1969 and Then Some

by Robert Wintner

  In the year of Whoredog, two elderly women wended through a crowded bar to sit near us. They’d read the odds and picked the winners. One of us engaged one of them and made her laugh. She loved his jokes. In no time it was the wee hours and he asked would she please suck on his weewee. She declined. He begged, come on, you gotta help me out with this thing. She declined more firmly, “No way in hell I’m gonna suck your dick, motherfucker. Now back off!” She demurred, however, that a girl might change her mind for four bills. That would be four hundred dollars, U.S.

  The story emerged a few hours later that our guy got a hand job for twenty-five bucks on a compelling case based on the exchange rate—Canadian dollars were so worthless—and the sorry nature of a handjob compared to a blowjob. He asked for sympathy. And understanding.

  She scoffed, but she did get the stuff out like a jackhammer on a sewer main. Hell, she could have killed him on a blowjob, unless she took her dentures out. Ha! The story died on the toughest question: “Was it daylight yet?” The dour breakfast crowd moaned.

  Yes, sunrise illuminated a desperate man and a practical woman with a madly pulled pecker between them. Haggard faces, beer bellies and slurs framed the romance.

  Pathetic, yet it paled next to the second guy, a fellow short on stature who could barely reach the pedals, who rode a rented Harley- Davidson with no motorcycle experience or social conditioning, dangerous in curves, in the passing lane and in public. Full throttle on straightaways showed his skill. The swarthy little fellow was somebody’s guest, because of potential sales contacts or something.

  The second woman fell in with the little guy. They chatted. He moved close to her. They made out—tongue thrusters. Harry Woo scooted back, leaned forward and puked between his legs. Coming up flush he said it wasn’t them; he’d smoked a cigarette, his first cigarette ever; it had seemed so right.

  The scene was off, as in off-kilter, a distortion that fit the misadventure, the extreme heat and cold, a road fund facilitating drunkenness in a weft and warp on nature and culture. By morning the little guy strolled the parking lot hand in hand with his date. She’d given him a terrific discount, and he wasn’t even from Canada. After farewells and promises to do it again, some time, he swaggered triumphantly into the dining room to announce, “I got my road name.” Nobody looked up from his eggs. “I’m gonna be Sparky.”

  “No. We got a Sparky. You’re Whoredog.” The dour breakfast crowd laughed.

  Whoredog smiled, frowned, smiled again, frowned again and twisted to full throttle on a final smile, as if to force the beat upwards. That night, a few hundred miles down the road a cafe owner happily engaged our group of hail-fellows drinking top drawer liquor, when into a lull barreled the little man: “You know, I get a taste for pussy when I’m on the road. You know where I can get some pussy around here? I had some last night, and there’s nothing worse than a little taste to make you crazy for some more.” Humanity bemoaned itself in excruciating silence.

  Since it was Elko, Nevada, the little man got served just up the street. We waited in the bar, where his date emerged in flimsy negligee and moved lightly for such a heavy, worn woman. With practiced mystique she drifted to the beat of a different violinist. The dour drinking crowd moaned. In an artistic striptease she playfully revealed her rebuilt torso and multiple stab wounds. She scanned above and beyond the fray, perhaps seeking greater appreciation of her skills from the more sophisticated men in the bleachers. But there weren’t no bleachers. Whisking a frilly scarf from her lower self, she looked startled and then demure, till an acerbic fellow belched and called out, “That thing looks like a carwash mitt!”

  The evening’s entertainment ended on a huff. Whoredog sauntered out swinging his arms wide like President George W. Bush, and in a victorious baritone ordered the king of beers.

  That was a highlight of the year of Whoredog. Sitting out was easy. What was to miss? I sat out for years and would sit again in a rare actual feeling of win/win. I called a Triumph dealer outside Seattle. He had two in stock but this was not happening.

  For starters, daily mileage ranged three fifty to four fifty.

