In a Burbank writers’ room, over deli sandwiches from down the street, someone asked, “What’s your one dating deal-breaker?” I didn’t hesitate. “He can’t have a cat.” A few eyebrows lifted. That’s the hill? I doubled down. I hate them. I’m scared of them. Instant swipe left.

Two years later, I met my Bumble date at a North Hollywood bar shaped like a whiskey barrel, and my heart dropped the moment I saw him. He was even more handsome than his profile suggested. Disarmingly real-life handsome. I scanned the room to make sure it wasn’t a prank, which had actually happened to a coworker, but the coast seemed clear.

We sipped Moscow mules and traded stories like we had known each other for longer than an hour. When a surprising burlesque performance erupted beside us, he didn’t so much as glance away. His eyes stayed on mine. The night felt magical.

I don’t usually romanticize first dates. Most of them make it easy. A quick drink, polite conversation, a mutual understanding that we tried. It’s simpler than confronting the parts of myself I’ve hidden for years, fearing no one would accept me. I perfected the art of staying just far enough away to never fully be seen.

Until now. This one felt different.

As I headed home, the hum of Lankershim and the neon blur of bars couldn’t drown out the quiet, unmistakable voice inside me whispering, “I think I just met my future husband.”

My phone buzzed.

“Have I mentioned I have a little black void named Aneksi?”

A black cat with enormous green eyes stared back at me. Oh no … no, no, no! How could my dream guy, my supposed future husband, have my biggest deal-breaker?

This couldn’t be happening.

Despite my cat trepidation, I saw him again, just to make sure my first-date magic wasn’t a fluke. But the second date was even better. Shoot.

Over the next few days, I did what any rational woman falling for a man with a cat she despised would do. I Googled how long cats live. Fifteen years. Sometimes 20. Could I outlast it? Could I ask my dream guy to give up his rescue cat, his pandemic buddy? No. That would be cruel. Or would it?

Cats weren’t something I could easily get used to. My whole life, they had been vilified by my mom’s side of the family. We half-joked that our family had a curse with cats. Maybe this alleged “curse” is why I fear cats, or maybe it’s because when I was 4 years old I was attacked by one.

It happened at a sleepover. My friend’s cat hid under the bed and wanted us to play with it, so I leaned over and uttered three words I’ll never, ever, say again: “Here, kitty kitty.”

The cat lunged, claws digging into my arms. I ran for the door. Jammed. I tried barricading myself in the closet. The feisty cat was faster. My screams finally drew my friend’s mom to intervene. I limped home looking like a scene out of “Carrie.” The family curse was alive and well.

Now I was standing at the intersection of fear and desire. And I couldn’t stop liking him.

For most of our early relationship, Aneksi hid. I rarely stayed the night, secretly loving the eight-minute buffer between his Valley Village place and mine in Sherman Oaks. The perfect distance physically … and emotionally.

I hadn’t been in love in more than a decade. I carried shame about parts of my body that I preferred no one examine too closely. I had an MBA in becoming invisible. And yet, despite the moat around my heart, I couldn’t deny I wanted love again.

Aneksi, it turned out, had his own trust issues. Once he realized I wasn’t leaving, he cautiously emerged from his hiding spot, keeping an arm’s length between us. Fine by me. My dream guy occasionally nudged me to pet him or offer a treat. I did, briefly, because it mattered to him. What unsettled me more than the cat was this man’s patience. His steadiness. The way he cared without asking for anything back.

And then he left town.

He asked if I could watch Aneksi. The first day, the cat stayed hidden. I fed him, cleaned the litter box and left. By day three, curiosity won. He poked his head out. I placed a treat on the cat tower. He accepted. I pet him for approximately 2½ seconds. He seemed to enjoy it. I seemed to enjoy it. Huh? By the end of the week, I was sending photo updates like a proud babysitter, documenting every cautious inch of progress.

Over the next year, Aneksi no longer bolted when I entered the room. Sometimes, though, I still wanted to. That was when my dream guy, known as Sergio, brought up living together. Every cell in my body screamed yes, but my mind spiraled. The litter box. The tuna. The early mornings. No more eight-minute buffer to retreat to.

Plus, the idea of one of us giving up our rent-controlled apartment felt like throwing a pot of gold into the Pacific. What if it didn’t work out? And yet, my growing love for him tipped the balance. OK, I thought, let’s give this a real try.

