This L.A. couple kissed on a bridge and went viral. Now they're getting married

In Could 2023, Adam Vasquez and Trino Garcia walked throughout a bridge overlooking the 110 Freeway, proper subsequent to Sycamore Grove Park, feeling nervous and just a little shy. It was their first time being photographed as a pair, holding fingers and sharing a kiss in public.

Henry Jiménez Kerbox, a photographer with greater than 7 million followers on TikTok, had seen them and requested to take their image. Little did they think about that the impromptu picture shoot would go viral, their tender second resonating with hundreds of thousands on TikTok and Instagram. Now, individuals know the couple as TrinoxAdam.

On the facet of Garcia’s face, “Adam” is inked on the suitable and “Mexicano” on the left. Vasquez’s face mirrors this, with “Trino” on the left and “Chicano” on the suitable. As Garcia rolls up the unfastened, dishevelled sleeves of his jersey, he reveals a young tribute to his childhood, household and God — etched into his pores and skin is Charlie Brown, the face of his daughter Natalie when she was a child and a portrait of the Virgin Mary.

With their tattooed faces, piercings and street-style clothes, Garcia, 39, and Vasquez, 44, don’t precisely match the stereotypical picture of social media influencers. However with greater than 2 million followers on TikTok, they’re breaking obstacles and difficult perceptions of masculinity, sexuality and Chicano tradition. Right here, the couple, who stay in Van Nuys, share the story of their journey from closeted teenagers to beloved web personalities.

An immediate crush — and a soul connection

Practically twenty years in the past, in Bakersfield‘s Central Valley, Garcia, then 20, noticed a photograph of Vasquez in a good friend’s work locker and was immediately smitten. It took him a month to lastly spot Vasquez’s contact info on a good friend’s cellphone at a celebration. “I’ve a very dangerous reminiscence, however that day, I bear in mind it,” Garcia says. He borrowed a pen and wrote the quantity down on his hand. The subsequent day, he known as Vasquez.

Earlier than he met Garcia, everybody Vasquez frolicked with was coping with medicine ultimately. Vasquez himself was hooked on crystal meth, which he’d begun utilizing when he was 12. However when the 2 went on their first date, to a Del Taco, Vasquez says he noticed in Garcia a lifeline to normalcy: “Everybody I related to all the time did what I did. So I by no means had that outlet to flee that.”

On a later date, they’d deliberate to see a film, however Vasquez’s physique began to ache and shake because of withdrawal.

“I instructed him, ‘I can’t go inside,’” Vasquez says. “So he took me again to my place. I went beneath the desk and made myself really feel higher.” As he continued utilizing, Garcia waited “and stood by my facet.”

In Vasquez, Garcia acknowledged a kindred spirit craving for acceptance. Garcia had struggled himself, as a single dad to child Natalie and in not being accepted by his household after popping out. “I used to be drowning,” says Garcia. “He was struggling together with his personal struggles, and it made me really feel actually related with him.”

After a month of relationship, they moved in collectively. Vasquez continued to battle his dependancy; Garcia would catch him utilizing medicine underneath the desk or discover medicine in his pockets. However the two caught it out. For Vasquez, Garcia and Natalie had been a part of the motivation to cease utilizing. “I had our daughter that I needed to be higher for,” he says.

Vasquez has now been drug-free for greater than a decade, and this 12 months marks the couple’s nineteenth anniversary. On Nov. 30, they plan to get married in downtown L.A. at Rip-off and Jam, a month-to-month throwback dance occasion and celebration of Chicano tradition hosted on the Regent Theater. On the first-ever Rip-off and Jam wedding ceremony, Vasquez says the couple hope individuals will “simply dance and vibe collectively to share this particular second.”

“It’s an honor to search out any individual that you simply’re with for therefore lengthy,” Vasquez says. “There are such a lot of ranges to us at this level: We’re pals, we’re lovers, we’re homies, and most significantly, we’re fathers.”

A household solid in love

When Vasquez entered Garcia’s life, Garcia’s daughter was simply 2 years previous. Elevating Natalie as a homosexual couple in Bakersfield got here with its personal set of challenges.

Once they went to father or mother conferences at Natalie’s college, Vasquez was all the time the “uncle,” as a result of they didn’t need their daughter to have pointless consideration or bother. As soon as, a mom of Natalie’s elementary college classmate confronted Garcia, saying she thought Natalie ought to go to counseling as a result of she was lacking a mom in her life. Garcia was offended, however he additionally felt concern: “What if we did one thing flawed?” he would ask himself. He additionally frightened Natalie may reject them, as different members of the family had executed, for “a traditional life.”

