Lovers and Friends: How They Met

This semester, narrative journalism has appeased the pleasures that come with "soft news" or what I like to call flowery writing. Imagery, says vs. said quotes, scene setters, physical descriptions. Confronted with the angle of happy love, this story tells readers how Bushra Mollick met Joe Damiani.

Bushra Mollick remembers strolling into a Media Law class at Stony Brook University  – as usual, she was low on energy and high on caffeine – a year and half ago. Her walk-ins caught the attention of 19-year-old classmate Joe Damiani.

“It was the dresses she wore stumbling into class all the time,” says Damiani, a six-foot, seven-inch sophomore.

For a change, Mollick’s tardiness worked in her favor. At the time, the 20-year-old junior from Lefrak City, Queens, had been involved in a courtship. But, after she confirmed rumors of infidelity, she called it quits.

“I was really affected by it,” she remembers.

Soon after her spirits were lifted. Love came knocking in the form of a Facebook request.

Damiani added his classmate in November. Today a request speaks volume; he goes beyond the “adding you to my network” stage. It is move often looked as taking the first step. A) platonic, B) I think you’re cute, C) I want to know more about you or D) all of the above.

Damiani may have been sending mixed signals.

Mollick says that she accepted without much thought. “He’d poke me,” she says. “I’d say ‘who is this kid?’”

Today a poke begs attention or at least acknowledgement. Damiani says it was for the latter.

While Facebook might have been the birthplace of this love story, the couple held traditional values and took the road less traveled today.

They became friends. Best friends.

Damiani visited Mollick in between her shifts in the West Quad office, where she is a resident assistant. She remembers that his lanky arms wrapped around her – enough to make her feel protected.

Eventually, the feelings grew.

Both say time and distance apart in the winter helped the friendship grown. Mollick, approaching 22, who resides in Lefrak City, says her older sister pointed out the consistency in Damiani’s text messages. “We had been texting everyday and I thought ‘maybe he likes me.’”

For Damiani, it was confirmation that Mollick had mutual feelings.

“She is a well-known girl on-campus and I’m this shy, quiet guy who’s never had a girlfriend; I was like ‘wow, she really notices me.’”

That following semester, Mollick and Damiani shared Tuesday and Thursday classes.

Mollick and Damiani – majors at the School of Journalism – with a focus in broadcast news, had taken the introductory class together. They were a pair and often in the newsroom rewriting scripts or in Starbucks café at the Student Union.

“There’s no set pace – I don’t think anything was rushed,” he says.

Mollick who says she made all the ‘moves’ – leaning in ninety percent and her stud meeting the remaining ten – initiated the first time the two had locked hands and kiss. “It happened in front of my building; I ran upstairs and squealed after,” she says.

“I tried getting Joe to kiss me a week earlier, but he didn't get the hint,” she recalls. “When I texted him, ‘can we make out already?’ he got the hint.”

Damiani and Mollick made it Facebook official on June 2, 2012. No mushy-love statuses warranted the special day. It was a closed ceremony.

The girl with a flowing mane and the guy with broad shoulders and squinted eyes compliment the other.

Mollick is a muslim from a moderate-liberal Bengali family. She talked about her boyfriend, Joe, before introducing him to her parents. Race is never an issue, she says. “If I have my father’s stamp of approval, then he’s a good kid.”

Damiani comes from a tight-knit community in Oyster Bay, Long Island and always had shelter from school.

His girlfriend, who calls Lefrak City home or ‘the hood’ spoke of the contrasts in neighborhoods. “He lives near the water, and there’s a Popeyes by my house.”

Joe and her folks met last year.  The love of her life hasn’t had a home-cooked meal at her place. If he wants a home-cooked meal, he has to propose to his girlfriend.

“Unless he is your fiancé or husband, you don’t bring him over for dinner,” says Mollick.

Now the two have been the other’s support systems. Damiani, who commutes from Oyster Bay, spends at least two afternoons per week waiting for his girlfriend in the newsroom’s equipment room.

Mollick, also a political science major is graduating in December. Her boyfriend will graduate the semester after. Both say their biggest fear is the distance. She hopes to visit him on the weekends if he becomes a resident assistant.

“I still want us to be together,” she says.

“We will,” he says. 

-A