Brilliant … But Bouncy

Not This Time.

On the morning we were leaving Sturgis, there was some hubbub outside of the world’s worst port-o-johns. Larry didn’t come back to our “camping” spot for a long time.

“What’s going on?” I asked when he finally returned.

“Somebody got shot,” he said.

“Who?”

Larry shook his head. “No idea,” he said, and lit his cigarette. “But he’s dead.”

Good thing we’re leaving, I thought. I don’t want to get shot. We were on the bike only minutes later. Ronnie was in his truck, following us.

We stopped at a gas station to fill up the tank before making the several-day-long trek home. As usual, we wouldn’t be taking the highways because we couldn’t afford the tolls.

Larry was paying for the gas when a guy with a huge camera walked up to me. I was sitting on the back of the bike, waiting for him and not smoking, so as to avoid causing the gas pump to explode.

“Can I take your picture?” the guy asked.

“Sure,” I said. Just as I started to lift my shirt to give a tit-shot to the giant camera, Larry appeared out of nowhere.

“Not this time,” Larry said, gently moving my hand back to my lap. He stepped back.

I was wearing the SHIT HAPPENS t-shirt I’d acquired from the horrific experience of topless begging. I hadn’t bathed, showered, brushed my teeth or brushed my hair in a week. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want a picture of me.

But the guy took a photo of me just sitting there on the back of Larry’s bike.

“Thanks!” he said, with a big smile, and walked away.

“Never give a tit shot to a guy with a camera like that,” Larry said. “You don’t know where it’ll end up.”

I couldn’t have cared less where it would end up. “Okay,” I said, as though guys with giant cameras constantly took my pictures.

Larry and I rode a couple hundred miles before I tired of sitting on the back of the bike. I switched at a rest area so I could ride the rest of the way home with Ronnie in his truck. We chatted and listened to music and I went barefoot and drank beer and had a blast. The truck was so much more comfortable than the motorcycle!

After Sturgis and two full years with Larry, I was tiring of biker life.

Months later, Larry came home from the gas station where he’d picked up the latest copy of In The Wind magazine. In The Wind was an offshoot publication of Easy Rider, the biker magazine devoted to Harleys and American biker lifestyle.

The magazines weren’t exactly journalistic pieces. Easy Rider magazines were chock full of caption-less photos, which meant bikers loved “reading” them. Half-naked chicks and pimped out Harleys could be browsed at their leisure.

Larry bought all the biker magazines.

It was late fall when Larry walked in and said, “Lookee what I found!” He tossed a magazine down in front of me with a used coffee stirrer sticking out of the top like a bookmark.

I was bored.

“Open it!” Larry said excitedly. “Open to where it’s marked!”

I opened it. On the right, there were several photos of amputees – a guy with no leg, a guy with no arm…. On the left, there were photos of people wearing SHIT HAPPENS shirts and stickers.

And in one corner was the photo of me, taken at that Sturgis gas station after seven days without a shower.

It was the proudest moment of my biker life. I was finally published.