Harley and Me (17 page)

It's unbearably hot right now, the sweat stings my eyes, and my riding clothes have become the Crock-Pot in which I'm slowly cooking. But my senses are tuned in 100 percent. I smell the prairie. I feel the heat rising off the asphalt. My eyes are focused on the road ahead, searching for potholes or cracks in the asphalt, watching for road debris or an errant vehicle. I am here, fully inhabiting my flesh and bones, an embodied spirit glorying in the sense details of being corporeal. This may not always be the case. But right now, I am present. I am alive.

• • •

By midafternoon, we're getting close to the Minnesota border. George pulls off at a rest station. I'm wobbly getting off the bike. One look at Rebecca and the others and I know they're also suffering with the heat. Walking into the visitors' center, we are greeted with the most delightful air conditioning. I never want to leave. The drinking fountain spews refrigerated water. Trying not to draw the attention of the ladies working behind the information desk, we douse our hydration vests. Eating dried fruit and nuts revives us a bit, as does the liter of water we each down.

As we leave, Edna notices a hose on the grass outside. She turns on the water and arcs the spray in our direction.

“Wanna
really
cool off?”

Rebecca steps into the spray. “Let me have it!” She raises her hands and pirouettes in the water's sweep. I'm next, squealing when the stream douses me. George takes the hose and sprays Edna down, and then it's George's turn. Eventually, we squish across the parched lawn to our bikes. Wet woolen socks slosh in hot leather boots. Sodden hair plasters drenched skulls. We look like the least badass bikers imaginable.

We mount the bikes just as a group of HOG (Harley Owners Group) riders pull up, decked out in their colors, undoubtedly en route to Milwaukee as well. We nod hello, ready to leave, knowing how ridiculous we look. We don't care.

George holds up a hand to ask us to wait. He fishes around in his saddlebag, pulls out a book, thumbs through it, then removes his helmet and puts it in his carrier. I notice a number of the other bikers who have pulled up are likewise sans helmets. George explained that he'd checked his HOG book to verify the helmet laws in the state we were entering. We find out later that evening that we'd ridden though South Dakota wearing helmets that weren't required by law.

I've been with hardcore bikers when we've passed into nonhelmet states. Within yards of crossing the state line, they stop and remove their helmets. I am always agog at the freedom and joy they feel doing so. Yes, I'd love to pull this bucket off. But I wouldn't consider it for a moment. My life—on or off the bike—is not assured. Still, I can take all precautions that increase my chances.

Only nineteen states and the District of Columbia require all motorcyclists to wear helmets. This, despite data showing that helmets drastically reduce the risk of injury. Helmets are 37 percent effective in preventing deaths and about 67 percent effective in preventing brain injuries. Who wouldn't want the extra benefit on their side? In states that require helmets, deaths and injuries typically drop when the law is enacted. The opposite, unfortunately, is also true in states where such laws are repealed.

We cross into Minnesota, the state where my soon-to-be ex-husband was raised. Both sadness and anger wash over me. There was a time when I loved this state. We visited it as a family and brought the kids a few times. But now I can't help thinking about the dark side of its midwestern values and the “don't ask for more than the world offers you” mindset. J was stuck twenty-plus years in a go-nowhere job, unhappy, yet unwilling to risk and change things. He thought that same mentality should govern our marriage. Right now, he's pissed as hell because I have shown the audacity to think I deserve
better. To wish for a relationship with real intimacy, deep love, something more than “you agreed to this, so you're stuck with it.” Being here again, under very different circumstances, makes me bristle.

We've been on the road for at least eight hours when we stop for gas and I search on my phone for nearby hotels. We've stayed at low-end lodgings the last few nights. I find a slightly more upscale chain and we agree to book it. As we pull up, I laugh. The hotel parking lot is filled to bursting with Harleys outfitted for cross-country travel. The hotel itself is basically an annex to the local Harley dealer that sits next door. We seem to have found the right place.

After dinner, Rebecca and I walk to the grocery store to refill our stash of dried fruit, nuts, Lärabars, and apples.

After a soak in the bathtub, I nestle into my nice hotel bed, appreciating the thread count of the sheets, the efficiency of the air conditioning, the firmness of the mattress, the wonder of pillows. I have laughed more today than I have in years.

Day Six:
Wednesday, August 28

Albert Lea, Minnesota to Milwaukee, Wisconsin 367 miles

I don't move all night. There's something about physical and emotional exhaustion that brings a gift: the deepest sleep imaginable. I wake rested, ready to get going. Today we'll finally reach Milwaukee and get a few days of downtime. Though my body has at last adapted to the vibration and strain of controlling this nearly six-hundred-pound machine at high speeds, I still will be glad for the break.

At the serve-yourself-breakfast in the little dining room, we meet bikers from Vancouver, Mexico City, Idaho, and Alaska. All of us are on our way to Oz.

Unlike many of my fellow riders, I don't profess a particular loyalty to Harleys, even though making a cross-country trek to attend the company's 110th anniversary might suggest it. It's just a matter of circumstance. If Rebecca had owned a Triumph dealership, I'd
probably be on a Triumph. Ditto Ducati or Moto Guzzi. I have a fondness for all beasts two-wheeled and motorized. I appreciate the fact that Harley-Davidson is one of a declining number of manufacturing ventures in this nation that's still doing well, and the all-American satisfaction in the bikes and their storied history.