“I’m by no means ashamed of them,” says Natalie, now 21, although she has seen the judgments of others because of her fathers’ look. As an example, when she went buying with Garcia and Vasquez, individuals would comply with them to ensure her dads weren’t stealing something, she says. The stereotyping bothers her, however at school, “Individuals really discovered it actually attention-grabbing and funky” that she had two dads. (She calls Garcia Papi and Vasquez Pops.)

“[Queerness] has been one thing regular in my life,” she says. Rising up, she was surrounded by Garcia and Vasquez’s pals and would go to Pleasure parades with them, holding just a little rainbow flag. “I by no means felt I used to be lacking out on one thing. I all the time felt content material having my two dads, as a result of they had been simply so concerned in my life.”

“We raised her as two mother and father,” Vasquez says. “Trino was there along with her to get her nails and hair executed. I’d work exhausting to ensure she had every thing she wanted.”

Additionally they inspired her ardour for dance. When Natalie was a child, Garcia would document her transferring to music; later, he took her to bounce lessons.

“I needed her to see life the best way I didn’t see it,” he says. “I needed her to dream huge and specific herself.”

That concerned some sacrifices. Eight years in the past, with simply $3,000 of their pockets, the household moved to L.A. from Bakersfield so Natalie may get higher alternatives in dance. Their first condo, in Rowland Heights, price $1,600 month-to-month. Vasquez, who was working at each Crimson Robin and Chili’s, transferred to the Whittier areas so he may have a greater commute.

“I grew to become the most effective servers at Crimson Robin and Chili’s,” he says.

Garcia, after taking Natalie to bounce lessons, would keep late to scrub the studios to cowl her tuition. He requested Natalie to affix him. “I’d be like, ‘You’re working in your dance, so put delight in it,’” he says. “And we cleaned it collectively.”

Their dedication paid off — Natalie is now in her second season as a dancer for the L.A. Clippers. She additionally not too long ago launched her first boyfriend to her dads, who “have all the time been a giant assist system,” she says. “They had been prepared to drop every thing they’d in Bakersfield to come back over to L.A. [for me to] pursue what I actually wish to do.”

The journey to self-acceptance

Rising up as the one sons of their Catholic households, Vasquez and Garcia each felt the load of cultural expectations and spiritual beliefs.

Brenda Garcia, Trino’s second eldest sister, was the one one in his household who initially accepted his queerness. She mentioned he was “quiet,” “delicate” and “a sweetheart” as a child. When their father noticed Garcia was drawn to the “ladies’ stuff” of his 4 sisters, he put him on baseball and basketball groups to make him act extra like a “boy,” she says.

“These youngsters had been my brother’s bullies,” Brenda Garcia says. “He’s simply not a sporty man, and I may really feel a lot strain on him.”

In fourth grade, Garcia went to church to admit to the priest that he discovered himself drawn to different boys. The priest instructed him to hope, so he stored praying. As he obtained older, to be the robust Chicano man that his father needed him to be, Garcia deliberately had “turn into dangerous,” says Brenda Garcia. He fought with different youngsters, had numerous girlfriends and began to smoke.

All through all of it, “[my attraction to men] didn’t go away,” he says. “It wasn’t till my daughter was born that the fact instructed me I must get up” and settle for who he was. It was then, at age 20, that he got here out and left Oxnard for Bakersfield.

With three sisters, Vasquez additionally was the one boy in his household. His father left the household for one more girl when Vasquez was little. “He had a child along with her and known as that son the ‘junior,’ however I used to be his first boy,” he says. “There was plenty of anger and vacancy, so I turned to medicine to replenish the void.”

Baptized as a Catholic, Vasquez now identifies as Christian. He mentioned he discovered it exhausting to hope when he realized his sexual orientation and that he obtained into medicine as he felt he had turned his again on God.

Vasquez says in lots of Hispanic households, having a homosexual son could be the worst disgrace, particularly as the one son in a Catholic household. When he instructed his mom he was homosexual, her preliminary response was devastating: “I don’t have a son anymore.” He moved out that very same day.

“I’ve been instructed that is flawed, however I’ve by no means been so completely satisfied in my life,” Vasquez says. “Why [is] loving this man going to ship me to hell?”

Redefining masculinity

In a world that always equates gayness with flamboyance, Vasquez and Garcia stand out. Their look — tattoos, dishevelled garments and a mode rooted in Chicano tradition — may problem stereotypes about what it means to be homosexual.

