He told me I was a good kisser and that he looked like Dog The Bounty Hunter. I believed the former but needed visual aid for the latter. He was telling the truth, but it wasn’t a quality that suited him. I knew because of the comfort with which he sat, as if he was eternally at ease. How he could smile and look sad all at the same time and be unashamed of both. 

I met the man in crisis at an eastside bar on a noisy couch, amongst the din of a May Tuesday night, where he told me he hated suburbia and felt betrayed by Grimes. The only thing that kept me nursing my single tequila soda was I could tell he knew he wasn’t saying anything. I think he even apologized for it. Either out loud or with his eyes. 

He stroked my hair as we melted together into the red leather couch. He asked me if I’d always been hot. I said no, which was half of the truth. He found me charming and enigmatic, like standing on the edge of a cliff and wanting to jump just to feel yourself fly for a second. I could tell he was a man attracted because of—not despite—the darkness I’ve worn since birth—that ninth circle of Hell, prickly, black tar that hurts like a thousand needles and the sound of your mother’s voice. Folks in LA are used to people like me, people who feel bad and make a living off it. In fact, I moved here to wear this darkness in peace. Objectification had become a peaceful state for me. A state of survival.

We walked from the bar back to my apartment, up the steep hills of cracked pavement, casually scaling mountains made from fault lines. He asked me questions about the moon, which shone down on us like a well kempt lighthouse eye, and I lied in response. I knew I seemed like I’d know, and he wouldn’t question my answers. It seemed like he needed the ones I gave.

“I’m into kinky things like making the bed,” he japed when I realized my bed was bare and in need of fresh sheets. I was having a carefully carefree summer, rotating dating apps, partners, and bed linens as frequently as a bisexual with OCD might. My roommate came home and suddenly I felt claustrophobic, so my date and I hiked back down towards the bar and his enormous rattling vehicle. 

His car was as boisterous as he could’ve been if he hadn’t become one of those quiet, brooding men who likes documentaries, Alice Coltrane’s Ecstatic Musicality, and a single earring to declare a delicate, On The Road kind of difference hanging from his left ear. He ferried us to his apartment, where we made noises louder than his record collection. 

In bed with him, we lay beneath a blanket of summer air, still cool and light, not yet sticky with the promise of June. I got six mosquito bites before smacking the bug to death against his hairy thigh. He kept the doors and windows to his downstairs Echo Park studio wide open while he slept. I can’t imagine living life without such fear. I suppose I shouldn’t mistake carelessness for bravery. Maybe he just didn’t want to feel alone. Or maybe he just wanted to feel like he was in Texas. 

He was tender with my body, and I wondered what he was afraid of. He was really into old school country, old school everything. He had a cowboy hat hanging from his rearview mirror, a few in his house, and even had found a cowboy painting discarded on the sidewalk that he was planning on framing. White men always want to be cowboys. They’re nostalgic for land without laws, endings, or any kind of limitations. He wanted to be in the great wide open. “So you want to be close to God?” I asked. 

“Don’t we all?” he replied.  

He donned a Stetson to drive me home, barely fitting inside his low-ceilinged apartment until we reached the stillness of the porch. We emerged to a swollen sky. It had swallowed the full moon completely. I told him it was probably the most full right now, when we couldn’t see it. I hoped I was right. I didn’t think he deserved both me and the moon. 

He was going to Texas soon and I hoped he’d find what he was looking for, God or otherwise, that he wouldn’t be disappointed like he’d been with Grimes. I don’t want to be close to God. I don’t know where that would get me, besides stranded in a barren plain. I like the stars as much as everyone and I find the moon religious, but I’m skeptical of men who love Texas and hate California when they’re essentially the same state, just different shapes. I’d rather be close to myself­—God has never given me a reason to trust or seek intimacy. Maybe someday I’ll match with God on a dating app. Maybe then I’ll get my reason.