His Getaway Car had Red Leather Seats

How a nightmare helped me stop betraying myself for a guy’s attention

As I went through a period of deep breakdown and healing recently, I stayed decidedly single. Even the thought of spending time in a date-like situation was exhausting — I needed every little ounce of juice I had for myself.

After more than a year, I started to find my ground and began creeping out of my shell to see who was out there.

… a sexy DJ, for one.

My friend and I were dancing at a club in San Juan, right in the pulsing, perreo heart of La Placita — a whole mess of clubs clustered around one square block (hence the name). You can club hop literally door-to-door, but we kept ending up back at the same spot. 

Fai and I were having one of those nights where everybody and their cousin is tryna dance with you and you’re having waaay more fun shaking your ass sola. We were running the dance floor, racking up the numbers, drunk off solely our own sexiness and power. 

But also. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the DJ. We made eye contact a few times… smoldering. Fai was crushing on a guy working security. I caught him sneaking looks at her while she pretended not to know. 

We decided 1:30am was a reasonable time to leave. I thanked the DJ for the music on the way out. My friend walked by her crush, trying to play it cool. When we got to the car a few blocks away, we were giddy. We chugged water and replayed interactions with the characters of the night. We already knew we were badass, but all that validation felt like a real good drug; we were high on attention and we wanted more. 

Going home and getting some sleep was the “practical, responsible” thing to do, but…. Fuck that! We got right back out of the car and headed for the same club.

When security guy checked Fai’s bag for the sixth time, he bent down to her ear to tell her she was cute. Back on the dancefloor, DJ brushed by on his way to the booth, letting his finger run along my back ever so lightly. 

Our messages had been heard loud and clear.

I started thinking about giving DJ my number. Just slipping him a piece of paper before I left. The thought made my heart race, but in a good lemme-conquer-this kind of way.

Then, mysterious angelito de La Placita came outta nowhere and yelled over the blasting reggaeton, “I’m pretty sure the DJ is single — I think you should go for it.” (Guess I wasn’t being very subtle.)

It was just the fuel I needed to step up behind the booth and ask this guy if I could give hive my number. “Claaarooo,” he said. Of coouurse. 

Fuck yes.  

“I get off in 20 minutes.” 4am.

I’m like, wait wait wait… I’m not trying to see you noooww! But then he’s even more attractive up close and I don’t want to miss the opportunity and I’m like…. well maybe I am. 

My heart’s like, girl, you’re not hooking up with a stranger, those days are behind you — you don’t want this. But there’s this insecure, bellaca, rebelling-from-my-own-good (self-sabotaging?) part of me that does. 

So I give this guy the most Mixed Signals: I boldly give him my number and stay until the club closes. Then I leave without saying anything. Out in the street, I accidentally call him and quickly hang up. He calls right back, tells me his sister is staying at his place so we’d have to go to mine. I ignore the implication, thinking maybe we’d just hang out (though I have trouble thinking of what else we might do at 4am).

Luckily, my exhaustion gets the better of me. I tell him I’m heading home to sleep, I’ll call him tomorrow. 

As we drive back, Fai reads me texts from her crush — some real forward shit that makes it clear he’s ready to sleep with her asap. She’s freaked out and stops responding. 

I call DJ the next day and, surprisingly, the conversation flows. We make plans to go to the beach. I feel high all day.

On beach day, I text him to confirm. Nothing.

A whole week goes by and I go through the stages of being ghosted: shock, despair, self-pity, ending with the emphatic (maybe slightly forced) conclusion that clearly he doesn’t deserve me.

As soon as I’m over it, he texts me with a whole bunch of apologies and excuses. And — I Really Hate to admit this, guys — I give him another chance.

For a couple weeks, we text here and there. It’s not the meaningful kind of conversation you have when you’re really trying to get to know a person and vibing. Still, each message is like this little hit and I keep it going. We try to meet up a few times, but plans keep falling through. 

Finally it happens. I’m in San Juan watching plena at a bar in Santurce; after, I head to salsa night at another spot. I see if he wants to meet me there. 

Bailas salsa? I ask

You can teach me? He responds. 

When the band plays cha-cha-chá, his moves come out (of course he was playing). He teaches me the step. He’s smooth, sexy, oozes confidence and our physical chemistry is out of control. I know why I gave him that second chance.

He walks me to my car and we make out on the sidewalk. It’s hot. He’s traveling across my skin like I’d wished so many other men before him knew how to. “Quiero besarte en cada esquinita de tu cuerpo.” I want to kiss you on every little corner of your body.

At one point he does curls with me right there on the street. (100% showing off, but that was easy to overlook given that he was repeatedly and effortlessly lifting my entire body to his chest.)

