Garret Hanson of Brooklyn, New York, was highly optimistic that his forward-thinking - and extremely attractive - new friend, Jessie Harper, would respond positively to his text message proposing an ongoing "friends with benefits" arrangement - until he realized that his mistyping of the word "benefits" had resulted in an auto-correction to "veggies," completely foiling his no-strings-sex agenda.
As it happened, Jessie interpreted Garret's message as a suggestion that they host a regular vegan potluck.
"Friends with veggies," said Garret. "I get why she would see it that way."
Disappointed as he was, empathetic Garret didn't have the heart to tell Jessie that he'd actually had a somewhat less wholesome scenario in mind. As a result, he found himself hosting weekly neighborhood-friendly plant-based dinners, which quickly became the place for socially-conscious Brooklynites to be on Wednesday nights. Fortuitously, in the course of putting on the vegan potlucks, Garret also found the romance he'd been looking for. It turned out that Jessie, a passionate animal rights activist, found his civic engagement and community-building spirit highly appealing.
"She says compassion turns her on," said Garret, who now enjoys a committed, more-than-friends-with-benefits relationship with Jessie. "It ended up working out."