  Posing macho is one thing; teasing death with bad judgment is another. Acuities diminish in the cold. Joints stiffen. You get cold and lose your shit. Hands go numb. Core heat drops to the verge of hypothermia. The trembles feel like bad bearings. Approximation loosens up. The odds on rider mishap swing dramatically to favor the house on long, cold miles. Numbness moves south from the ass, till a foot couldn’t feel the ground if it had to. Depth perception and reaction time follow in short order, till the laws of physics enforce the death sentence.

  They say freezing is a painless death; drowsy goes to sleep. How bad could that be? But on a motorcycle the crash would wake you just in time for the pain. Nobody has the riding chops they had in ’69 or ’81, and every trip had its near-death encounters or, in road talk, close calls. They became part of the bullshit spume, as if getting a load off a chest could displace the lingering fear. A common close call was shooting the gap, passing Pa Kettle over the double yellow into oncoming traffic in time to avoid the cream, but even on a shortfall you could always squeeze in there. You might get tagged by a mirror, or thwacked with an air pocket if the oncoming was a truck.

  Ha! Man! Fuck!

  Stupid, stupid, and everyone knew it, especially those who nearly left it out on the road. Drifts and short calls, close shaves and miscalls made us smart enough to doubt the margins even as they shrank. Road wisdom leads to patience. A rider can lay back, but the near-death tally never goes to zero.

  But then other traffic comes on frightfully fast and feels like impact may be unavoidable: decrepitude, assisted living, death by boredom. Difficult thoughts accompany the aging process. It’s natural, just as a traveler wonders how much farther, and what comes next. Nobody wants to dwell on the end or what waits yonder. Why not pass in a Barcalounger instead of French kissing a Mack truck at eighty?

  Was I afraid of the Smoker? May be. But only a fool would mount up for a long haul without knowing what might kill him. Fear has always seemed like a first component of courage—but close calls paled next to angina, which is not where babies come from but what takes Daddy away. What came next was not the big one but gallbladder inflammation. A big, greasy stone jammed the bile duct at intervals, like a truck parked on the rib cage and backing onto the sternum to offload hot oil—beep, beep, beep. A stuck gallstone feels like a coronary thrombosis, because the gallbladder is next to the heart and pumps bile that can’t get out, because the stone is in the way. On the bright side, a man in the pink should remain vital, with the gallbladder removed.

  “There’s really nothing to it,” the doctor said. “Unless we get in there and find the thing attached to your liver. Then we have to open things up and cut it off. It must come out.”

  Most people survive a nothing to it surgery. U.S. Congressman and generally good guy Jack Murtha was vital but did not survive. His inflamed gallbladder got infected—infection is tough. He may have resisted surgery as many do, because gallbladder attacks come and go. And surgery can kill you. Jack was a Vietnam veteran, seventy-seven already.

  Given a time and season to every purpose at a breakneck pace, life can lock up its rear wheel on reflection. Mind follows body sooner or later in a lose/lose process—unless you let go, have faith and give peace a chance.

  Now where were we: motorcycles, whoredom, time and relative value? Yes, and money—George the broker in synchronous convergence called for quarterly assessment, opening as usual on the The Materialist’s Golden Rule: “The one thing you don’t want to do is outlive your money.” Except that this quarter seemed different, with so much time spent harking back to youth that had seemed eternal not so long ago.

  “But I do.”

  “Oh, man,” he moaned, like I wasn’t getting the picture. “Listen: old age doesn’t mix well with poverty.”

  “I get the picture, George. If I end up broke you think I should drop dead
and be grateful. Fuck that, George. What I don’t want to outlive is my vigor.” In the pink had become my mantra.

  George didn’t want to condescend but explained age and money. “Your vigor will fade. With money you’ll have the best medical care.”

  “You mean I can live like a lump as long as my bankroll holds up?”

  “Yes! And you can live well, even as a lump.”

