The thing about being a “bad boy” was that everyone wanted to change him. Girls wanted him to love them instead of leave them. His parents wanted him to drive slower and drink less, and his teachers wanted him to stop ditching class for cigarette breaks. Every time he passed a police officer they would glance at his leather jacket-clad form and their eyes would narrow in warning that he better not cause any trouble. Even his friends shook their heads and told him that he was crazy and had the potential to die young if he wasn’t more careful. It seemed as if he was the only one who was happy with the way he was.
He liked his motorcycle. The moment he’d turned 18 he’d gone to a class and gotten his license. He’d been saving for two years for the bike that he wanted working a dead-end job at a gas station where truckers came in to load up on smokes and lotto tickets, and he went straight from the DMV to the garage where the purring hunk of metal sat waiting for him. When he roared down the street on the beautiful machine he had fondly named “Dehlilah” he got angry looks from mothers, lustful glances from pretty girls in short skirts and high heels, and ugly jeers from old men driving dented pick-up trucks. He loved every second of it.
Society told him that he was going to change someday. That he was going to meet a pretty girl with freckles who went to church and settle down with her in a little house with a white picket fence. He would eventually sell his motorcycle and buy a mini-van and replace his bottles of liquid heat with juice boxes. He would no longer listen to rock and roll and would be forever doomed to a life of Barney and Justin Beiber like pop-stars. The mere thought of it made his stomach roll.
When he’d gone to Sturgis his last summer of high school he’d witnessed firsthand the possibilities he had to continue his reckless life style. There were 65 year old men there who’d had their bikes since they were his age and still drove and partied like it was 1977. They told him stories of the road and pretty girls who didn’t last, and showed off the women on the back of their bikes who had ridden with them for years and never tried to change them. That night he’d gained a whole new appreciation for partying with women old enough to be his grandmothers. They had long learned how to put it away.  
He liked to circulate biker bars and play pool. His fake I.D. was poor but no one really cared about his age. He rode tall, played well, and drank like a champion. In his world that meant more than the number of years he’d been on the earth. He was accepted by the part of society that society scoffed at. Sometimes he rebelled against the world’s image of him so much the he resembled Johnny Depp in “Crybaby” and did reckless things just so he could be judged for them. It was a lot of fun.
He loved women. Not just one, but most of them. He’d give them rides on the back of his bike and play the bad boy part to satisfy their reckless teenage hearts. He liked their soft lips and the way they yelped when he opened up the throttle on his bike. Mostly, he loved how they rarely tried to stick around.
For a moment his school had tried to label him a player. His face still scrunched up when he remembered that time in his life. New girls would come in and flirt and giggle then suddenly tell him it was commitment or nothing. He picked nothing. That was a dry spell for him and probably one of the low points in his life. It amazed him how a label given to him by people he couldn’t have cared less about had the power to change his life so drastically. He should’ve remembered that warning when it was given to him.
He sighed and rested the back of his head against the concrete wall of his holding cell. His hair was getting long and he kept having to brush stray black strands out of his eyes. The scratch marks he’d left in the wall told him that this was day five of captivity, and his court-appointed lawyer hadn’t given him an ultimatum. He knocked on the floor again, his knuckles still red from the hours he’d spent doing so. He was trying to create music, but all he was really doing was making his hands hurt. It was almost worth it.
One wrong move. That was all it had been. He didn’t realize that sleeping with a girl and then not committing to her made him a rapist, but apparently she didn’t come with test drives. You either bought it or it was stolen. She had been perfectly willing at the time, in fact, she’d come on to him. He’d taken her for a ride on his bike, showed her the city with all of its lights, and didn’t stop her when she’d started to undress him. Now he was in a jail cell waiting to go to court for rape in the first degree.
He could tell that the police didn’t believe him. His lawyer was on the edge and his parents had their doubts. It was insulting. He was here for his reputation, not his actions. The way he looked and the reckless fun he had made him guilty of things that he didn’t do, at least, in the eyes of society it did.
If he was a Harvard-bound polo-shirt wearing pretty boy he would’ve been out on bail waiting for the charges against him to be dismissed. Instead he was labeled a flight risk, dangerous, and was ordered to be kept in solitary confinement under a watchful eye while they were investigating him. He couldn’t wait to see what they’d come up with. He did a lot of bad things, but he would never hurt a woman. Despite his rough exterior he was still a man with values.
A sigh escaped his lips and he laced his fingers together waiting for the lock on his door to click and his handcuffs to be put on so he could go eat some lunch. The food wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t good either. He knew a few other people from the time that he spent partying, but none of them acknowledged him. He was alone.
Even if he wasn’t charged the whispers would still be there. The accusing eyes of people who had once been his peers would act as executioners for any opportunity of a normal life. Even if he moved to a new place, a bigger place, the report would still hang over his head. Rape was on his record whether he was found guilty or not. He could never have a desk job which didn’t bother him . . . not really, but he’d had plans that would never be fulfilled thanks to one little blip on the screen of his life, one sigh, one palpation of the heart of his existence, and now he was doomed to dwindle. All thanks to one poor decision and a bad reputation. A label given to him by society would ruin him, and it wasn’t because he had given it the power to do so, it was because he was powerless to stop it.
He sighed and continued tapping. The general beat of Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi was beginning to emanate throughout his cell. He nodded his head in time with the music and the lyrics became a whisper on his lips. He thought of riding his motorcycle in the middle of the night, tearing across pavement and yelling at street signs. He could almost feel the wind in his hair when the buzzer went off, alerting him that his cell door was open. 
He stood from the floor and nodded at the guard as he passed. He stared the man in his cold eyes that were staring into the deepest parts of psyche and judging him anyway. He wandered down the hall listening to clink of metal handcuffs. He sat at his normal table and ate the food that was left in front of him. He was uniform here. He meant nothing and was nothing.  He was another file in the cabinet, and another mouth to feed. He was what society had made him. He was no longer a man. He was a piece of meat in handcuffs. He was doomed.