LIKE A CHILD MOLESTER feigning airy disinterest, I lean against a chain link fence at the skate park located across the street from the zillion-dollar curves of EMP–that misguided salute to rock and roll–while watching gangly, adolescent boys rock and roll some curves of their own. Each exhibits a self-contained nonchalance, whether elegantly gliding through the air or biting pavement with a wet thud reminiscent of flopping fish clubbed on a concrete dock. Again and again, I wince and look away from the expected carnage, though each time they miraculously leap up and hurl their bodies back onto their boards as if nothing in the universe offers more pleasure than the opportunity to injure themselves in the presence of their peers.

Greg, an ancient 25-year-old who hides a secret identity as an accountant, stares blankly at me when I ask why not a single person in the park is wearing protective gear. “Uh, it’s not cool.” I nod as if this makes perfect sense. Tor, a 14-year-old with a wide smile full of braces, gleefully chimes in, “This little dude pancaked into the quarter pipe and cut his chin in half. You could see the bone and everything.” These war stories are fascinating, but a low rumble distracts me. A lean guy with a cigarette dangling from his rakish grin clutches the leash of a pit bull possessing the musculature of an ox as the dog drags him across the parking lot at 45 miles an hour. He leaps off the board like a punk-rock Errol Flynn, tosses the dog a bone from the back pocket of his jeans, and drops down into the cold, gray curls. Oh, be still my beating heart!

He rides far better than the others, and I watch him with predatory pleasure until he flips over the lip of the knoll where I stand, catches his board, and saunters over. Show me a tattooed guy with a dog and a likely history of incarceration, and I’ll show you my dream date. “Oh, please God, let him be of age,” I quickly pray. “I’m 29,” he says in answer to my strictly journalistic inquiry. “I’m never gonna put the board down. Here, feel this scar tissue.” I grope happily at the elbow this fellow I shall call W. proffers, while he enthuses, “The park’s got a lot of vert with trannies and street elements, but I’ll hit the thing mach just to grind and carve.” Momentarily buoyed by the fact that he thinks I’m cool enough to understand a word that he is saying, I summon the courage to casually ask, “Beer?”

Minutes later, I’m watching his dog shove an entire snout into a pint glass while W. slits himself from stem to stern and lets his secrets slither out onto the table. “I was wanted for attempted murder–it’s kind of a long story. You really want to hear it?” I don’t have to beg, though I certainly would. “I was living in Miami selling coke, Special K, Ecstasy, you name it. I also modeled–J. Crew catalogues and a couple of Versace layouts. Between that and the other stuff, I was making 10 grand a week.”

He gently tugs his beer away from the dog and takes a long sip. “It went on like that for years until we got a call from an undercover cop we used to sell to. All the message said was, ‘Get out of town.’ No time to put in two weeks’ notice. You move before the SWAT team busts down the door.” I blink hard in a pointless attempt to shake the sensation that I am in an Elmore Leonard novel. “My roommate, this gay guy with AIDS, and I loaded up all the shit we could carry and the pup here into a horse trailer and took off. Ten unmarked Caprices escorted us to the city limits while we blew straws packed with heroin and X into each other’s noses.

“My roommate’s father was the sheriff of this town and he wasn’t too glad to see us, but he let us stay in a house on his property that hadn’t been lived in for 10 years. No furniture, dry rot and shit. And at first it was great. We did the rest of the drugs, but in a couple days I started detoxing and reality set in.” Maybe it’s the fact that I’m well into my fourth beer, but this story is doing nothing to make W. seem any less appealing. “The last thing in the kit was a Ritalin and some testosterone, so I mixed ’em up and shot myself in the ass. Immediately I blacked out and started raging. I don’t remember any of it but I did things I didn’t even know were possible. I tore the refrigerator door off its hinges, ripped sinks out of the wall–just went fucking nuts. When my buddy came in and tried to stop me, I hit him in the back of the neck with a pipe and threw a knife at his head.”

He fixes me with a shining gaze. “The year before this happened, I’d been having this dream about blue lights flashing on the faces of men in cowboy hats who pointed shotguns at my face. And when I finally came to on the porch of this house, they were waiting; here I was inside the dream. Finally it happened, and you know what? It was kind of a relief.” I wanted to tell W. that he didn’t have to explain. Every single person who skates is in intoxicated pursuit of danger, and though I don’t exactly ride, I know all about the desire to look into danger’s handsome face. But instead, I ask if W. wants another beer, and let me ask you this: Do you think he turns me down?!