Cohabitation wasn’t seamless. The litter box was still disgusting. The tuna still smelled. We coexisted more than we bonded. I loved Sergio. I tolerated the cat.

Then I hurt my knee at a dance audition in Pasadena I had no business attending.

When I started limping, Aneksi exuded a sympathy limp. The vet confirmed nothing was wrong with him. As I lay on the living room floor in pain, he flopped beside me and blinked slowly. I instinctively blinked back as happy tears streamed down my cheek. For the first time, his presence didn’t heighten my nervous system. He steadied it.

Something shifted after that. The safer he felt, the more open I became.

Sergio knew about my insecurities. What he didn’t always see was how carefully I managed myself around them. Like the angles I chose in photos, the way I shrunk myself to go unnoticed, the relief of a closed door. Living together made hiding harder.

One night, with Aneksi wedged between us on the couch, I let him see the parts of me that still wanted to hide. He didn’t flinch. He stayed.

For someone who spent years outrunning love, I was surprised to learn that when I stopped spiraling in my mind, I could finally trust what my body already knew.

I’m now married to Sergio. The spare rent-controlled apartment is gone. The litter box remains. And Aneksi rarely leaves my side. I now have two loves of my life and I couldn’t imagine it any other way. Maybe the family curse was never about cats. Maybe it was about fear. And maybe, finally, it’s broken.

The author is a screenwriter whose upcoming Hallmark movie “A Season to Blossom” premieres April 4. Find her on Instagram: @itsjenwolf.

L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.

Editor’s note: On April 3, L.A. Affairs Live, our new storytelling competition show, will feature real dating stories from people living in the Greater Los Angeles area. Tickets for our first event are on sale now at the Next Fun Thing.

Smiljan Radić Clarke was named the newest Pritzker Prize-winner — an award often called the Nobel of architecture — Thursday morning.

Was he surprised by his win?

“Yes, completely,” the Chilean architect told NPR in an email. “[It’s] a huge honor. And possibly, in the very near future, a bit of a headache, since it will probably mean being far more exposed than I would like.”

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Smiljan Radić Clarke

Tom Welsh for The Pritzker Architecture Prize

hide caption

toggle caption

Tom Welsh for The Pritzker Architecture Prize

Advertisement

The designer, known professionally as Smiljan Radić, is not exactly underexposed. But he is not as well known internationally as earlier Pritzker winners, such as Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Renzo Piano, Frank Gehry and I.M. Pei. Radić, who is 60 and the second Chilean architect to win the award, has designed dozens of buildings that have earned him a formidable reputation in artistic and intellectual circles. The New York Times described him as “a rock star among architects” in 2014, after his contribution to London’s prestigious Serpentine Pavilion.

For that annual installation that showcases cutting-edge architects, Radić designed a glowing rotund pod, almost alien in appearance, perched upon weathered quarry stones. Architecture critics were captivated.

“Seeming to belong at once to a world of science fiction and to a primordial past, the pavilion could well serve as the film set for a post-apocalyptic drama,” wrote Ellis Woodman in his review for The Telegraph. “And yet… it also invites association with the use of ruins and grottoes in the eighteenth century English landscape garden…. What is most captivating about Radić’s heroically peculiar pavilion is the way that it seems to stand out of time.”

Radić grew up in an immigrant family in Santiago. His father’s parents came from Croatia, and his mother’s from the United Kingdom. Although he colloquially uses his father’s surname, he told Pritzker officials upon winning the prize that he wanted to honor his mother by including her last name in the official announcement.

As a student, Radić nearly failed out of the architecture program at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Later, he described the humiliating experience as formative, enabling him to travel and study history. While in college, he met sculptor Marcela Correa, who became his wife and close collaborator. Among the numerous works they’ve created together is the celebrated House for the Poem of the Right Angle, a secluded house in the woods of Vilches, Chile, completed in 2013.

Exterior and interior views of House for the Poem of the Right Angle, 2013, Vilches, Chile

Cristobal Palma; Gonzalo Puga/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Cristobal Palma; Gonzalo Puga/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

A dramatic mishmash of stark angles and sinuous bulges, the black concrete structure was inspired by an abstract painting by Le Corbusier. The interior is open and airy, encased in cedar and stone.

“House for the Poem of the Right Angle signifies contemplative retreat,” the Pritzker committee wrote. “with thoughtfully placed openings, oriented upward to capture light and time, encouraging stillness and introspection.”

