This is part of Breakup Week. We just can’t do this anymore.
This as-told-to is based on a conversation with 34-year-old Noam Ash. The Los Angeles–based actor, known for his work on The Other Two and the YouTube series My Gay Roommate, is the writer and star of Bookends, a new movie based on his own life. Bookends also stars F. Murray Abraham, Caroline Aaron, and Charlie Barnett. It premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival last month. Here, Ash tells the real story behind the movie: a breakup that upended his life, and what he learned about love upon moving in with his grandparents for a year.
Back in 2018, when I was a recent college grad hustling and living the New York life, I had this whirlwind romance with a guy that I met on Instagram. It started with us liking multiple pictures of each other—he was tall and handsome, and he often posted about the fun travel adventures he went on. As soon as we started talking, one thing led to another. Daily messages gave way to FaceTime conversations, and within six weeks he planned a trip to see me. He lived in Europe, so it began as this long-distance international love affair where I’d fly there and he’d fly to me while we tried to figure out how our lives could fit together. There was something very exotic and thrilling about it all: I’d found someone who might be my soulmate and we just happened to connect on the internet and find each other.
When he first came to visit me, it felt like a movie. We were just two strangers from opposite ends of the world meeting in New York, thinking we were in love, each swept up in the idea of what we thought the other person was. It was intoxicating. It was intense. He was going to stay with a friend of his, but I took him to dinner on his first night in town and he just came back to mine and didn’t leave for 10 days. We spent every single moment together. We went to a Broadway show and the Museum of Natural History. It felt like I was seeing the city through fresh eyes.
It was easy to maintain the soulmate fantasy when we lived so far apart. But people in my life were suspicious. One of the things my grandmother said to me later was, “When things are easy, it’s easy to love almost anyone.” That certainly felt true: We had no issues, no disagreements, and no responsibilities. I was too wrapped up in the fantasy to see that real life—with its other people and myriad obligations—was about to rear its ugly head.
He spent the summer with me in New York to see how he liked it. I think the enormity of the potential move hit him, and he realized he didn’t want to leave his home behind. He started feeling trapped and under pressure. We wanted different lives, and the lives we wanted were not compatible. One day, I noticed he was on Grindr. It turned into a whole argument where he said he was only on there to see if I was on there. He would also leave the apartment to take calls in private with someone who I now know was his ex. When he went back to Europe, I couldn’t get ahold of him for a few days. I had a strong suspicion that he was with his ex, which he fervently denied—until months later when he admitted it. He never did come back to New York. I got a text: It was over.
Thinking about it now, I see how modern it all was: We met on Instagram. It ended with a text message. But the heartbreak was insurmountable. I felt like the world was closing around me, that the fantasy I’d spent the last year obsessively building up just completely shattered overnight. Everything in my life came crashing down. I’d spent so much money traveling to see him that I was in a pretty bad financial position. I’d also neglected my friends in New York. I felt depressed and lonely and out of options, so I went to live with the closest family I had: my grandparents.
Arriving there felt like the ultimate defeat. I was pushing 30, I had just been dumped, and I had no real legs to stand on. I arrived at their house with my tail between my legs, totally mortified. But they were thrilled. They were in their early 90s and less able to leave home than they used to be. To them, I felt like a breath of fresh air. Still, I told myself that it was just going to be temporary until I found a better situation. I was in denial about how long it would really take to get back on my feet.
When I showed up, they were immediately like, “Let’s unpack all your mistakes. Let’s see what you can learn and how you can get back on your feet.” Of course, it was all done with a lot of humor, love, guidance, and warmth, but when in the thick of it, I was like, Can we not?!
But then something magical started to happen. I found that people who are on opposite ends of life’s journey sometimes have the most to give each other. Having a young person in the house and dealing with heartbreak and relationships invigorated them. They felt needed. It was an opportunity for them to give guidance—and, for me, it felt great to receive.
Sometimes, when you give voice to things that seem entirely normal to you, you hear yourself say them and realize how ridiculous you sound. For example, they would ask how we met. I said on Instagram. They said, “So you don’t know each other.” And I’d say, “Well, that’s why we send each other pictures!” But they’d respond, “You think that’s how you get to know each other? You think it matters what a person’s favorite movie is or what they like to eat? We don’t like the same movies. We don’t like the same food. This is a very shallow way to get to know a person.”
At the time, I was very focused on superficial things: how tall a person was, what they looked like, if they were friends with a cool crowd. My grandparents taught me those things don’t make for a happy relationship. In fact, they had a whole different take on my breakup. “You’re so angry at this person for not living up to your fantasy of what you wanted him to be, but you didn’t even really know him,” they told me. “You had an idea of him. You had a fantasy that you built up, and when he failed to live up to it, you were crushed.”
I knew they were right. So I changed the way I approached dating. First, I got rid of the superficial checklists I had of what makes a “suitable mate.” Second, I stopped spending endless amounts of time texting people on apps. I wanted to meet them in the real world. I started communicating differently with them, too. We would talk about family, and what we valued in life and in other people. It was much deeper. It also changed how I felt if something wasn’t a fit. The rejection didn’t feel like rejection, or as heavy as it did before. It wasn’t that I wasn’t good enough—we just weren’t aligned. It freed up the whole dating process and made it a lot easier for me to meet the right person.
My time with my grandparents put me back in touch with the values that I was raised with and the things that were important to me. It reconnected me to the things that I wanted out of life and out of a life with a partner. When I met my now-boyfriend, it was unlike any other relationship I’d ever had before, because those profound things were what we bonded over first, giving us a strong foundation from the start. We have very much the same outlook and priorities. It’s been wonderful. I’ve been with him for almost three years.
I lived with my grandparents for about a year. Witnessing their marriage firsthand taught me so much about love and relationships. I could see that they were different people, but they complemented each other so well. They deeply enjoyed each other’s company. I got the sense that home for each of them was wherever the other person happened to be. I learned that that’s the most important thing: providing safety and comfort for someone who feels like home.
While I was there, my grandfather started showing signs of cognitive decline. I became concerned by what I was seeing, but my grandmother had a very difficult time accepting what was happening. Over the course of the year, though, a transition slowly occurred where one generation went from being taken care of to stepping into the role of a caretaker. It was very profound. I learned to stop thinking just about myself.
It was the year I grew up.
My grandfather passed away in 2021. He was buried on what would’ve been their 71st wedding anniversary. My grandmother died a year later. My movie is inspired by all the lessons I learned from them. I hope they’d be really proud and moved. The film is a love letter to them and how they set me up to live a good life. It’s something I will be forever grateful for. They were helping me open chapters and get my life started on the right track, and I helped them close a chapter of theirs.
