By Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

At 32 I fell for a man I met through OK Cupid. Still a couple of years before the dating app deluge, I joined the site determined to end my history with short-lived, non-boyfriends.

We chose Barnsdall Park for our first face-to-face. I found him sitting under the shadow of a tree at a small table on a terrace overlooking Los Feliz. The conversation began with the last topic discussed online, our mutual fondness for shrooms. With his face turned toward Vermont street traffic, his crisp blue eyes peered sideways at me from time to time. Talk turned to his work in the studio as a sound engineer. Sessions often went all night and he’d woken up only an hour or two before this meeting while I’d come from a day of teaching high school students. I noted his strong arms and the absence of any pained pauses or awkward interview questions.

I suggested touring the Frank Lloyd Wright home in the middle of the park. We walked to the entrance and found the house closed for the day. I spied an opened side door beyond a clasped velvet rope and dared him to sneak in with me. Our footsteps creaked along the hardwood floor of a darkening hallway as we entered an antique sitting room. The act felt clandestine, and I silently willed him to kiss me, but he didn’t. Later he’d say that kissing me hadn’t crossed his mind because he didn’t yet know me.

One date became multiple, and at each Jason showed at my door in a pressed collared shirt, and more often than not, holding a bunch of hot pink flowers picked from the street. Sometimes he’d drop by after a long night in the studio to leave flowers on the windshield of my car for me to find on my way out to class. Once he even sprinkled pink rose petals across my bed for no reason at all.

To repay his acts of kindness, one time I borrowed a waffle maker from my mother to cook his favorite breakfast, but he ended up being too wrecked from a late session in the studio to eat. In fact, derailed plans due to his demanding and unpredictable hours became increasingly frequent. Some nights, he wouldn’t come over until 5am, and then we might drink a beer together before he crashed in my bed. But the way his feet rubbed against mine beneath the blankets on Sunday mornings, said maybe he found something in me worth loving. 

About five months into dating and at the end of summer, a well-known rap artist Jason worked for asked him to housesit while he was on tour. For days we enjoyed an uninterrupted love affair bouncing naked from room to room of the palatial, hillside Studio City home, but when the rap star was rumored to be coming back, Jason said I needed to go. The change felt abrupt and hurtful. I ignored his request and insisted on being taken on an overnight adventure. He’d been promising me such a thing, a tender shroomy moment in the outdoors, since soon after we met, and with the harvest moon soon to rise over the city and me about to start a new school year, it seemed like the perfect night to deliver.

The adventure was a test.

I wanted to be important to him, to be deserving of flowers and foot rubs, but an ugly and irritating fear lodged itself into my heart, maybe I wasn’t lovable at all. It seemed the only way to know for sure was to press him to forget about the rap star and choose me.

I prodded, and he agreed to drive up the coast but said he wouldn’t leave overnight. I rushed home for supplies and packed a sleeping bag just in case.

We drove to Leo Carillo Beach. I popped a couple stems into my mouth, and offered him the bag. He declined, and the irritating fear turned to an ache.  

At the beach, we walked into a secluded cove lit by the full moon and made love in the sand. After we climbed onto a lifeguard tower and looked out over the black ocean. I took photos.

“You’re acting like you’re on vacation.” His tone stabbed. I snapped another.

On the way back to the city, he took a route through the winding Santa Monica hills and parked on a dirt turnoff to fool around. Down to my underwear, he dared me to jump out and run around the car. I did, and then he jumped out in his underwear and chased me for another loop before we fell into the back of his van for a romp. For a moment the ache eased. 

As we entered the house, his phone rang. The rap star was on his way.

“You really have to leave now,” Jason said. “He can’t see you in his house.” The ache turned searing. My eyes went blurry. I angrily accused him of I-don’t-know-what before ripping my way out the front door. On the street, the rap star saunter up the hill with his entourage trailing behind. I paused for a moment before waving. His eyes said, Who the fuck are you? 

At home I immediately sent an apology text and asked Jason to come over. He said no. The next day, I asked him to come over. He said no. Later that day, I suggested taking a walk. He said no. The following day, I suggested a movie, and he said no.

A week later, he showed at my door wearing a ratted and stained sweatshirt and holding no flowers. My skin felt raw. 

I drove us to a neighborhood bar. After ordering a round and settling into a table he said, “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” Don’t cry, I told myself.

“Why not?”

“You kinda went crazy.”

“I guess I do that, but you’re the first person I wasn’t crazy with. Well, until now.”

“Maybe you should have hid that longer.”

“Right,” I said. “It’s just hard with your work and never knowing when we can hang out and things changing last minute.”

“That’s how it is.”

“But when we first started dating, you’d tell me your schedule. You’d give me a heads up.”

“That was me trying.”

“But if you tried again…”

“I’m tired of trying.”

We sat in silence as I drove us back. I willed him to reach for my hand on the gearshift but knew he wouldn’t. Why did we go out when he could have dumped me at home or even over the phone? I desperately wanted for this moment to be different. I remembered a day when I thought it could be.

He’d taken me to a lookout of the Pacific Ocean in San Pedro where a hiking path followed the rocky bluffs. I chose to wear a strapless denim dress and wedges because my legs looked good in the outfit. At the path, I slipped my shoes off and held them in one hand as I followed barefoot alongside Jason. When a piece of debris pierced the bottom of my foot, I said nothing and did my best not to limp. Thankfully, he cut our walk short and took me back to his place in Long Beach for the first time.

Sitting on his bed, he brought my feet into his lap and began massaging them. “Do you have a splinter?”

“Do I?”

“Don’t you feel that?”

“I guess, but it’s no big deal.” He disappeared into the bathroom and returned with a leather-bound grooming kit. He picked out the tweezers. I winced pulling my leg back.

“I promise not to hurt you,” he said guiding my leg to him and hugging my foot between his warm hands before proceeding.

It didn’t hurt. In fact, when he tweezed the tiny piece metal from my foot, I noticed an immediate disappearance of a throbbing I pretended all afternoon didn’t exist.

“Better?” He placed the piece into my hand.

“Much.”

I can think of other splinters when my flustered mother dug into my palm with a blackened tip of a safety pin telling me to be quiet when I cried. That’s the kind of care I knew before this.

Next he turned on some music, and we danced in the middle of his bedroom. As a melodic song played he slowly slipped the red cardigan I was wearing off my shoulders sliding it down my arms. Next he unfastened the belt at my waist. Last he moved around to my back to pull the dress up and over my body kissing my naked shoulder as he dropped the cloth onto the floor.

Later that night he introduced me to his roommate and his favorite hometown food, Chicago-style Italian beef sandwiches. Yes, that day I thought, Maybe. 

Back at my place, Jason walked me up the front steps. At the gate, he stopped. A step below me, we were eye to eye.

“I hope you know, you’re a very beautiful person,” he said, “and you deserve love.” His eyes focused on mine cutting through to a hurt below. “I only wish you knew it.”

He hugged me, but when tears began to pool at the rim of my lids, I pushed him away and went inside. I never saw Jason again.

All I can say is, I thank him for finding the splinter in me.

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Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and the author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016). A former Steinbeck Fellow, Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner, and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grantee, she has work published in Acentos Review, CALYX, and crazyhorse among others. She considers herself an experiential witness poet, and she fights for gender parity in publishing as the director of Women Who Submit.