The first memory I have of Enrique Allen is from the campus of Stanford. He had just graduated from the d.school and was teaching part-time. We were about to start working together. He was all bounding lightness. That’s the first image: Jumping, huge bright smile, long black hair, wide open face, totally open heart. Bounding lightness. The lightness stood in contrast to his bigness as a human; not hefty, he was just a tall dude with the broadest of broad shoulders and a lot of muscles. A soccer maniac, he was strong, but the strength was tempered by that heart of abject softness. Man, have you had Fraiche? he asked. I had not. And so it was, I had my first of many Palo Alto artisanal frozen yogurts with Enrique.
I’d come to learn over time that his lightness and kindness and preternatural affinity for things spiritual and otherworldly was, in part, borne from his wonderful family. A human like this doesn’t emerge from a vacuum, so it was no shock that his mother (kind eyes that saw straight into your soul and a mouth that told you what they saw) and father (lithe like a leopard, braided ponytail, ultra-marathoner, cool as heck), and his younger sisters, too, contained many of those best parts of Enrique — a whole damn troupe of powerful humans that seemed to feel the very thump of the drum beating at the center of the world.
I met Enrique in July 2010, and I moved in with him and another friend-to-be, Ben Henretig, in October. We lived together for three years. We rented a blue house in Old Palo Alto down a storybook street of leafy greenness and infinite wealth, just two blocks from Steve Jobs. We owned three yoga mats and an old kitchen table. I didn’t know it at the time, but moving in with Enrique would prove to be one of the most pivotal periods of my life. I moved in and this is what I got: Hugs.
I had been living basically alone for a decade at that point, and then, suddenly, I was engulfed, literally, by a grand humanity the likes of which I now realize, I didn’t even know could exist. By dumb luck, I felt backwards into it. Hugs. Hugs galore — so many hugs. Hugs in the morning, afternoon, goodnight hugs. Big fuckin’ bear hugs. Like, real crush-your-chest-with-love hugs. The importance of hugs cannot be overstated, I know this now but did not know it then. I remember pondering how long it had been since I had been hugged so much or so well. It’s a strange thing to recognize — a hug deficiency. But there it was, a gaping hole in my heart to be filled only with: Hugs. Hugs and discipline. Enrique worked day and night, hunched over at the kitchen table, deep in his projects (which often included people, love, and friendship alongside investments, company building — he was both freakishly analytical and also full of emotion, a human constellation of strange and intriguing contradictions). Fueled primarily by hummus and soy milk (we were all vegetarian, didn’t drink alcohol), I watched him work and worked beside him. Enrique taught me how to tackle big projects and even more importantly, how to hug, how to be vulnerable, how to believe in love in this world.
Enrique was six years younger than me. Which seems implausible given how wise he seemed (though, of course, not always!). I like to believe that I was a mentor to him as much as he was to me. Because: Was he ever. He was forever concerned with my happiness. He was obsessed, hilariously, with finding me a life partner (and I relished the notion of some day finding such a person and having a gathering of friends to consummate the connection, and hugging Enrique, allowing him to finally release a little of that worry-tension I felt like him hold for me, lovingly, all these many years). For Thanksgiving, he made sure to invite me to his family’s gatherings, to include me, and the affection and ceremonies I witnessed at those meals stays with me still.
I watched Enrique launch Designer Fund with Ben Blumenfeld. I watched them build out their community in that brick office in San Francisco. (An office I — fate of fates — had been to before, back in 2001, stopping by San Francisco on the way UPenn after that first year in Tokyo, visiting a friend who was running a web design firm out of the very same space.) Enrique always offered me a seat. Always kept space for me to come and work. He even bought tatami mats just for me, kept them in a corner beneath a window for me to work at. He always made me feel like I was welcome. He saw in me all my deficiencies, not the least of which I felt around belonging, and he made sure to let me know: Awwwwwww Modgod! That’s not how it has to be! (He called me “Modgod,” which was embarrassing and prodding and endearing — a twist on “-san” (Enrique was a quarter Japanese), a way of both “elevating” me (I was older), and deflating me (I had lived alone forever and had my … uh … quirks). Modgod — dammit, now I’m crying as I type these words.)
The final time I saw Enrique was in California last year, at his home nestled in the rugged hills north of San Francisco. I was exhausted. I almost didn’t make the drive up. But as soon as I arrived, I was glad I rallied. He and his wife, Majo, had had their first kid. I wanted to meet the little sucker, see what a transcendent beauty bundle could look like. (A tiny pooping angel, that’s what; up above is the quick little portrait I took of them on that day.) We went for a hike, just Enrique and I, looked out over the bay from above, talked about life, the future. He told me how happy he was, how much love he felt, how much love he had for his family and how excited he was to be on this road to building something much bigger than just himself.
It’s no exaggeration to say that meeting Enrique pulled me out of the muck of my 20s (a most terrible and cursed decade) and thrust me into my 30s (still tough, but infused with Enrique’s lightness) with a resolve and optimism I could have never mustered on my own. In a way, I owe my life to the guy. He saved me without knowing it, simply by being himself. The first archetype of a series of critical archetypes in my life. Many of you who met him, I suspect, feel the same.
I miss him and will continue to miss him for as long as I have memory. I wish we talked more in recent years, but it always seemed like we’d have more time (he was only thirty-eight, taken by a out-of-the-blue cancer diagnosis), and whenever we saw one another, it was as if no time had passed at all. I am heartbroken for many things, but perhaps I am most heartbroken that his kid will never get to properly meet him, won’t get the benefit of a father like Enrique. But — I’m calmed knowing that whatever magic was in Enrique, is also in Eska. And in this way — and through our stories — he will know him.
Damn, though. Eska, man, I wish you got to feel your dad’s hugs as you got older, hugs that could change the world. Let me tell you: Dude was strong. I loved the heck out of him and I’m grateful for every dumb second we got to spend together.