However beneath the robust exterior lie hearts stuffed with love and a need for acceptance. Their tattoos, removed from being gang-related, depict flowers, butterflies and phrases like “love” and the title of their daughter. This juxtaposition of conventional masculinity and open vulnerability is on the core of their attraction. They’re displaying a era of younger males that there’s nobody technique to be homosexual, nobody technique to be a person.

Their viral second in 2023 catapulted them into the highlight in a method they by no means anticipated. On the June day the video was posted, Vasquez was working at Chili’s. His notifications “simply went loopy” with individuals sending likes and following the couple. Later that month, they went to L.A. Pleasure, and, for the primary time, individuals began to line up and take footage with them.

The eye has led to a way of freedom for the couple.

Now, on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, they carry out lip-sync music movies, share their outfits and publish day by day life or journey vlogs. They’re utilizing their platform to problem stereotypes and promote acceptance, significantly inside the Chicano neighborhood.

“We’re being clear, and we’re not hiding within the closet anymore,” Vasquez says. “We’re going exterior, going to locations the place we shouldn’t be embraced. However individuals are discovering the love in us. As a result of we may very well be their uncle. We may very well be their son.”

Throughout this interview at a Starbucks in Van Nuys, a younger lady approached, her eyes large with recognition. “Are you Trino and Adam?” she asks, her voice trembling with pleasure.

With out hesitation, the couple stood up, their faces breaking into heat smiles. They embraced the lady and her mom, taking time to speak and pose for photographs.

Their message resonates past the LGBTQ+ neighborhood. They’ve been welcomed at lowrider reveals and spoken at prisons, breaking down obstacles and fostering understanding.

“Perhaps you don’t agree with it,” Vasquez says, “however there’s somebody we’re touching, somebody that appears like us, somebody that’s been hiding all their lives.”

From TikTok, a brand new chapter

As we speak, Vasquez and Garcia steadiness their social media presence with their day jobs as neighborhood integration facilitators on the group Social Vocational Companies, working with people with developmental disabilities and taking them on leisure actions.

“Dwelling within the social media world could make you lose your self quick,” says Garcia. “The larger the numbers get, you are feeling such as you’re floating, however after we go to work, clock in and [are] with all these individuals, it makes us grateful for the place we’re at in life. I wish to proceed to be grounded.”

Their plan is to not be influencers, ceaselessly often called “the blokes on the bridge,” he provides, however to make use of their social media presence to “talk about one thing highly effective.” They’re additionally planning on writing a ebook about their love story and the place they got here from.

In October, the couple launched their first unique rap track, “Vibe Out”; Natalie dances within the music video. “Adam is rapping so much on this piece,” Garcia says, taking a look at Vasquez proudly. “I believe he’s a pure, and I’m a No. 1 fan.”

‘Individuals have been embracing us’

For essentially the most half, they’ve discovered public response heartwarming and inspiring. However getting full acceptance from their households could also be a lifelong journey. For Garcia particularly, it’s bittersweet: “The people who I needed to see me is my mom, my father and my sisters, they usually nonetheless don’t see me.”

His sister Brenda Garcia, nonetheless, continues to be a supportive drive in his life. When her youngest daughter requested her about Garcia and Vasquez’s relationship, “I simply instructed her, ‘Homosexual doesn’t have an effect on who you’re. It’s simply love. Is that going to make you alter the best way you see your uncle?’ And she or he mentioned no.”

Though she initially rejected him, Vasquez’s mom, Lupe, is pleased with the lads Vasquez and Garcia have turn into and the life they’ve constructed collectively. “It doesn’t matter what, he’s my son, and I like him dearly,” she says.

For his or her Nov. 30 nuptials, Garcia and Vasquez have invited about 20 members of the family and pals from their private circle. “Individuals have been embracing us,” Garcia says. “And we wish to have a good time with the individuals which were therapeutic us.”

Following a brief ceremony onstage, a number of DJs will play on the “club-vibe occasion with music,” the couple says. Tickets can be found to the general public by way of Ticketmaster, and the occasion can be livestreamed on TikTok.

Together with the marriage, there’s one other milestone within the works: After Nov. 30, Vasquez can be Adam Issac Vasquez Garcia, “in order that the three of us could be Garcia,” he says.

“We’re like an attractive plant that grows slowly and blooms extra fantastically,” Garcia says of their relationship. “We had been like two damaged items,” Vasquez provides, “and coming collectively we grew to become a full, full particular person.”