bark at the moon

Many years ago I met a guy at a beer festival. He of the long hair and multiple tattoos, me of the boredom and hunger. We danced wildly hands gripping beers, drinking in the sun. Numbers exchanged at the end of the day, curiouser still. I notice the flame creeping up his leg and I wonder how far it goes.

A few days later he calls, we agree to meet up at a bar. I go there that warm summer night and share a few beers and agree to go for a ride on his motorcycle. He's bad, this man. And I was recently tired of being good.

We climb on his bike, I've had several drinks now and am feeling no pain. He hands me a helmet with check out my tits stenciled on the back and I laugh in the face of it's absurdity. It has nothing to do with me so I slip it on my head and hold on tight.

We hit a few more bars and around 1am he talks about some of the darker sides of biker gangs. It's rather like a bizarre version of the learning channel. I laugh in the face of crime and subjugation and order another beer. I am reckless. I wear the helmet again on the way out.

It happens that his apartment is close to the bar of origin, so he offers to take me there on the way back to my car. It's dangerous and I know it and I say yes anyways. His badness has nothing to do with me, not yet. I am just visiting and beneath the devilry and the sexism he's just a guy on a bike.

We go into his apartment, half the night is gone by now. Candles stuck in skulls, another motorcycle inside. He shows me around, the last stop his room. A room that is almost solely full of bed, leopard skin and all. Something catches my eye and I turn my face upward. A complicated system of pulleys and leather and shackles hang from the ceiling, a whip looped through the cords. For the first time all night I am truly taken aback, this is more than I bargained for and it's more scary than absurd (although absurd it still is). He notices me gazing upward and says, all six feet of him with hair streaming down his back You should know I never have sex on the first date.

Immediately center rights itself again, his words warning me not to get my hopes up when instead I wanted to run for the door. I am thanking the gods and godless my intuition was right, that although he's bad, he's also good. We talk for another hour or so before I go. And when I do he says to give him a call if I am still interested, a chaste kiss on my cheek ends the night.

I never call this man again, this wildly dangerous man with a certain moral fortitude. But I'll always remember that night fondly, the dark and windy ride in and out of the badlands.