A Ride for Connie

“Hey! What are you doing?” His voice was cool. She knew it would be.

“I was just looking,” said Connie. The man hardly startled her even though she didn’t see him come up from behind. She had been sitting on the side of a building that housed the saloon where her mother worked, next to a door emanating the sounds of a busy afternoon crowd demanding satiation. Usually she was inside, helping wash dishes and wipe the men’s spillage from the bar. But when he walked in, it meant the thing she wanted most would be outside and unattended.

Up until now, Connie had only sat and stared from afar at the polished chrome pipes and oiled leather saddle, longing to grip the handlebars and lean forward to take a curve as she had seen men do in movies. But today she lost her mind. She walked right up, and after some trouble involving her ankle-length skirt, swung her leg over one side and sat atop the motorcycle.

It was perfect– more powerful than her older brother’s Radio Flyer and steadier than the horse at her uncle’s farm. She had always felt that only a certain type of person was fit to be atop one of these machines, and knew the instant she sat down that she was one of these people.

This was why she barely flinched when the man burst around the corner. She knew they were one in the same. He couldn’t be mad at one of his own.

“Pretty, ain’t it?”

Connie nodded, sliding her hands up and down the handlebars.

“You should feel it on the road. Ain’t nothing like it.”

“Oh, I know. Or, what I mean to say is, I think I know.” Connie spoke more to the motorcycle than to the man.

“You seem pretty sharp, I’ll take you for a ride.”

Connie’s head shot up at this. She had imagined this moment so many times that she was sure it wasn’t real. But just then the hulking figure of her mother appeared in the doorway, and Connie knew it was real, because her mother never appeared in her fantasy. Arms crossed and resting on her large sagged breasts, a bar rag slung over her shoulder, her mother glared at the man. Connie’s heart sank. She knew better than to try to explain what it meant to her mother, especially when the crowd at the saloon would be swelling to capacity. She began gathering up her skirt for her downward decent.

The man turned toward her mother, and as cool as ever, said “Oh come on, Flo. You gotta let the kid try a ride. She’ll wear the helmet.” Connie expected her mother to pull out one of her remedies for “mouthy gentlemen”–narrowed eyes, a slew of curses, or simply spitting in the direction of the man’s feet close enough to make him understand.

But her mother never said a word. She simply held up her hand, motioned for Connie to stay where she was, nodded, and went back inside.

The man walked up and Connie instinctively slid back in the saddle, making room. He sat down in front and pulled a pair of brown beaten leather gloves from his pocket, pulling them down tightly over his hands. “First,” he said, turning his head toward her as far as it would go, “keep your feet up here, and watch this, it gets hot.” He pointed to a chrome pipe just out of reach of her calf.

“Now, put your arms around me.” Connie hesitated for a moment. This was the part in the movies that made her feel a bit funny…a bit romantic, and she was grateful he couldn’t turn around far enough to see her blush. But he must have felt her pause because he immediately brought her back to the present with his instructions: “Wrap them around me tight, like you’re trying to get one of those old drunks to spit up a peanut he’s choking on so he doesn’t croak before he settles up.” They had both seen her mother do this on more than one occasion. They called the maneuver “Flo’s nut buster,” because, at least Connie believed, it ended in a spray of chewed up peanuts emitting from the victim’s mouth.

“There, just like that. That’s fine, just fine. I don’t got a helmet, so don’t let go.” He said, as he began walking the bike out to the street. Any trepidations Connie harbored were quickly dispelled by her excitement. She had always told herself it didn’t matter if she died on a motorcycle since it had to be better than dying old and curious. She couldn’t see what he was doing, but all of a sudden she felt a little pop and then a purr, rough and low.

She watched her familiar world glide past as they made their way through the neighborhood streets. From up on the motorcycle, Connie felt herself separate from the people walking down the blocks and sitting on the stoops. She was particularly aware of seeing and being seen all at once, but not equally. The speed of the motorcycle made it difficult for anyone to get a good look at her face. But, due to some kinds of laws of motion and relativity, Connie could distinguish the individual curiosity of each passerby. When they came upon a group of teenagers outside of the movie theater, the man slowed down just long enough for the snot faces to register who they were staring at. Then, he made the engine snarl and snap, leaving their disbelief in a cloud of dust. Connie was grateful for the rumble of the motor and hoped it disguised her rapid heartbeat, which the man must have surely felt through his jacket.

Just as Connie had become accustomed to the stop and go of city streets, he took a turn and revved the engine, cannoning them through a green light and turning down the road that was known to her as “the way out to Uncle Troy’s farm.” The wind lashed at her face, her hair like a rider’s crop. Dirt flew up around them, and Connie contemplated burying her face in the man’s back but was afraid to miss the scenery. Soon she realized how it felt was more important than how it looked, and she closed her eyes and pressed her face into the leather. The faster things moved around her, the more she allowed her mind to drift. She no longer pictured anything beyond this moment. This man, this machine, and the road were her only relation to the present. If she were to let go, she would not care about the consequences.

They rode for almost an hour. When they came back to the first stop light in town, Connie caught a glimpse of herself in a shop window. She loved the look of her tangled hair but quickly relaxed her face to conceal the smile that had appeared. “I didn’t want anyone seeing me smile up there, I just wanted to look natural.” She later recalled.

After they returned to the saloon, the man turned the bike off but told her not to move an inch. “Getting off is tricky, especially with these hot pipes and that long skirt.” He instructed Connie to carefully bring one of her legs over, then scooped her up like a child and placed her back on the ground. Her legs were a bit shaky at first, and she still felt the rumble moving through her body.

A few weeks later, Connie got hired serving popcorn at the movie theater and spent most of her nights there instead of the saloon. She wouldn’t get the chance to ride a motorcycle again for years, and when she did it was just around the block with her nephew when he came by to show off his new Honda. Her first ride would always be the one she worked to remember. She can still picture almost every detail, but retells it in a condensed version, making sure to add that she “never caught the man’s name but saw him around from time to time,” and that “he had never once on that ride tried to get fresh.”