It all Hinges on the hello...
It was an unimaginably cold morning (dear reader, it was below 60° in Los Angeles) on the 21st of January, 2020 as Jordan Beeks sat on Hinge writing and deleting approximately 12 different possible opening volleys to one “Erick M.” before ultimately electing to respond to perhaps the least inviting of the prompts on Erick’s profile; an Instagram post about temporary child rearing.
“Why not?” he thought to himself, “Somebody this hot probably isn’t going to respond anyways and best to get the weird out of the way now.” He hit send and promptly left for work.
—
Two hours later, on the opposite end of town, Erick Moritz sat at the table of his coffee shop/office/kitchen in West Hollywood perusing the profile of the much younger gentleman (freshman to his senior for those who speak college) who had liked his profile. Against his better judgement, he wrote back.
By Wednesday afternoon the two had plans to get coffee that Sunday at Guest House in Los Feliz, though Jordan was admittedly unsure if this was to be a date or simply an opportunity for Erick to discuss his Theme Park Art collection with someone in the industry. It turns out, it was both. From there they had a totally normal and certainly not unprecedented 2020 and everything was super boring and now they’re getting married. Yay!
Soup, Springs, & Unlimited Music
Unfortunately, that last bit was a lie, a jest, a fib if you will. If you want to read more please do! IF not, then thank you for reading the spark notes and we’ll see you in September!
On their second date the following weekend Jordan came down with a sudden flu and they had to depart the Huntington Library Lunar New Year Festival earlier than intended.
Four days later, Jordan got a text from Erick asking if he was home, which he was and had been since, gently nursing a 100+ fever. Thirty seconds later there was a knock on the door and there stood Erick with two bowls of takeaway Matzo Ball soup from Grenblatt’s, RIP. From that point on Jordan knew Erick was going to be the man he married. So far, so good!
The next two years were full of the unique kind of adventures only a global pandemic can provide. Zoom trivia birthdays, a get away to Palm Springs where all meals had to be enjoyed outdoors in 105° heat, and a tour of the owners box of a nearly abandoned NFL stadium.
2022 brought moving in together, The Luca Lanai, and their first chance to attend a festival together, shout out to the Portola crew. 2023 brought Coachella, a one day Pan Am World Tour, and the first Spookilau . Which brings us to 2024…
Eur The One For Me
In Spring of 2024, Erick and Jordan jetted off to Europe for a bit of light sight seeing. Everyone kept asking Jordan if he thought “anything would happen” but he was fairly confident it wouldn’t as there hadn’t been any talk of rings of late.
Their first stop Paris revealed that other, than a very detailed guide on hotels and flights, there was very little in the way of activities planned which was an invitation to explore… and a sign that any questions of the life changing variety seemed unlikely to occur.
From there it was on to Madrid, their favorite city and Erick’s former home. After checking in Erick asked if the conceirge if they might be able to go and visit El Capricho Park that afternoon and was told it was not open that day and in fact would not be open again until the following Saturday, their last day in town and the day after they had reservations for Kapital until 4am.
Give me a ring when you get there...
So, it was that at 8:30 on Saturday morning Jordan was, begrudgingly awoken after a mere 4 hours of sleep and, despite impassioned protest, convinced to dress and board a taxi with Erick for the 45 minute drive out of town.
As they were arriving to the park it was clear that Erick was getting nervous so Jordan began poking light fun at some of the things they were seeing in an earnest attempt to raise his spirits. For example, wasn’t it ludicrous that all of these men around them had shown up early to the park for engagement shoots in nothing but a polo in jeans? Like it was totally fine for him, Jordan, to be wearing it because he was just a tourist in park, but for an engagement? How embarrassing! Dear reader, he was not helping.
Upon reaching the hilltop temple to Aphrodite and Bacchus at the center of the palace grounds Erick encouraged Jordan to step into the temple a bit, to get the best view of the gardens below and, after appreciating spectacular landscaping, realized to his horror he had stepped directly into the background of a touching maternity shoot down below.
Mortified and sleep deprived, Jordan determined that the best way to evade detection was to hike up one knee in a “the-grinch-stealing-christmas-kind-of-way,” turn around, and get out of there. Yet, as he turned around his raised foot nearly knocked the small velvet box out of Erick’s hands as he kneeled on one knee and began asking a very important question…
6 Long Years
In the years since Jordan & Erick have had the chance to tour the world celebrating their friends marriages from Seattle to Spain to Sunny LA. This year, they invite you to join them at The Parker in Palm Springs as we celebrate the next step in this never ending love story. We hope to see you there to witness “SuperLove” in action.