NAVE, Performing Arts Center, 2015, Santiago, Chile

Cristobal Palma/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

Advertisement

hide caption

toggle caption

Cristobal Palma/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

Advertisement

Radić’s other notable works include several performing arts spaces in Chile, including the NAVE arts hall in Santiago and Teatro Regional del Bío Bío in Concepción, which earned him accolades and awards. The Pritzker jury called the theater “a carefully engineered semi-translucent envelope [that] modulates light and supports acoustic performance through restraint. Construction becomes a kind of storytelling, where texture and mass carry as much meaning as form.”

Vik Millahue Winery, 2013, Millahue, Chile

Cristobal Palma/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Cristobal Palma/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

The view from inside the Vik Millahue Winery, 2013, Millahue, Chile

Cristobal Palma/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

Cristobal Palma/The Pritzker Architecture Prize

From certain angles, his VIK winery in Millahue, Chile looks like a giant piece of agricultural equipment. It was, Radić said, intended to reflect the realities of winemaking, rather than a romance with the fermented grape. During an onstage lecture for the Architecture Foundation in 2023, Radić credited industrial process and chemistry as inspiration. “It’s not really about some concept I don’t like, the idea of terroir,” he said. “It’s a lot of myth.”

In recent years, Radić has also collaborated closely with the high fashion brand Alexander McQueen, designing stores in Miami, Las Vegas, London and Dubai. Yet the Pritzker jury noted that his buildings “invite interpretation, rather than consumption.”

This year’s jury was chaired by Alejandro Aravena, who became the first Chilean to win the Pritzker in 2016. His admiration for his countryman was evident in a Pritzker statement.

“In every work, he is able to answer with radical originality, making the unobvious obvious,” he wrote of Radić. “He reverts back to the most irreducible basic foundations of architecture, exploring at the same time, limits that have not yet been touched. Developed in a context of unforgiving circumstances, from the edge of the world, with a practice of just a few collaborators, he is capable of bringing us to the innermost core of the built environment and the human condition.”

In February, the Pritzker Prize itself came under scrutiny when it became public that Tom Pritzker, the director of the foundation that awards the prize, had been in frequent communication with Jeffrey Epstein. Tom Pritzker is the son of Jay A. Pritzker, who established the prize with his wife Cindy in 1979. (The elder Pritzker died in 1999.)

The family had made a fortune in the hotel industry. Tom Pritzker stepped down as executive chairman of the Hyatt Hotels Corporation, though he remains the chairman of The Hyatt Foundation. A spokesperson for the Pritzker Prize told the New York Times that the Hyatt Foundation protected the prize from outside influence and its financial support enabled the jury “to remain assured in the strength of its process and focus entirely on the celebration of architectural excellence.”

The prize bestows $100,000 on the winner, as well as a bronze medallion.

“This sad moment in history is not the best circumstance in which to receive an award,” Radić told NPR in an email. He was responding to a question about the importance of architecture during a moment when so many important buildings are being destroyed around the world in conflicts and wars.

“The Chilean poet Nicanor Parra once wrote in the 1940s that ‘the sky is falling apart,’ and today we might add that the earth itself seems to be cracking,” he wrote. “Still, I believe that architecture is a positive act — it helps create concrete realities where people can value their surroundings in a different way.”

Cal Calamia remembers stepping into his power at the Los Angeles Marathon two years ago.

It was a cool and especially windy March morning, and Calamia had run through a succession of L.A. neighborhoods — Chinatown, Echo Park, Silver Lake and Los Feliz, to start. He cruised by some of his favorite L.A. landmarks, including the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which he’d romanticized as a glittering oasis while growing up in the Midwest in a conservative Republican family. Here in California, “a sanctuary for transgender people” like him, and ensconced by the cheering L.A. Marathon crowds, he felt not only safe, but celebrated.

During one section of the race in Westwood, with about eight miles left to the finish line, energetic spectators on Santa Monica Boulevard huddled onto a concrete median shrieking and waving signs — one read, “You’re running better than our government,” he recalls. Toddlers sat perched on adults’ shoulders, seniors wielded cardboard posters. He says the crush of rippling flags is an image he’ll cherish forever — more pink-blue-and-white-striped trans flags than he’d ever seen in one place.

