Berkeley Square

We took BART and then a bus down University Avenue, me in my jeans and black pleather jacket, as soft as the surface of my tongue, which means not soft at all, and you in your leather skirt, zipper down the side seam. Every man’s eyes snagged on your torn fishnet stockings. I don’t remember the band we were going to see, let’s say X or Lords of the New Church, but I remember you repaired the torn sleeve of your T by threading safety pins through the fabric. The velvet softness of the underside of your wrist when I dared to run my thumb over your pulse beating blue against your pale skin. Slow and steady, it didn’t speed up. In the club, someone rode a mechanical bull, and I wanted to hoist myself in the saddle like John Travolta, boot heels hooking onto stirrups, to show you how I could hang on, but, face it, I wasn’t wearing cowboy anything, just Vans and this cheap ass jacket with Husker Du’s logo painted on the back with Wite-Out. We drank Coronas bought with our older sisters’ IDs at the safe edge of the mosh pit, and the band played so loud, Exene or Stiv or whoever leaning into the microphone, your lips an O and the long curve of your neck as you drank. I wanted you to run your smooth tongue on every jagged lyric I yelled along with the band. The mosh pit a black hole, a maelstrom. A flailing arm, a stomping black boot, a fist pumping to the drum beat, a thrown elbow. You tried to smash your bottle to the ground, but I caught the heft of glass (your heart) in my hand before it could shatter. Then, you flipped your hair and stepped into the mosh pit, caroming off the bulk of a mohawked guy. You held your hand out to pull me in. Perhaps there was no riding bull, perhaps I didn’t wear the leather jacket that night, perhaps the band was Blood on the Saddle, the band you were really into that summer, but I remember this: when I didn’t clasp your hand, you moved away, one body in black among the other bodies, into the surging swirl.