Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: We made fun of toxic men at the gym. Then this friend started acting like one
I saw Trevor around the gym for months — scattered tattoos and black tank top with a cute smudge of climbing chalk on their ears. They always made sure to say hi, looking in my direction frequently. They first asked me to hang out in December.
I asked when they were free, and they replied, “Christmas Day?” I thought it was a joke, but now I’m not sure. In January, I went on a hike with them. They tried to take me to an old mine in Millard Canyon, which we never found — but we did find a shared love of theater and making fun of capitalist overlords and loud, grunting men at the gym. Overall, it felt so … friendly. No spark, but good conversation for hours.
A few months later, they got me out again — this time, to Geeky Tea and Games in Burbank. I had so much work to do, and I was hardly getting time to sleep. But I freaking love board games. We were out until 2 a.m.
After beating them in Catan (without witnessing an alpha male tantrum at losing!), we ended up at IHOP, where the server remembered Trevor from their youth. Her memory of them being sweet as a teenager calmed the “Is this person actually a serial killer?” intrusive thoughts.
We started texting throughout the day, sharing memes, cat pictures and jokes about the hypermasculine beasts at the gym. By May, I was working two jobs, hosting a fundraiser and arranging a group vacation.
I got sick and Trevor swooped in, making me soup, doing dishes, reading with different voices to me in bed, cuddling me and eschewing activities outside the apartment because they just “wanted to talk.” Even though I didn’t feel romantically connected, I felt protected and loved getting to chat until the birds sang with someone emotionally aware and sensitive.
We giggled about all the ways cis men had to prove themselves (and to whom?!). They repeatedly said they were happy with how the friendship was, that they would be just as happy if we never had sex and just slept next to each other at night. As someone on the asexual spectrum, that sounded perfect.
However, they kept being more and more touchy in bed, talking about how much I turned them on and how they weren’t like other male-bodied folks. I was curious and didn’t want to lose my sleepover buddy, so we agreed to be friends with benefits. Things went smoothly … for about two weeks.
By mid-June, their communication became inconsistent. Suddenly, the playful messaging, reliability, the soothing sound of them reading at night — all my favorite things about our time together — disappeared. When I asked what changed, they said that now that they “had me,” there was “no reason to do any of that.”
The sex was fun for those first few weeks, but then they stopped doing any sort of foreplay. I cried. A lot. It felt like I was spending time with a stranger — and one who couldn’t care less about me.
I knew they were going through a rough patch financially, and I thought if they could just get through that, they would go back to being the fun, gentle friend from the spring. But they started playing games of the non-board variety, such as messaging me, “What time are we meeting again?” at the time we were supposed to meet. They belittled creative ideas I had.
The long chats about our world and perspectives were reduced to watching a TV show in each other’s arms and falling asleep. Where was the emotional connection I enjoyed?
A few weeks later, they mentioned that they wanted to sleep with two climbers from the gym — two people in separate long-term relationships. They started making unrealistic plans to sleep with them (unbeknownst to the people). I calmly pointed out that if they continued to do this, they would lose me.
Trevor looked me right in the eyes and said, “OK,” leaving me to feel like our friendship was nothing to them.
I ended the sexual part of our relationship, but I held the door open for friendship. They responded, “Great, now I’m not gonna have sex for years.”
This cued a roller-coaster cycle — they’d come to the gym to say things like, “I’m going to cry myself to sleep tonight” and text that they needed me to come over, only to change their mind later.
I slept over one more time to have a talk about what our future friendship could look like. Trevor bemoaned how I could possibly want to be friends with them and how badly they felt for hurting me, saying they just couldn’t help hurting people all the time.
I told them that I felt it was odd to ask for sympathy for causing me so much emotional pain. I told them that to be friends moving forward, I needed them to promise not to intentionally hurt me in the future and to communicate if they were feeling anxious or insecure rather than lashing out.
When I woke up, they told me they didn’t want me to sleep over again because “it’s weird.” I left but then began receiving texts from them about how their week was going. They also shared YouTube clips with no context and fake cheery messages.
I felt like they were still putting on a front with me, when I wanted the real person. Or maybe I finally met the real person.
I wrote a long text message, explaining how our friendship still felt off to me, and I suggested that we chat about our feelings. They responded, “At this point, I do not think we would make good friends and I don’t want to be friends with you.” Ouch.
When the friendship ended, it felt like I was grieving someone who hadn’t existed. I think I should dislike them more, but the reality is that I miss my funny, talented friend. I wish for another late night of jolting up from laughing and hearing them playfully say, “Wait, are those birds starting to sing? Oh, nooooo, what are we gonna do?!”
I won’t ever know if my springtime buddy was genuinely there or if it was just a long-running mask. But I’m grateful for the friends who validated my feelings of sadness and confusion and firmly recommended running far, far away. For the next partner, I’ll keep the bar above the shirtless grunters at the gym and raise it up a notch to someone who can laugh through the birds singing and communicate even when they can’t.
The author is a queer, multiracial writer who took a part-time job at the climbing gym, only to accidentally unionize it. When she’s not playing outside, she can be found playing pretend at comedy venues around town. She’s on Instagram: @jessadventurin
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.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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