I met him once before, Spider that is. I wanted to buy my first lowrider motorcycle & he had one for sale. He lived out of town with his parents in a barely furnished house down a dirt track. He was around 6' 2" tall, a handsome english redneck with a black beard & he had owned some of the coolest looking customised bikes for miles around. He seemed a decent sort of guy; I tried out the bike though didn't buy it from him. Spider belonged to a local motorcycle gang. If he wasn't with his gang he was a bit of a loner & it was known that if he had a girlfriend it wouldn't last for long.

I had been living with Jeanie for just over five years. When I first met her she told me about her previous boyfriend she had been engaged to. They were planning the marriage though just before the important day he changed his mind & left her, so it was understandable that she didn't have anything good to say about him. She focused on all of his bad points & even though I had never met the guy, I allowed her opinions to build up a pretty negative picture of him in my imagination, which looking back was pretty narrow minded of me.

Sex had been really good with Jeanie for most of the time, though she went through a phase of putting some weight on, so I stopped having sex with her. At the start of the relationship I had told her I didn't fuck girls with excess fat. She must have thought I was joking, but I wasn't. She got her figure back again after about 6 months & my desire returned though now she didn't want to have sex with me, saying I shouldn't just find her attractive if she was slim.

It wasn't just the sex, though our relationship had begun going down the drain & I was getting bored living with her. The house & doing d.i.y. were important to her. Life was getting far too safe & cosy for me; I wanted more excitement & a change so I decided to leave her. Even though I tried to do it gently, she didn't like being rejected one bit, which I'll get to in a minute. I moved out & started sharing a house with a guy called Jim.

After a few months I got to meet a couple of hot girls. We meet up twice each week & went out drinking & clubbing together. They introduced me to some other hot girls. These girls were some of the hottest in the alternative social circle in Lincoln, my hometown. I see girls here & there though I always meet up with my female group each weekend in a pub called The Red Lion.

While my new life is forming Jeanie decides she wants to go out with Spider. It's no big deal to me & doesn't concern me. I want to get on with my life & how it's panning out is alright by me. One slight problem is we all frequent the same pub on a regular basis. On a couple of occasions Jeanie kisses Spider right in front of me, looking like she wants a reaction from me, though I'm cool. I would be sitting at a table in the bar, three or four hot girls on either side of me & Jeanie would sometimes be sitting directly opposite with Spider looking daggers at me. 'Get over it', I think, I'm not interested.

After a couple of months Jeanie stops going out with Spider & she stops coming down the pub though Spider continues drinking there as it's his local. By now he owns the shiniest Harley in his motorcycle gang. Quite an attention getter which he has parked outside the pub when he visits. Suddenly he starts giving me bad looks & vibes & on a few occasions he bumps into me kind of hard. Initially I don't get it. I haven't done anything to him & I haven't got anything against the guy.

Anyway, these bad vibes & the barging continues so I walk up to him one night & ask him what's the problem? I ask him if Jeanie had been bad mouthing me as I thought she may have tried to poison his mind against me. I explain to Spider that she had done the exact same thing with me towards her x fiance. Spider sneers at me & says in a threatening tone of voice, "I don't know what you mean!" Weird ...

While I'm sharing my house with Jim, Mr Stud in town, one of Spiders best friends, Tramp, another gang member, has a girlfriend called Jane. One night Jim decides to take Tramps girlfriend off him in the pub whilst Tramps back is turned & brings her back to the our house to fuck her. Two hours later there is a knock at the door. I go to answer it & it's Tramp with a concerned expression on his face looking for his girlfriend.

Under the circumstances it makes sense for me to deny she is there. I don't want fight kicking off in my home. Jane decides to continue seeing Jim so she blows out Tramp, so now when I go to the pub, I've got two biker guys who have taken a dislike to me, though I know I haven't done anything to either of them.

The Red Lion is made up of three brick tunnels. You entered through the centre tunnel then either chose the left tunnel for the lounge or the right for the bar. When I went out drinking, there was a repeated pattern that took place on a typical Friday & Saturday night. I would be sitting at a table in the bar talking to a few friends. Spider would be on his own with a drink propped up against a cigarette machine in the centre tunnel.

One of my girlfriends would enter the pub & have to walk past Spider to get to the bar. He would try to engage then in conversation for a few minutes. They would listen politely then get a drink & come & find me. The next girl would walk into the pub & the same thing would happen again. They told me they found him boring to talk to. I would find myself with around eight pretty girls for the night. We would then go off clubbing together. It was fun & this went on for around one year.

I can remember one of my birthdays. The girls & I went for a pizza in town & an extra table had to be added onto the main one to fit them all in. Also in the Red Lion on several occasions guys who would be propping up the bar week after week would chat with me when I was on my own & ask me what I was saying to these girls. I told them it wasn't so much what I was saying, it was more to do with what I was NOT saying. I was genuinely interested in them & would listen to them. It's not rocket science.

For one whole year Spider & Tramp tried to get a reaction out of me when they saw me. They were both fuming. In hindsight, I fully understand why they could have been so mad at me, though at the time it didn't click. I couldn't understand why they should be angry with me as I knew I hadn't done anything to them or didn't wish them any ill. From their point of view though, both of their egos were badly bruised. They had both formed negative assumptions about my character & they were seeing me on a regular basis in perhaps a position they would like to be in themselves.

You may be thinking why didn't I simply go to a different pub? Where I lived didn't have too many choices of where to go. There were two other pubs which I used to go to as well, though within my social group, we all used the same three pubs. I did my best to ignore their behaviour, then one night I had just left a bar in town & was walking along a street when I saw Spider walking towards me on the same side of the road. I had had a bit to drink & when we passed one another, because by now I was thinking his behaviour was a little stupid, I sniggered. I continued walking for a few yards then stopped & looked back. Spider had also stopped & was staring at me. I turned round & continued on my way thinking, "I shouldn't have done that."

I didn't give it too much thought the following week. Friday evening came around & I met up with the girls in the Red Lion. We stayed there for a few hours then went to Logans, the main nightclub in the City where most of our social circle went to. I was dancing with the girls then decided to go to the toilet. I walked up some steps to the Gents, opened the door & was greeted by Spider towering over me who said, "No one fucking laughs at me!" followed by a very hard punch into my right eye socket. Unfortunately, he had a large ring on that fist which cut deeply into the flesh just below my eye.

Fortunately the alcohol I had been drinking deadened the immediate pain. I don't know whether he expected me to fall over or run away, though I did neither. He had around five of his motorcycle gang behind him inside the toilets. I stood my ground & beckoned him toward me with one of my index fingers. "Come here" I said. He shook his head & said no. I then said, "We can continue this right now or we can stop. What would you like to do?" He was looking at what he had done to my face & looked shocked. He suggested that I go visit a hospital immediately. I found out later that week that he had mentioned to his friends the possibility of him joining the army & leaving town because of what he had done.

I had several stitches in the wound though the scar is still visible to this day years later. It was an extremely good lesson for me.

Because of this particular experience I was not interested in wasting anytime on focusing on who was wrong or right even though it would have been easy to have had him arrested for assault. I decided instead to make sure that I would never find myself in a similar experience in my life. I could have lost my sight in one eye or worse. This particular experience made me delve deeply into psychology & also how to improve my communication skills. I am pleased that Spider assaulted me as what I have learned since that experience has been priceless. My quality of life has improved in countless ways.

Thanks Spider.