“Being in this particular race environment knowing there was genuine love and support for me, for people like me, just felt like being held,” Calamia says. “It was really beautiful.”

Calamia would go on to win first place in the L.A. Marathon’s nonbinary division that year, clocking in at 2:53:02 — one of myriad victories in his career. Based in San Francisco, Calamia (whose pronouns are they/he and who asked that both be used in this article) is the only nonbinary marathoner ever to podium (finish in a top-three spot) in six of the Abbott World Marathon Majors. They’re also a leading transgender advocate, helping to educate marathon organizers around the world about equity and inclusion — and a poet, a collection of poems inspired by their gender transition, published in 2021.

Calamia hasn’t participated in the L.A. Marathon since that memorable 2024 race, but they hope to reclaim the top spot in the nonbinary division on Sunday. The race, from Dodger Stadium to Century City, is 26.2 miles long; but the fight for equity for trans and nonbinary marathoners across the sport, Calamia says, is a far longer road.

“It’s changing, but we’re not there yet. So, so much more needs to be done in the realm of education,” they say.

Runners start the 39th Los Angeles Marathon at Dodger Stadium on March 17, 2024.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Calamia is competing in a moment when transgender athletes are a topic of national political debate.

The Trump administration has been trying to ban transgender athletes from participating in youth sports competitions throughout the country, a battle that is playing out in court. The Supreme Court is considering whether to uphold state bans on transgender athletes competing in girls’ sports in Idaho and West Virginia. In 2025 alone, hundreds of bills were introduced at the state and federal levels to restrict the rights of transgender people — not only targeting their participation in sports, but their medical care and their identity documents.

Within the marathoning world, the introduction of a nonbinary division is relatively new and has been a quickly evolving issue. Trans and nonbinary marathoners, historically, have run in either the category in which they were assigned at birth — in which they didn’t identify personally — or, depending on the marathon, in the category aligned with their self-identified gender. In the latter case, some might be at a disadvantage, others an advantage (trans men, for example, might be physically smaller and weaker, with regard to muscular strength and lung capacity, than the cis men they’re competing against.

Trans marathoner Cal Calamia started running in fifth grade. “It was the first time I felt like I had autonomy over my body,” they say.

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

The Los Angeles and New York City marathons were the first to introduce nonbinary divisions in 2021. Now all seven Abbott World Marathon Majors — in New York, Boston, Chicago, Tokyo, Berlin, London and Sydney — include a nonbinary division for mass participation runners.

But non-binary runners typically aren’t awarded prize money because there isn’t a category for them in elite divisions (in which where prize money is typically awarded) as there is for cis runners. (The New York City Marathon does offer prize money to nonbinary runners within its New York Road Runners-member general division, as do some local races.)

One reason: Most marathons take their cues from the Monaco-based World Athletics, the international governing body for the World Marathon Majors as well as large-scale road races such as the L.A. Marathon. And in the elite field, “our categorisation of either male or female for entry purposes and results are based on an athlete’s biological sex,” spokesperson Maggie Durand said in an email, adding that the dispersion of prize money is ultimately up to the races.

Another issue is that the nonbinary category is smaller and therefore less competitive, the L.A. Marathon says. In 2021, zero nonbinary runners crossed the finish line at the L.A. Marathon; 38 runners did in 2024 and 267 did in 2025. This year, the marathon is expecting 150 participants in the category. That represents just 0.54% of registration for the race, which has about 27,000 participants in all. (A portion of registration fees goes toward prize money.)

While the L.A. Marathon doesn’t have a professional nonbinary division with prize money, it does award the top three nonbinary finishers a trophy or a medal as well as inclusion in post-race publicity.

“World Athletics and USA Track & Field set our industry standards and we look to their regulations,” L.A. Marathon spokesperson Meg Treat said. “But at the end of the day, the category is small. And while some of the runners will clock fast times, many of them are going to be finishing alongside our everyday athletes as part of the general field. We’re watching how the competitiveness of that category develops and we’ll evaluate potential changes.”

Calamia, calls it a “chicken and egg issue.” “There’s a lot of, ‘Oh, it’s not competitive enough and too small,’ but how could it be competitive enough if it’s not recognized?”

Calamia, who was assigned female at birth, grew up in a suburb of Chicago in a “loud, conservative household,” as he describes it, the second oldest of four siblings. “There were a lot of people with strong opinions,” he says, and not much tolerance for “anything different,” which he felt inside. He started running cross-country in fifth grade and it brought him a sense of freedom — from the dissonance inside his mind as well as from the house.

