A Painful Write of Passage: Riding the Bull

I was sitting in my office, getting sucked into my computer's glowing screen instead of going to bed like a good girl, when inspiration knocked via email. It was an invite from my new Ohio friend Momo Fali to join a new Ning Group just started by Mrs. Flinger with the most wonderful mission. The group is Write of Passage and it's mission is to bring us back to the essence of blogging: Writing. Community. Challenge.

This week is just the BETA week with a cringe-worthy prompt, but as I am a little brown noser, I jumped right in. I embedded some code at the bottom of this post that should enable you to post a link to your post with the same topic, but if this doesn't appear, please leave it in the comments so I can pay you a visit. And head on over to the NING group so you can join the fun!

My most embarrassing moment. As Natalie Goldberg would say: "10 minutes. Go."

From the onset, I felt like an interloper. When I walked into the back room of the Korean spa, they greeted me in their white bathrobes, champagne glasses in hand. I waved and nodded at each of them in turn as they told me their names, promptly forget them, and then went to change out of my street clothes.

They were a bunch of high school friends on a Moms Gone Wild Weekend in New York City, and it had taken some serious convincing by my neighbor and best friend to get me to crash their reunion. I'm not sure what finally convinced me: the pleasure of getting to spend an entire day with my friend without having to police our kids, the lure of a massage, or the danger of mechanical bull riding. For whatever reason, I found myself driving into New York City that sunny Saturday morning to join a bunch of inebriated women for a Moms Gone Wild weekend.

The afternoon was uneventful, just your typical, blissful, soothing, pampering massage. It wasn't until we walked into the cheesy saloon, off of Times Square, that things began to get interesting. The bull sat in the middle of the deserted bar, a hulking mechanical beast draped in stained leather. I sat with my gaggle of wild moms at the bar, awaiting the first rodeo victims for a few minutes before boredom set in.

The bull sat, frozen in the spotlight, unused, unloved, untamed.

I thought to myself, "how hard can this be? I used to ride horses, this should be piece of cake."

And so, full of bravado and eager to make the night live up to its promise, I walked up to the bull master and signed the waver form.

Minutes later, I had walked across the deeply padded bull pen and climbed atop the contraption. I was towering above the patrons of the rapidly filling bar and being cheered by tourists wearing cowboy hats. Both of my hands were clutching the pommel of the saddle and I gave the technician the nod to begin. He looked back at me and shouted "one hand!" I raised my left hand high in the air, and with a squeak, the bull began moving.

He was jerky, but gentle at first, spinning me slowly around the room in a rough dance. Every quarter turn he would kick up his rump, like a spastic high schooler at a prom. I managed a few embarrassed smiles at my jeering group of moms before the attendant got bored and flipped the speed to high.

Suddenly the bull went wild, bucking back and forth violently, right and left and up and down. He was spinning around so fast that the crowd was a blur. I could hear their shouts but could make out no one. My riding background was helping me too much and I was maintaining my balance. The bull was now so rough and fast that I was scared and had no idea how I would get off gracefully. I tried shouting, "Stop!" but either the attendant didn't hear me, or just ignored me, because the bull just increased its speed.

I must have looked like a pathetic rag doll, bopping back and forth on the back of that black monster with my snazzy suede jacket and my lipsticked lips. Finally, desperate to get off the stage, I simply let go of the saddle. But instead of falling gracefully to the side, I went over the head of the beast, slamming my wrist on the saddle, before falling head first in front of it. I scrambled away on all fours, sinking into the padding until I made it back to the paddock door.

I wanted to skulk off and forget about my very public dismount, but my new friends were waiting for me. Most had cameras in hand, each filled with pics of my mortifying rodeo.