The Stranger pushed the chipping black painted door wide open blasting mid-afternoon sun into the windowless biker bar causing everyone inside to momentarily suffer from cataracts of sunlight. Some only vaguely saw a shadow breaking through the rays of blinding light. But eventually, everyone’s eyes adjusted to the shock to now see a handsome, maybe even beautiful, man crossing the bar heading straight across the dancefloor.

The only things directly ahead were the restrooms and some old jukebox, of which both worked irregularly. The bartender found it odd that the Stranger didn’t come up to the bar first or that he didn’t even look around for anyone. The Stranger seemed to carry a subtle yet content smile while looking directly ahead at his intended target. Halfway there, most people just figured that he was in urgent need of a toilet and went back to their dive bar lives.

But an increasing proportion of the women kept being distracted by the handsome Stranger while most of the men feigned disinterest. Still, a growing number of men kept sneaking glances between pool shots, sips of cheap light beer, and puffs of extra long cigarettes. And since most were spying on him in some way or another, they would all also discover that his intended was not the toilet, but the old jukebox.

Without looking around, he casually pulled a few singles from his front right pocket and placed one at a time in the money slot. He seemed to look intently at the severely yellow faded music cards held in black flip boards listing country, rock, country-rock, and bluegrass selections. You could hear the hard aged plastic black frames slamming into each other hard as he turned each page with the push of a button. The Stranger still never looked at his growing number of spectators. He finally stopped at a page, smiled more obviously, pressed A, then 6. A couple seconds later the 80s rock band, The Cult, came to life on the bars sound system playing, “She Sells Sanctuary”.

The Stranger placed a hand in each one of his back pockets and began to move his hips gently in beat with the song. He never looked up at the captivated audience and their initial approval of the song. Instead, he removed his hands from his pockets and placed them both, palms open, on the dirty plastic dome casing of the jukebox and started interchanging the twisting of his hips with gyrating thrusts at the jukebox. This climaxed into him catapulting himself off the jukebox and into the middle of the empty dance floor for a complete solo dance routine, while everyone stared in shock and disbelief. But the Stranger still never looked up.  

The shock first triggered a moment of laughter, which soured to suspicion, then rotted into disdain for the Stranger entertaining himself in front of them. The women no longer felt amused but jilted. The men just didn’t care for it one bit. The bartender looked at one of the well-muscled guys, a friend of his since 1st grade, nodding for him to bounce this guy out. And so the bartender’s friend kissed his girlfriend, who pinched one of his partially exposed nipples through his sleeveless tank top as a sign of flirting and approval, and walked over to the Stranger, now in a lively dance with his hands moving all about his body by this point.

He stood a few feet in front of the Stranger and bellowed at the Stranger who just kept dancing, never looking up. The muscle friend moved in closer, practically removing all distance between them, which did catch the Stranger’s attention resulting in the Stranger looking right at the muscle guy. They were nearly the same height. The Stranger just smiled at the muscle guy and kept dancing and gyrating, but with the distance now nil, the Stranger was rubbing right against the muscle guy’s body. At this point, the muscle guy kept looking into the eyes of the Stranger and roughly placed his hands on the Stranger’s hips, perhaps in an attempt to stop him from moving. But the muscle guy just pulled the Stranger even closer to him and then charged in to kiss the Stranger deeply and with full tongue. Now both moving to the beat of the song.

The women all screamed at once and the men grabbed their beer bottles and pool sticks hard while firing a torrent of curses at them. The bartender signaled for more of his friends to go to the dancefloor and break it up. And while the first day-drinking brigade headed for the dancefloor, the jukebox flipped to The Cult’s, “Dirty Little Rockstar”. But even more significant during this moment was that as every single guy got onto the dancefloor he immediately felt compelled to start dancing, bouncing, gyrating, taking off his shirts, and kissing someone or a group of someones.

The women continued to shriek with pitched madness as their men were engulfed into the sexualized dance circus. The bartender was his own last hope, as he stepped onto the dancefloor with a wooden bat, but that too proved in vain, as he quickly became tongue-tied with his longtime muscle friend. The women finally grouped together and invaded the men’s irrational behavior, trying to literally pull the men apart from each other, but with no success. You could barely hear the music at this point over the desperate pleas, obscenities, and cries of the women fighting against something they still didn’t understand.  

While everyone was distracted by their focused passions and disbelief, the Stranger casually maneuvered his way out of the collections of hard labored muscled bodies, slower paced beer bellies, the pungent scent of pale yellow domestic beer, menthol cigarettes, and woodsy smelling colognes. At one point he was nearly crawling on all fours between men’s and women’s legs. He walked over to the heavy black door. Didn’t look back. But this time only opening it enough for him to return to the awaiting sunlight outside. As the door closed he could still hear the women screaming obscenities at their men and each other, along with accusations and glass breaking.

But the heavy black door finally closed, slowly entombing the sounds inside. The Stranger looked around at the silent gravel parking area, interrupted only by the squawks of a few crows on nearby electrical cables. He walked across a dusty pale grey gravel lot, past motorcycles and various sized trucks until he stepped onto the worn crumbly edge of a two-way tarred country road. One direction would take him to the nearby town and the other direction through more farmlands until eventually the nearest real city. He stepped out onto the road, pointed his feet in the direction he wanted to go, and proceeded to walk.