Calamia recently became a vegan. “There’s an intersection between transness and veganism,” they say.

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

“It was the first time I felt like I had autonomy over my body,” he says.

They moved to San Francisco in 2018 and began their gender transition, having top surgery in 2019. Later that year while training, they ran shirtless through the streets of San Francisco as a nonbinary transmasculine athlete and felt more themself than ever, embracing “the in-between.”

“Early in my transition, my goal was, ‘I don’t want to be perceived as a woman. But I’m not quite like these cisgender men, either.’ It took me a lot of work to understand how beautiful occupying that liminal space is instead. Having the nonbinary division in marathons is an extension of that.”

His family has “come a long way,” but relations remain strained, he says. “They’re not just, ‘We voted for Trump;’ they’re Blue Lives Matter flag up in the yard and Trump bumper stickers and ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flag and tattoos,” he says. “To try to have a relationship with them is challenging. Because they’re actively voting against not just my rights, but human rights.”

Calamia backed into an activism career when in 2022 he led a campaign pressuring San Francisco’s Bay to Breakers race to let nonbinary participants win awards. (The race was letting the runners register, but not place.) Calamia won that battle — and then took first place in the race days later.

“I was like: ‘Wow, look what we just did. What else can we do?’” he says.

The answer: The San Francisco, Chicago and Boston marathons all introduced nonbinary categories within a year, partly due to Calamia’s efforts. Calamia, would become the San Francisco Marathon’s inaugural nonbinary division winner as well.

Post-victory elation, however, was short-lived: In mid-2023, Calamia had to tirelessly defend their right to use testosterone, which they’d been taking since 2019 as part of their gender transition, to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. It ultimately granted them a 10-year therapeutic use exemption so they can continue to compete.

Now the four pillars of Calamia’s career — marathoning, activism/education, writing and community building (they founded a nonbinary run club that meets weekly in the Bay Area) — are working together with the gusto of an elite athlete. But Calamia feels added pressure to win races because it amplifies their advocacy voice.

“None of it works if the sports performance isn’t up to par, because then no one is paying attention,” they say. “But also, I’m putting pressure on myself to try and beat all the women or compete with at least some of the fastest men. Because I don’t want to feel like a charity entry. I’m a fast runner. I want to be recognized as a strong athlete — not as someone who got the chance to be here because ‘we’re so inclusive.’”

Calamia says he feels a sense of freedom and calm when running. “It’s a flow state.”

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

With the L.A. Marathon just days away, Calamia is feeling positive about the race. His personal record is 2:41:59 from the Berlin Marathon in 2024 and he hopes to best that. Toward that end, Calamia will do what he always does the day before a race: visit a spa for contrast therapy (between a hot tub and cold plunge) while visualizing every stage of the imminent marathon, its hurdles and eventual successes. On race morning, he’ll eat his usual: a bagel with peanut butter and a banana.

Next up: Calamia will compete in the open division of the Athletic Brewing Ironman 70.3 Oceanside on March 28, with two other trans athletes as his teammates, Schuyler Bailar and Chella Man. And after competing in the Sydney Marathon this August, he’ll run a 100-mile ultramarathon in Arizona in October.

Marathoning, says Abbott World Marathon Majors Chief Operating Officer Danny Coyle, is “one of the most inclusive movements” in sports globally. “If you’re lucky enough to stand on the side of the street on any given race day in the WMM — and some of the big races like Los Angeles — it’s just this melting pot and stream of humanity of all shapes and sizes, all creeds and colors, with one shared objective: to get to the finish line.”

Calamia, however, says there are still miles ahead until the sport is truly inclusive for trans and nonbinary runners.

“But I love the sport,” they say. “The fact that it’s still evolving is a beautiful thing and I’ve learned so much about myself, and grown so much, because of my relationship with running.”

The L.A. Marathon, they add, plays a central role in the sport’s own evolution.

“L.A. is this place where all these different people from all over the place come together to pursue their dreams, which is inspiring,” they say. “Having nonbinary representation on the course, as well as support from spectators, sets a precedent for other cities around the globe: that no one should have to choose between being who you are and doing what you love.”

Transgender athlete-activist-poet Calamia shows off a tattoo reading, “Eyes up. Look ahead.”

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

Advertisement