Bull Rider
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
She climbed on the bull in mixed lighting and rode it waving an arm free in the air. I watched her balance herself with that arm and turn her hand with the same grace that hands have when they are steepled for praying. This happened early in the night when the fresh poured beer was spreading a liquor smell through the bar. An indoor dusk settled on the tables and stools as the light faded from the courtyard. The people were still finding their way around the pen to watch the patrons ride, to forget themselves – to be out, drinking and maybe take their own shot at the bull.
The bull was mechanical – horns sculpted onto a false head and open at the other end, it swung around the ring in slow bucks, but in her movements were freedom. There was proof, too that there are beautiful women in the world who are facing their fates in good faith rather than bitterness.
Other than the purely physical details I noticed, I didn’t know anything else about her at this first sighting. I just enjoyed her performance. She wore the red shirt employees wear in this cowboy bar and she was pretty, which seemed to be a pre-requisite for employment. I guessed that she wanted to ride for her own sense of adventure or to encourage more riders from the crowd. The shirt made her easily identifiable, but as moments do in a bar where the music is loud and people are leaning into each other to shout conversations, I lost track of her after her ride.
I stood leaning against a railing and talked with my best friend from college (who I couldn’t imagine not talking to eight years ago) and filled him in on the last eight years of my life, where I was now and what I hoped to find in this second leg of my life. And I’m not sure if he believed anything I said about being ready to move forward. Moving ahead? Well, that would take some more time to see possibilities and how big the world really is.
The night before, my friend invited me to PBR Blue Sky in the Power & Light District. I was asleep with my youngest daughter when the phone rang past 10:30, which is a late, late hour when a child is staying the night. An acquaintance of his had won a VIP cocktail party there and could bring as many friends as possible. I came alone, hoping to do nothing more than catch up and rediscover the world outside my new bedroom walls.
I watched the people move around me. Both the men and the women were either young or old, nowhere in between. The women weren’t as scantily clad as I’d expected them to be in unofficial summer and the few who were had earned the right.
I was starting to imagine back-stories for all the people when the girl from the bull worked toward us. Her middle was bare and tan, flat and muscular, and she carried herself through the people getting drunk to the group where I stood. There were mostly guys and they were all too eager to sign her clipboard for a chance to in their own VIP party.
Would I sign, she asked? I said I would. I asked her about the bull. I asked her about the guy at the controls and said he had the easiest, most fun job in the place. The beginning to the conversation could have been smoother, but she responded. Somehow it came out in the discussion that she was going through a similar break up in her marriage. A child was involved. I shared my situation … a longer marriage and more children.
She stayed for a bit, maybe 20 minutes longer. We connected on the deeper issues, though we asked each other about what we did for a living, what we did to make it through our lives. Her divorce was a welcome one. Mine has grown to that through much contemplation and consideration. I enjoyed the talk. I needed it. And for awhile, it was nice to listen to another person in transition.
How it feels to talk to someone on a deeper level might not be pure happiness, but it is close to it, and I felt I had reconnected with something, though, in the end, it wasn’t our hearts not necessarily. The circumstances weren’t right – a bar, one of us at work and the other out for fun, with no expectations other than to be out. There may have been other let downs, but they were on my end if they happened at all. She eventually went her way to sign more people to the clipboard. She gets paid by the name. And I stayed there standing on the platform looking into the bull ring.
On the bull, perfection is rarely the result and it doesn’t matter that the riding isn’t picturesque. The objective is to hold on. The perfection is in the excitement – the temporary energy. All eyes in the bar are on the lit square in the center of the grandstands and the padding that catches the riders. The cockiest are thrown the quickest. Beginners and the least confident are given a lower pace and yet still manage to fall off. And, then there is the circus clown who rides the bull’s back like a surfboard and flips off the machine backward, but it’s so over the top – so much for the attention – that there’s nothing meaningful in it except a laugh.
I saw myself on the bull, clutching the saddle strap, the bucks growing more violent. While I never actually climbed on him, the bull was in the grandstands all along, under me, and I was on and riding well beyond 10 seconds. Not as graceful – not nearly as beautiful – but in my own private way, I’d found balance and a discovery that country music is best when listened to alone.