  “George. People around the world have no money and aren’t ready to die because of it. Some people value spirit more than money. In some cultures, comfort is set aside to better seek spiritual light.” George sighed over irrelevance to strategic financial assessment.

  “I think you know what I mean,” he said.

  “I’m afraid your meaning may not be my meaning. I hope you learn the difference before or after your money runs out. But fuck all the death talk, George. Make me some money.” So we got down to oodles of moolah at last as the best distraction.

  Strategic financial assessment felt like a hairpin turn near the pass. George shuffled mutual funds with forgettable names, each one a letter or syllable different from the others. George sold a shitload of some and bought a shitload of others and in no time the numbers rolled like an electric meter with the AC on High Cool and the windows open. But gains felt like nothing, because you must sell the little blips to realize the gain. Short of a sale, positions merely improve. Was I in the position?

  By the next quarter, positions weakened. George wailed, “Stay in!” I frankly didn’t care. I could stay in and watch my position improve or deteriorate and feel nothing either way. The numbers rose and fell with numbing failure to change anything, to feel better or worse or in the least consequential. And he could not say how these numbers representing an idea of money could rise and fall and feel so ungodly different from the buck fifty an hour I turned on hash slinging and pearl diving forty-five years ago. Those dollars had dynamic value, spendable on the celebration of life with a hard-driving downbeat on a blood surging rhythm and a gang of friends discovering the world and ourselves.

  How can things change so much and then poof, be gone? People stay hungry for meaning and lasting value.

  A surgery coming up would require anesthesia, which shuts down the five physical senses, except for pulse and breath. The edge of death seemed a decent vantage point from which to look into the abyss. The character of the void seemed obvious, but it seemed a good time to look. Near-death experience commonly occurs above the scene, often with friends and family gathered below in loving company, encouraging the near-deather to descend back to the body to live a while longer.

  The elevated view suggested a new sensory function engaged in passing. The unconscious person could have imagined the scene from above and then remembered the scene, maybe. A spirit has no eyes in the conventional sense but it might see by other sense. Dolphins “see” with sonar, proving non-ocular vision. Why not humans?

  “Is out-of-body experience possible under general anesthesia?” I asked the anesthetist while rolling into the operating room, a harshly lit chamber with no windows and many instruments. Bacteria must have been discouraged by the freezing cold. I was.

  The anesthetist murmured directions to the nurses then instructed me to transfer myself from the gurney to the table. The table, colder still, was narrow enough to fit between shoulder blades. A nurse covered me with a quilt that felt fresh from a hot drier. “Thank you,” I said. She smiled warmly.

  Another guy leaned over my face from the top for that odd appearance of talking upside down. “Here’s the part you’ll love . . .”

  Wait a minute. Is he the anesthetist? “Do you think a spirit can ride a motorcycle? I mean sense riding a motorcycle?”

  Fuck. It was the same as dead, and I wasn’t ready. Well, you don’t gain insight in giant steps. I should have known. Dylan Thomas woke in the night with the answer but forgot by morning. So he put a piece of paper and a pen on the nightstand, and when the answer came again the next night, he wrote it down. Jubilant, he went back to sleep with the answer secure, and in the morning read: Green cheese.

  Spirits can ride motorcycles. Spiritual senses align for a feeling that is greater than the sum of its parts. The act of riding engages spirits. Unique dimensions overlap—feelings test a theory, and the data proves that time and money unspent are forfeit forevermore.

  Could the theory be worthless as a gallbladder? Or could it tap into mobility in a limitless universe?

  Gallbladders are not worthless. Some must come out, but the dog will keep hers as long as she can.

  What occurs to a spirit in life is the same as what occurs to that spirit after, call it an old familiar movement. That which is known is the best base for jumping off the edge of the tangible world into what is not known. Or riding off.

  Motorcycle Resolved

  FUCK, I DIDN’T know. And who cared anyway?

  Who needed that heady, depressing shit with a motorcycle trip to plan?

