I'd always deeply loved the idea of flat black.  It was more than just a color, it was a way of thinking. I remember an English class in high school, where the teacher asked us all to describe ourselves in the form of a car. I chose flat black as the color. I don't remember what kind of car I was exactly, but I remember the reaction I got from other kids in the class. Some thought it was cool, others thought it was dumb, at the time I think I just said it to try and appear cool, but there's more to flat black than meets the eye.
  I loved flat black whenever I saw it. Of course it appears in many of my favorite movies. It's the color of choice for vehicles that happen to be in any sort of wasteland movie: Mad Max, Road Warrior etc. etc. The list goes on and on. It's got an almost para-military feel, it's the color of drab, old school, communist eastern-bloc, dirty garaged vehicles. Then again it's sort of punk rock, it's the color of anarchy, it's the color of tear down the walls, and start over. It's the color of I don't care what you think. I didn't realize just how powerful it was until I used it.
  I drive a lot, and I like to go to custom car shows. My wife and I had a habit of running into them wherever we seemed to be, for a while. Whenever we'd go on vacation, or go cruising on a weekend, we would see a line of old 50's or 60's cruisers on display. Every so often there was one painted in that amazing flat black. They might have had red wheels, or white wheels, and a little chrome on the engine, but they had that marvelous flat black paint job. It's kind of like a particular piece of clothing that you like to wear, that you think goes with everything; it probably doesn't go with everything, but you don't care, you wear it anyway.
  My love affair with flat black was off and on.  By this, I mean I always loved flat black,but I didn't see it that often. The other day I was driving down a highway somewhere, and I got passed by this guy driving some old flat black hot rod. I think it was made in some shop in Baltimore. He looked he was heading for a car show somewhere, but I couldn't go, I had to go to work somewhere, all I could do was cruise along next to him, looking at that fabulous black color.
  I've ridden motorcycles for about 25 years now, and I've been fixing them up myself for about 10 years. I recently found a website called Ratbike.org that has pictures of lots of wonderful creations by fellow eccentrics, lots of which are flat black in color (yeah, I know, it sounds like geeky motorcycle porn), but I don't care.  I always wanted to paint a motorcycle in flat black. Tank, fenders, frame, wheels, maybe even the engine. Flat black is the anti-chrome. All those guys who ride those chromed out bikes with the name of that company on everything they own (you know who you are, you know the name), ought to at least get paid for all that free advertising they are giving that company, maybe then they re-coup some of the cost of all the chrome. Flat black is cheap. Flat black is $1.79 a can for something cooler than chrome.  I just spent almost a whole weekend working on my latest fixer-upper bike,  and I just made the tanks flat black.
  I looked at this bike for a while. Usually I only look at the price tag before I buy one to fix up. I've got an unwritten rule to never pay more than $500 for a bike. That way if I'm making $30000 a year I'm only spending less than 1 percent of my income on what will usually end up being a toy.  I usually do an inventory before I fix up a bike. Quick list to see what it needs. Carbs cleaned, paint job, fenders fixed. new plugs, wires, maybe a battery, maybe some this or that. I love all motorcycles. I love scooters. I love mopeds. I love crotch-rockets, and cruisers, streetfighters, and rat bikes. I love them all.  I love all the old ones that have resided in my garage from time to time. Sometimes I wish I had them back.
  Sometimes I like to do them up to look factory. You know, just the way they looked when they rolled off the factory floor. Sometimes I like to give them a bit of my own paint. Maybe change a light, change a fender, tweak an engine, or change a color. I always thought about doing one in flat black, or doing an old car in flat black, but it seemed like every time I got to the store all they had was gloss black.  I was thinking about changing the color of the tank on this bike, and I finally decided to get rid of all the old scratches, marks, and horrible stickers on the sides, and go with another color. After hours of scraping I finally had the tank rough, and then I primed it.
  With the primer gray it almost looked like a big lump of clay, that hadn't been molded into anything yet. It was crying out for some color. I'm glad I waited for this. I'm glad it took 25 or more years of a love affair with a color before using it. Who knows, if I'd started with flat black back then, I might still not have loved it now. When I got to the paint store, there was a row of cheap flat black cans, next to the gloss black cans. I looked at the lids on the paint cans, sometimes the lids aren't quite the same color as the paint inside. I've been fooled before, into thinking I bought flat black, when in turn it was gloss. Anyway, not being able to spray a test run in the store, I went with my instinct, and bought a few cans. I felt like a giddy teenager sneaking up to his room,with his first porno magazine, or a kid who just used a fake ID to buy a six-pack.  This is a funny color. It's almost wrong to paint with it. 
  I held the can up to my claylike gastank, expecting to get a gloss black color come out of it, (even before I had noticed the little sticker on the side of the can clearly indicating flat black contents) and cautiously, but firmly depressed the nozzle. A fine mist was expelled from the can. It looked almost like black fog. It was enticing. At first I wasn't sure if I had shaken the can enough. I couldn't believe that flat black.  I shook it some more, and then I saw the color hitting the primer gray tank. It was amazing. As my hand waved back and forth, I stared into the tank. It looked almost like a thunder cloud. The color looked like a thought process. It looked like the swirling smoke from a smoky campfire, on a cold wet morning.  I almost wanted to keep the color just that cloud color.  But I kept pushing on the black, layer upon layer until the tank was dark.  I did the front fender the same way.  My bike stood in the mouth of the garage, silhouetted against the night.  Actually the flat black wasn't silhoutted at all, it was almost like looking into the night.  As I stood away from the bike I could barely make out the shape of the front fender against the backdrop of night. It was a beautiful thing. It was true blending. It was almost like I had discovered a new camouflage. I imagined keeping the "cloud" color for myself. I might use in the future on another bike, or car, or maybe just the side of a building. I imagined flat black as camouflage, over greens, and browns, and tans, and yellows. All those great images of flat black came back to me, in that moment. I hastily placed the finished tank on the bike, and replaced the seat. It looked just the way I had imagined a flat black vehicle would look. In that moment I was transported to some dingy communist garage, or some futuristic sandy wasteland, or some kind of  punk rock group.  I could already see myself riding this one down the street, hopefully my boyish grin, or bright red cheeks won't overshadow that good old flat black.