It was one of those lonely Saturday nights in Ventura when I met this girl at Oil Can Charlie’s Bar. We were all alone when she smiled at me, and offered to close the bar early if I’d take her for a ride into the Ojai hillside. I was alone at the time, living in seaside middle-class Oxnard. I didn’t know a soul, steered clear of the clubs, and wandered the back streets looking for love.
Her big amber eyes and bright smile were like a Christmas-wrapped Lionel locomotive to a ghetto kid on Xmas morning. I couldn’t believe my eyes or my trembling ears behind my scruffy beard. I was just a dirty biker in a strange town, alone as an illegal immigrant with only a backpack scrambling across the border west of Nogales, Mexico, hoping to find a new life past the Sierrita Mountains south of Tucson, before the border patrol or some gang caught up with him.
I speculated if the blonde Scandinavian goddess was some club president’s ol’ lady. I didn’t know anyone, but when she smiled, it didn’t matter. Then she turned to close the cash register, and the slope of her tits caught my eye. If the entire Oxnard Carnales Chapter stormed the saloon with guns blazing, I didn’t care; I was a happy man for the first time in months.
I looked around inside the dark bar, wondering if I might find Rod Sterling sitting in the corner sipping port. He’d look up at me from his dark corner and whisper, “Welcome to the Twilight Zone.” The bar was still empty.
She came around the bar, and I slipped off the barstool to meet her. She was just right for my 6’5″ size, slightly large and voluptuous in all the right places. I still couldn’t believe it. She was cute, her teeth were even and ivory white. Her eyes didn’t contain that crack-whore distant glint. Her complexion was smooth and when she pressed her buxom mountains against my chest, I knew instantly they were real, and I kissed her. She didn’t have the pungent breath of a smoker and her lips were like a hot acetylene torch to a birthday candle.
“Can I play one more song, before we leave?” she whispered in my ear, followed by her moist tongue. What the fuck was I gonna say? I just nodded and she strolled toward the jukebox. My eyes followed the gentle curve of her ass like a starving kitty following a brimming bowl of fresh milk.
She gently pressed a couple of buttons on the flashy face, adding a pink hue to the curve of her breast and plump cheeks. The jukebox shifted gears with a clink and a clank, then out rolled Jerry Butler – For Your Precious Love:
Means more to me
Than any love could ever be
For when I wanted you
I was so lonely and so blue
For that’s what love will do
And darling, I’m
(I’m so surprised)
Oh, when I first realized
(I realized)
That a-you were fooling me
And darling
They say that our love won’t grow
But I just wanna tell them
That they don’t know-oh-ho
For as long
As you’re in love with me
Our love will grow wider
Deeper than any sea
And of all the things that I want
In this whole wide world
Is just for you to say
That you’ll be my girl
And
(Wanting you)
Wanting you
(Oh-ooh, I’m lonely and blue)
I’m so-whoa, lonely
(That’s what love will do)
My mind was awash with desire. My heart pulsed with fresh untouched adrenalin, as she gathered her riding gear and shut off the lights. She rode! Amazing. She donned a gnarled leather jacket and weathered gloves. I was lulled into a biker’s wistful nirvana, wrapped in one of the best R&B love tunes ever to melt the airways, as we strolled hand-in-hand into the parking lot.
I fully expected a gun-totting ex, in an alcoholic rage. Instead, she straddled a Honda four custom and we raced into the night. Miracles do happen.