  Well, it was easy, dismissing Harley Davidson for Triumph. But it was time to move on—or get back. Less was more with half the weight at half the price and twice the performance.

  Freedom from embarrassment felt like a bonus—who wouldn’t want away from a dog ‘n pony circus played out by a fat-gut wanna-be crowd and a bunch of V-neck poseurs? The transition felt uplifting, lean and mean as a skinny kid scrambling for the whole wide world out of split-level confinement. The suburbs are comfortable and Harleys are fun, primitive and heavy with poor build quality and a silly scene. Freedom from the lifestyle, the merchandizing and the imagery felt like a hard won victory, and there we were again.

  Surviving surgery hones the appetite for a ride. Cold, wet weather seemed less threatening post-op.

  I cancelled again on seeing the itinerary. The road captain called to urge, “Come on, man!” The tedium came back in numbing clarity.

  “No. Are you crazy? Four-fifty a day? That’s torture.”

  “Most days are only three-fifty. You can do that.”

  “I can ease a broomstick up my ass too. We’ve done three-fifty plenty. And four-fifty. It hurts. It’s far enough to guarantee a mountain pass—or three mountain passes. It hurts in nice weather. In cold and rain it’s torture. Not once, ever, was it fun or enjoyable.”

  “That was miles. This is kilometers.”

  “This is kilometers?”

  “Yeah, man. Come on!”

  “Oh.”

  Let’s see: point six times three-fifty is two-ten. Four-fifty would be two-seventy. Hmm. That might do, with a comfort quotient extrapolating from two hundred fifty miles requiring x energy to three fifty at 2x, more or less, depending on weather, curvature and delays. And age. Four-fifty would run 2x2. “You’re saying the daily mileage—that’s mileage, as in miles—will run two-ten to two-fifty?”

  “Yes? You can do this!”

  “Maybe. Let me think . . . Why kilometers?”

  “British Columbia, man. BC bud!”

  Pipes, bags and a windshield came in under a grand—what Harley Davidson wanted eighteen hundred for, not counting the taillight and installation.

  Perception wobbled for another week of pro and con—on the one hand, but on the other hand. I studied the map for easy outs and shortcuts home, till things solidified on another phone call.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  “Oh, hey. I’m just sitting here. What are you doing?”

  “Do you remember driving me to the airport and giving me five hundred dollars to use for emergency?”

  “Yeah. You used that money to buy that thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “That motorcycle.”

  “Very good. You’re not senile. Do you realize what time it is?”

  “You mean here or there?”

  “That was forty years ago.”

  “No it wasn’t.”

  “Yes it was. I need another five hundred.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I think I am.”

  “Y
ou said you were done with that.”

  “I thought I was, like you thought you were done after your second marriage.”

  “That was different.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not playing games here.”

  “Oh. Well, anyway. I’m going again.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “Of course you do. You wish I was at your place, sitting on the couch watching TV and eating two-handed. Playing it safe.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It would be more dangerous than a motorcycle trip.”

  “I don’t know how you can say that.”

  “Because I would have hung myself by now.”

  She laughed. Old mom had turned ninety-one—a hundred fifty-two in kilometers—but she could still parry and thrust. “You said you weren’t going. It’s dangerous, and in case you haven’t noticed, you’re not as young as you used to be.”

  “Yes I am. You’re older. Not me.”

  “Have it your way.”

  “Thank you. I think I will.”

  Besides wit, old mom still had instinct; waning youth wasn’t the half of it. I feared—or rather anticipated—lower energy reserves than in the past, along with muscle spasm between the shoulder blades, cramping in the hips and bloating in the gut.

  On the other hand, with age and seasoning came insight to herbs and supplements. Not reefer—I knew enough to shun the reefer until inside a fifty-mile radius of the destination, and even then keeping intake to one hit. Okay, maybe two. But no more than two hits and most definitely not four. That would be crazy, no matter how wild the times got or how high the sky seemed.