. We barely spoke, just moving cables, tweaking knobs, and nodding at each other when a rhythm locked in. It was the most relaxed I’d felt in years.

We ordered pizza, ate it on the floor surrounded by wires, and talked about our week. It wasn't a fairy tale. I still forgot to buy napkins, and she spilled a bit of water on the floor. But looking at her there, fixing a loose connection on my oscillator while chewing a slice of pepperoni, I realized how exhausting it had been to pretend to be normal.

I don’t know where this is going long-term. We’re both busy, we’re both stubborn, and we both have terrible work-life balance. But finding someone who doesn't just tolerate your weirdness but grabs a cable and plugs into it? That’s rare. And for now, that’s more than enough.