Everything Hurt.
Driving to Daytona took all day, even though we took the Camaro.
“Danny’s bike’s busted,” Larry said. Larry’s younger brother had a Sportster, but it was always broken.
Since I could barely sit upright, I could never have ridden all the way to Florida on the Harley, even for something called Bike Week.
I was happy to crawl – quite literally – into the back seat and sleep for the vast majority of the ride. There was a big hump in the middle of the backseat so it wasn’t exactly comfortable. But being awake after a serious suicide attempt was simply unfathomable. I slept as long as I possibly could.
We started early in the morning with Larry driving, then Danny drove, with switches made during stops for gas or restrooms.
No one asked me to drive.
Everything hurt. My head was pounding. My back ached like I’d been beaten with a baseball bat. My appendages screamed in pain – I couldn’t move my arms or legs without great effort, and even my fingers felt broken. My knees were scraped from crawling on cement. Even my nose was sore, having been hit repeatedly. And my eyes felt like they’d be permanently closed; I could barely squeeze them open to find my way to restrooms.
I was nauseous and dry-mouthed no matter how much Diet Coke I consumed. I never drank water if I had to pay for it, so I remained parched.
Still, it was astounding that I could move at all, let alone walk. But nobody was carrying me to any restrooms. There was not one ounce of sympathy for my plight.
Our only discussion – ever – went like this:
LARRY: “Do you remember what happened last night?”
ME: “Yeah.”
LARRY: “Good.”
That was it.
I moaned – once – as I rolled over the hump in the backseat and said, “My whole body hurts.”
Without hesitation Danny bellowed, “Guess ya shouldn’t’ve jumped out the fucking window!”
Apparently whining would not be tolerated.
Danny seemed angrier than Larry, who didn’t seem angry at all. I wondered if Danny’s bike was really broken, or if we were taking the car because of me.
Whenever we stopped, they both got out and shut their doors behind them, just leaving me in the back. The car was beastly hot at every stop. I had to pull myself forward and push the very heavy door open from the backseat – challenging on the best of days, but nearly impossible with my limited mobility.
They didn’t seem to care if I died back there and, serendipitously, I actually started to care if I lived.
In fact, I started to get excited for Bike Week. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I decided that if I was going to live, then going to Bike Week was just what I needed.
By the time we arrived in Florida, I was ready to party.
And I would be doing it with a few hundred thousand of my closest black-t-shirt-wearing, overly tattooed, boot-stompin’, heavily bearded and/or scantily clad friends.