NEPTUNE NET
Rough, old, dark wood enclosed the bar. Tiny, golden sun rays of the gleaming California summer poked through to light up the dark place barely. Heavy, hard wood chairs and solid tables lined the wall. A pool table was in the center. Faded photos of leather motorcycle gangs were framed on the wall. A lazy ceiling fan swung barely and silently to move the air heavy on spilled beer, sweat, and leather.
The sole person was the bartender behind the oak bar. His arms were wide and resting on the counter, holding a little towel. He was a heavy round man. The face was covered with a gruffly three day stopple. A black bandana with a skull covered his head. His arms were bare. A deep scar ran across his bicep down behind the elbow. The booze bottles towered behind him. With a stone cold gaze, he stared to the entrance.
The young man stepped into the bar -- tight jeans, eyes blacked out by sun glasses, leather boot tips standing up. In his mind's eye, he could see the night people like holograms moving through the empty bar. As if they had a blue shimmer to them, he remembered the heavy leather jackets that barely bent. He remembered the big beer pitchers with beer spilling over chairs, the floor, and people. In the rowdy atmosphere, he remembered the respect for the pool game in the center, the guy playing bending over the table, feet wide, stick poking back. And everyone would make a huge circle around the back of that cue.
He remembered his first fight in the bar parking lot. He remembered the awe of staring at the blood on his knuckles. The crowd had still been beating down on the guy. He had gotten a fist in. Yet, when he had seen the blood on his knuckles, the rush of the moment subsided and he realized what he had done. Then he had painted red lines on his face and had hollered his guts out.
His feet swiftly stepped down the steps into the bar. His heels banged loudly on the wooden floor. The memory of her voice came back to him. At night, all the men had to scream in the noisy bar to converse. Her voice was a melody in a pitch a little higher. Whenever he made himself very still, he could hear her over a fifty biker guys. The first time, he had seen her, her skinny self-stood tall in an ankle to neck biker leather suit. The front was zipped down all the way to her belly button. He had seen her bare, porcelain skin at the center of her front. She stood tall. Nobody was messing with her. She had a turquoise emblem, some kind of artist logo on her left chest.
His fingers were gliding past the wooden pole on the way to the bar. The touch to the pole was ritual like touching a mezuzah. He remembered, Fred, Hank, and Roger, his best friends sitting at a table over there. He remembered the bond, the understanding. He had been so close to them and spent so much time with them that he could remember their smell, the scent of sweat, leather, sour -- and yet so sweet. He remembered Fred's deep blue eyes, when they gazed down into his soul to tell him -- "I can see into your heart. Ain't never anybody going to know you like I do."
The bartender reached under the counter and brought up a shot gun with the rhythmic grace of a gymnast during Olympic performance. With a dry cracking sound, his meaty hand pumped the shot gun. He placed the shot gun down on the counter with the calmness of a Rottweiler.
The man from the door passed the pool table with the green, velvet surface. He thought about that game that he had played there. Dog-Face had been his opponent, a guy with pressed lips that made him look like a dog. The hair was skinny and stood up on either side of his skull like dog ears. Grim had Dog-Face starred down at him. Dog-Face had slowly twisted the cue in his leather clad hands. Dog-face's eye brows were bushy and twisted. Hands and fists had been pushing the man from the door to step up to the showdown.
With an angry fist, he had raised his bike keys high into the air and slammed them down on the rim around the pool table. The entire bar full of bikers roared. A beer cup was thrown at his head in the excitement. The girl at the bar had stepped away from her posse of male admirers. With her biker boots, that had a pink devil stencil, stepped wide she announced to the bar that the winner would own her racing suit for the night and could do with it whatever he wanted to do. The bar was boiling with excitement. A stool was smashed into a wall to unleash steam. The bar back donned dinged, bronze brass knuckles to brace for a fight.
On the way to the bar, he paused for a moment to look at the lineup of queues to recognize his queue. It had "devil worshipper" etched into it in a Celtic script. The bartender had watched him towering on the bar counter without a move without a hint of tension without a doubt that the bartender would take action.
The black ball had sunk into the far corner pocket. The pumping, hollering crowd had died in silence, confused about what was going to happen. She had stepped up to the pool table. It had been a near angelic moment how everyone's mind had been on pause. She had placed her left boot on the rim of the pool table. The boot shuffled to find a better spot for leverage. With strength and grace, she stepped up on the pool table in one smooth motion. Standing in the center of the pool table, in the center of the bar, the crowd had started banging on the tables, stools, posts, walls, anything. They had chanted "blood -- blood -- blood." Blood signified payment, payment of the wager in the bet.
She had stood tall with her elegant long legs and slender body. Her face had looked icy. Her face had a devilish look. Her face had deeply blue eyes that reminded me of a Viking warrior. Her thumb and index finger precisely held onto the zipper in the front of her body. The first two fingers formed on 'O'. The other three fingers had been splayed out straight like the comb of a rooster. The zipper had glided down to her groin.
The man from the entrance had reached the end of the pool table on his way to the bar. That's where he had stood, when she had slipped her torso out of the black leather jump suit. Once outside of the thick leather, her arms had been even more slender. Her boobs had been a wonderful tear drop shape. Her body and skin had been delicate and slender. The biker suit had dropped down to her ankles. She had worn a white g-string.
Only a rare woman had the power to stand strong in the middle of Neptune Net. The bar had been no stranger to police visits to inspect rapes. Whatever went down in the bar was shrouded by a wall of silence. Many women had been dragged in by their hair or foolishly entered of their own accord. This one had been tough.
The man from the entrance stepped up the stairs leading out of the pool table pit. An old sign hung over the bar: "This establishment reserves the right to refuse service to pigs."
He remembered stumbling up those stairs that night. He had her almost naked body flung over his shoulder. Drunk from five beers, he had been struggling up the stairs. He had pushed his way through the crowd for bikers -- heavy and unwilling to move. Her legs and head must have knocked into many of them. Hands were smacking her butt. A few daring fingers found her crotch. A sticker had been put on her back. A fist had grabbed his hair and shook his head in a strongly felt appreciation for his luck. A shot glass had been pushed to his lip that he had had to finish. The rough, physicality wasn't disrespect. It was part of being in the crowd.
Out under the full moon, he had put the almost naked girl on the back of his Triumph bike. Her arms had snuggled around his body seductively. The engine roared had been scaring up sleeping birds from a nearby tree. He had turned the gas grip hard. The back tire had skidded sideways and screamed. The dirt of the parking lot had flown high into the air. And off they had gone, dashing along the Pacific Coast Highway.
The moon had been their companion as it laid a white line from the horizon toward them. They leaned into the twisty, turny, empty coastal highway. Her long brown hair had been fluttering in the wind. Her hands had been caressing all over his body. Her skinny body had hugged against the back of his thick leather jacket.
The man from the entrance had reached the top of the stairs. He paused for a moment to gaze at the framed panties over the bar. They were signed "Juliana." Those were hers. The frame had a gaudy bevel around it. She had written XOXO -- hugs and kisses beneath it. There was a tiny, little, yellow bow at the front of the panties.