He tells me he wants to wake up with me and I tell him we’re not having sex. He says he can sleep next to me and not even touch me if that’s what I want. I sense an earnestness (and also like the thought of him in my bed) and decide to trust him. He follows me an hour home and he doesn’t betray my trust. I actually feel like he’s listening to my body, praising it, he’s correctly reading exactly what I want and am comfortable with.

I aaalllmost sleep with him. I so badly want to shut off the mental, spiritual, emotional parts of me and just have sex, just enjoy that pleasure without all the rest. But do I really need to learn from this mistake again?? I already know that what I actually want is emotional, intellectual, spiritual and physical connection. If that’s not there, I feel like I’m just faking intimacy and betraying all my tender selves that want the real thing. 

And, though DJ is extremely interested in my body, he isn’t all that interested in the rest of me. I’ve already seen enough red flags to know that he’s not for-real dating material. But we’re both good actors and I’m still here, not wanting this performance of relishing to end even if I know deep down, it’s pretty damn empty of emotion. 

The next day he calls and tells me he doesn’t have much time to date, he’s getting new work opportunities, about to start a business. I’m like yeah, no pressure, I’m busy too, we’ll just hang out when it works. I play it cool but I hope he’ll call. Despite knowing what I want deep down — knowing that this person is not it — parts of me are still craving him. 

A week after DJ slept in my bed, I had the nightmare. 

I’m in this big old house and DJ is on his way over so we can finally hook up again. I’m excited. When he arrives, he wants to take a shower, and I scramble to shave my legs in a separate shower before he’s done. He’s taking a while, so I head to this gathering/party happening just outside my house.

When I get back to my front door, the police are there, looking for the DJ, who had fled. In my mind’s eye, I see him speeding away in his black car. The passenger side door is wide open, giving me a clear view of the empty red leather seat where I had once, very briefly, sat.

I ask what he had done. He was taking children from the party, they tell me, tying their mouths with scarves and putting them in the closet. I see the images as they tell me of his crimes, sweet three and four-year-olds being gagged and led into a tiny room with no escape.

I can’t handle horror movies. I close my eyes through creepy scenes and skip pages in books. I intentionally keep my mind free of images like children being stuffed into closets. 

My subconscious did this all on its own, produced a scene to scare the shit out of me and get me to wake up. And it worked.

I knew he was dangerous… but I didn’t know he was THIS dangerous, my dreaming-self thought.

That morning, I was exhausted, weighed down by the heavy info contained in the vignette. Though it was tempting to demonize the DJ, I knew the dream wasn’t revealing to me that this guy was actually a dangerous criminal who abused children — or even that he was a “bad person.” I knew that, actually, it wasn’t even about him.

My subconscious had delivered a shocking reality check of how I was being affected by my interactions with him. So here’s how I interpreted each detail in the dream:

Scrambling to shave my legs: I felt insecure around this guy, not able to truly be myself, show up as I am. I felt I might be rejected if I was anything less than smooth-legged perfection.

(Pulled from America’s badass speech in the Barbie movie)

Walking outside to hang out at the gathering: Me clearing my head, taking a moment to touch base with my community, who I already knew this person stood no chance of becoming a part of.

The children: Various aspects of my inner child were being silenced and led into a dark space with no escape. This felt like foreshadowing of what’d I’d put myself through if I continued to interact with DJ, and also a recap of what I had already experienced.

He asked few questions and I got the sense that he’d rather be listened to than listen. At the bar, we had an argument (literally fighting on our first date!) in which I saw how he manipulated, relentlessly pushed his point, made exaggerated comparisons. It was exhausting and I swallowed my truth for the sake of making peace and dancing salsa.

I’d also silenced my own inner voice that was shouting a hard NO to a man who ghosted for a week out the gate and then often wouldn’t get back to me for several days. In my journal, I had written, why am I still giving this boy chances when he always just stops responding?  

I thought about when this happened in past relationships and I’d brush it off — like me wanting consistent communication was needy. Like I didn’t have a right to be upset because this person had many other obligations that were more important than responding to me and I just needed to accept that.

Here I am feeling again like I have to be chill and pretend I’m not upset or I’m going to look like I’m crazy, I wrote.

Let me just pause here and say that it’s really fucking hard to see this me. I have been working so hard to be a person that doesn’t take shit, that is secure in myself and won’t accept anything less than 100% respect and adoration. But for so many years, this wasn’t my reality. And even after I thought I had learned this lesson once and for all, here I was again, drawn to a guy who couldn’t give me what I knew I truly wanted and afraid to speak up or let him go.

So I’m left asking myself: What was I getting from these interactions that was worth swallowing my truth and betraying myself? What was standing between this silenced me and the strong, secure self I thought I was and so badly wanted to be? 

This is already pretty long, so stay tuned for the answer in part two next week.