The Wizard and the Artist
I write this, knowing I am at last saying goodbye to a journey I think I always knew I was going to go on from the day we met. I walked around the house trying to remember what it was like when he was here. It has been about 8 months - yet it felt like year. I grew to live this house and I wonder sometimes if he hever thought of it, what it was look to move into a new house together.
I found myself thinking back to the night we met — the day before Halloween, 2017, in Bogotá.
By then I’d been visiting often, spending time with Christian. We’d grown close — the kind of closeness that blurs lines — and one morning I realized I had feelings for him. I tried to downplay it, but the air shifted. After a long silence, he suggested we go out.
He took me to a bar called Tres Pisos. The energy was off — too much unsaid between us. Then, out of nowhere, he asked,
“Which guy here do you think is the most attractive?”
Before I could answer, he added with a half-smile, “And you can’t say me.”
I laughed, looked around, and noticed a man who stood out. Lighter skin, sharp features, quiet but magnetic. Christian followed my gaze and said, “Really? He’s not your type. But I know him. He’s a good guy.”
Then he waved me over.
“Daniel, te presento a Enrique.”
That was how it began.
A month later, Christian told me he had feelings for me too, and we started dating. It became one of the happiest and most creative relationships of my life. Then COVID hit, and everything changed.
Years later, when Enrique and I reconnected, it felt strangely full circle - like the universe closing a small unfinished loop. And maybe it did, just not in the way we imagined.
We began to talk - first casually, then with care and finally we were talking every day, several times a day,
2023 was the turning point when things still felt like discovery instead of endurance. Two months after he’d moved to Mexico City, a late-night chat turned into something more.
“Quiero saber… qué piensas de ser novios?”
(I want to know what you think about being boyfriends.)
I said I’d think about it. Days later, I said yes — or at least, let’s try. It wasn’t cinematic love; or the butterflies I had with Cristian. This was two people who’d been shaped by hardship, finding something familiar in each other’s resilience.
That’s where The Wizard and the Artist began - as an idea, half metaphor, half plan. He had an eye for light, color, and emotion. I had the structure, the systems, the order to make things happen. Together, we imagined a small creative studio, a shared brand, a life built from both intuition and discipline.
We believed in it long enough to make it real, just not in the way we expected. As he crossed into Mexico, he became somewhat unrecognizable and I was too focused on my own life to notice he had wanted to break up. For 7 months I didn't think of him and as 2024 came to a close and he arrived in the US, I knew we would finally have our chance, and for whatever reason, that was where it took us, and that it would be The Wizard and the Artists last adventure.
After everything happened and him being safe - after the black holes, the transfers, the nights of fear. I thought it would feel like victory. It didn’t. It felt like relief tangled with grief. We had both changed in ways the other didn’t recognize.
The first calls were all emotion: disbelief, laughter, tears. But slowly, the tone shifted. He started calling me baby again — the way he used to — and I realized I wasn’t that person anymore. His life had been paused since April. Mine hadn’t.
What once connected us — creation, trust, shared purpose — had been buried under logistics, lawyers, and survival. We weren’t partners anymore. We were witnesses to the same story, standing on opposite sides of the glass.
I stayed kind but distant. I answered messages, sent what he needed — contacts, IDs, next steps. But I also stopped playing the role I used to: caretaker, fixer, protector. That was no longer love; it was habit.
In those first days of his return, I saw familiar patterns resurface — not cruelty, just a search for control. He tested boundaries, sometimes in small ways that used to hurt. This time, they didn’t. I saw them for what they were: ways to feel power in a life that had stripped it away.
It wasn’t manipulation. It was survival instinct. And that understanding dissolved the anger completely.
Instead of resentment, I felt compassion — and a quiet mourning for who we’d been.
Over the next weeks, the group chat that had once pulsed with urgency: lawyers, advocates, family, friends — went silent. We had achieved what we set out to do: get him free. But none of us knew what to do with the quiet that followed.
When the purpose that drove us disappeared, I did what I always do when something ends. I closed the loop. I archived files, handed off responsibilities, deleted copies, and let the rhythm of crisis fade. And then I began to write.
I could sense the panic coming through on his texts. Part of him had I assumed I would still help take care of him. He was becoming more and more worried as the time expired on his temporary place and I no longer reacted to any of his methods.
When he left for a friend’s place, he sent a final message: thoughtful, calm, grateful. He noticed the distance and didn’t fight it. That was our quiet ending mutual respect, no anger, just exhaustion and peace.
The Wizard and the Artist was never really a business. It was a metaphor for what we managed to create in impossible circumstances. He made beauty out of chaos; I made order long enough for it to exist. For a while, we built something extraordinary, even if it couldn’t last.
Now, the name means something different. It’s not about him and me — it’s about what belief can do when systems fail, about the people who showed up and made the impossible possible.
Sometimes it still feels like a story that ends mid-sentence — not tragic, just complete in its own strange way. He found a way home and I found a way forward.
“Tal vez algún día lo contaré como arte,” he once said.
(Maybe one day I’ll tell it as art.)
I hope he does. Because art lasts longer than magic- and what we did was both.
For me, The Wizard and the Artist will always be proof that two people, against every obstacle, reached across borders and disbelief — and for one impossible moment, made something work.
And that’s enough.
