We Were All Called “Chicks.”
With Joe gone from the house, Dave had me all to himself. He was petrified of Larry, especially after Larry beat Joe to a pulp, but Dave was very, very stupid. He continued to make quiet, soft moves on me when Larry was nearby.
Dave and I would ride in the cab of Dave’s pickup truck while Larry was driving. And Dave would very slyly reach his hands over and casually give me a massage as we bounced down the road. He’d play with my hair when Larry went into the store, and stare deeply into my eyes.
I think Dave thought this would make me fall madly in love with him, or at least in lust, but I just took advantage of the free affection and ignored Dave the rest of the time.
Larry never once noticed. He never suspected me of cheating on him, maybe because I’d been doing it the entire time. Nothing had changed except, in Florida, the temptations were substantially fewer.
None of Larry’s Florida friends even looked at me. I was just the ol’ lady, and none of them would have dared to try anything with me. They only spoke to me if I spoke to them directly, which I never did. I didn’t find a single interesting person in Larry’s core group in Florida. The women were particularly lifeless.
The biker culture in which I was immersed had a specific role for women. Other than mothers and sisters, who were exempt, all women were treated – quite simply – as eye candy or meat, or both. We were all called “chicks.” A biker dude did not mess with another biker dude’s “chick,” period. And if anyone crossed that line, it was perfectly fine to blow the head off the offending party.
“Chicks” were never considered much more than property. Like a beloved dog, I believed Larry loved me and would do anything he could do for me. But if I had disappeared, he would have just replaced me with someone equally treasured to prop up on the back of his bike.
One day Larry and I went to a swap meet – basically a flea market for small metal objects and military grade equipment. Just inside the door was a table, like there is at any conference, where you could make yourself a name tag. Swap meet participants generally ignored this table and just walked in, but I was intrigued.
“Can I have one of these?” I asked Larry, who smiled and said, “of course!” They were free, after all.
The free name tags were big, round, gaudy gold pins with a blank space in the middle for a name.
Any name, I thought.
I had my regular huge hangover, a ton of apathy about my life, and a black marker in my hand. I knew who and what I was. I would always be one simple thing.
I took the cap off the marker and wrote C-H-I-C-K in big letters across the middle. This name, much more so than my own, epitomized how I felt about myself in my current role. It told the world that I knew I was nothing more, nothing less, than a piece of property/meat for “my old man.”
CHICK. That was me.
I pinned the button to my jean jacket and wore it for years, until the pin rusted out and the button literally fell off.
A part of me found this to be the most profound action I’d ever taken. Another part of me found it to be hysterically funny.
Larry didn’t understand my profundity or my joke.