Aimeé
A big question for a lot of singles in quarantine right now is, “Am I literally going to die alone?” The prospect of dating is perhaps too overwhelming to contemplate. We can’t touch. We can’t even be within six feet of each other. And if you could go out, there’s not really anywhere to go! This conundrum might explain the popularity of this budding love story between two Brooklynites, Jeremy Cohen and Tori Cignarella.
Cohen is a photographer with a drone who told Insider that since quarantine, he’s been working on a project about people on roofs.
“I’ve been working on a photo series where I document people on their roofs because, during this time, a lot of people are going up to their roofs way more frequently than they have before,” he said.
But then he saw Cignarella: “It was the first time I saw someone dancing on the roof. She just kept dancing and I was just attracted to her energy.”
“There were people in the direction I was facing and I just started dancing,” Cignarella said in an interview with TIME. “I like making people laugh if I can, and I like making myself laugh, too.”
A very attractive attitude. Cohen sent his number over to her via drone and she texted him a little later. The video story of this courtship went massively viral as people wondered if a lover would drop out of the sky for them:
I can’t believe this actually worked and yes this is a real story pic.twitter.com/X5KbBl0qIe
— Jeremy Cohen (@jerm_cohen) March 22, 2020
The meet-cute went so well that Cohen decided to ask Cignarella out on a date. He got her roommate’s number, and together they planned a surprise rooftop dinner date.
“It’s very Gen Z — I Venmo’ed her roommate for everything she did, because cause I wanted to treat her to dinner,” he said. They share pics and videos of their FaceTime romance too:
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Cohen told Dazed that he didn’t intend to make this into an epic tale for the Internet, but it worked out.
“I’m not much of a planner,” Cohen explained. “So I never envisioned it to be a series. But once I was editing the first part, I realized I could make a second part by having a ‘date.'”
But there was still a third part to come. Cohen went to pick Cignarella up for a third date, rolling up to her house in a big bubble… that he just happened to have.
“I actually ordered the bubble a couple of days before I met Tori for a possible conceptual art project I would do,” Cohen said. “I didn’t really have a plan, just thought it would be cool to do something with it. I think the day of the first date is when I received the bubble in the mail and thought it would make for a perfect second date.”
They moseyed around the neighborhood with Cohen in the bubble and Cignarella in gloves.
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Cohen thinks that people are interested in the story because it shows creative ways to get around this feeling of isolation.
“We have these barriers up now, and we can’t get close to each other physically,” he said. “But we have all this technology we can utilize now to still stay so closely in touch.”
But will they keep dating when the barriers are down?
“She’s just a very kind person and cute. So we’ll see where it goes,” said Cohen. “If this doesn’t work out, which also is a possibility, I’m sure we will be close in some way, just because she’s so cool and chill, and we’ve had this crazy experience together.”
Hmm. Doesn’t sound good. But not all love stories are meant to last forever. We just end this one for quarantine.