The morning is cloudy and humid, still warm but not as scorching as yesterday. We ride. I keep experimenting with different ways of sitting on the bike to give my shoulders a rest. Before we left L.A., I did two modifications to the bike: the addition of highway pegs so I could stretch my legs on long runs, and a more comfortable Mustang touring seat, the cushiest I could find. It has a depressed center spot, nicely designed to cradle one's behind while offering in a little lip of a backrest. When I first bought Izzy B, I added a riser to her handlebars to bring them closer to me. But I still found I pitched slightly forward to reach the controls. Any time I ride, after an hour or two on the road, I feel intense pressure in my shoulders from holding my upper body upright. That riser modification to bring the handlebars closer, alas, was basically undone with the new seat that pushed me back by about an inch. My behind is now more comfortable, yes, but I have to reach even further forward to reach the grips. Which means that as I reach forward, different parts of my anatomy hit the seat and absorb the vibrations in a new way. Something I haven't thought much about until we start to cross the Mississippi River, the point of entry into Wisconsin.

It's about ten thirty. The morning is warming and the sun feels good on my face. Right here, with a row of semis to my right and traffic moving smoothly at eighty miles an hour, I feel a delightful sense of buildup. I'm sitting more forward than normal to reach the grips, but now, instead of feeling the strain on my shoulders, my consciousness is elsewhere. The sensation is downright pleasant. Okay, more than pleasant. I look at my fellow riders. Is it obvious what's happening? Slowly, hoping no one notices, I rock my pelvis subtly in time with the vibrations. Mild but very enjoyable waves of pleasure course through me. Then they build and I feel my eyes grow wide. Is
this really happening? I'm having an orgasm on a bridge traversing the Mississippi in broad daylight surrounded by truckers. My back arches and my hands grip the controls. Waves of euphoria flood my blood with the neurohormones oxytocin and prolactin, as well as a healthy dose of endorphins. Tingles run along my arms and curl my toes in the heavy leather boots. A shiver makes me even taller. Truckers, cowboy-driven pickup trucks, and soccer moms stream past, unaware.

I've gotten away with something amazing. Right here, in public.

I've long suspected that it might be possible to orgasm on a motorcycle, with all the vibrations thrumming through one's body for long stretches of time. But it has not been my experience in the two years I've been riding, nor have any of the female riders I know ever mentioned anything about it.

Not that I asked.

Discussing sex and its shadowy backroom intricacies is not something I normally indulge in. I am of the belief that sex is an ineffable private experience and thus best left in the realm of the unspoken.

After the orgasm subsides, I need to process what just happened. Do I say anything? Is this normal? The last two years have all been about my journey toward authenticity. There's no authenticity in silence, in pretending things didn't happen, but how do I talk about this? Perhaps I've unknowingly morphed into some kind of lone cougar. Will I be picking up thirty-year-olds before this trip is over?

Male friends often joke about my motorcycle being a five-hundred-pound vibrator. I laugh, putting it in the category of just another urban myth. I didn't expect this.

Maybe it's the new seat? Or that I've been balanced on top of 565 pounds of vibrating iron for so long that this was simply inevitable? Or perhaps it might have to do with me beginning to rediscover my sexual self?

I have to admit that sex has been on my mind a lot since my marriage ended. Certainly a lot more than I expected. Just a few weeks ago I purchased condoms, something I've never done. There is no
man, active or wished-for, in my life. Still, the condoms are a talisman, giving me some assurance that I won't be sexless the rest of my life. It seems I'm waking up from the deep narcolepsy to find myself in a new and unfamiliar land, utterly flummoxed to be here. I am celibate for the first time in my adult life.

I knew my marriage was over when I had sex with J for the last time, more than a year ago. I found myself completely incapable of giving in to the feelings of desire I'd always been able to jump-start in the past. I couldn't manufacture even the tiniest trace of yearning. Instead of appreciating the joys of touch, I became hyperaware of the gardener's leaf blower buzzing next door. I couldn't block out the stale taste in my mouth. I watched dust motes move under the ceiling fan, wishing it would hurry up and end.

For many years, sex had been the rubber band that held us together, the oxytocin producer that made us feel warm and loving toward one another. We used it to smooth the rough patches, and over two and a half decades and three kids, you can bet there were a lot of rough patches. Sex was the one area of our marriage that stayed good the longest.

Long after we'd stopped talking about the things that mattered, long after we'd gotten into the habit of putting the kids' needs ahead of our own, long after we'd prized our role as parents at the expense of our role as spouses, we could still communicate with this one physical act of expression. We might not have been able to say the words to support each other emotionally, to ask the questions that would bring about the disclosure of deep dreams and harbored hurts, but when given the chance to spend intimate time together, all those frayed parts didn't seem to matter.

That's not an altogether good thing. If our sex life hadn't been good, perhaps we might have sooner confronted the issues that bedeviled us. If this physical act of reconciliation had been less effective, maybe we would have demanded more from our marriage and worked to ensure that it met our needs. Or, possibly, the divide would have been apparent sooner.

And now I find myself orgasming on a motorcycle, buying condoms, embracing an awkward truth that keeps popping up in my dreams, as I ride, when I write and run and walk and eat.

I miss sex.

On a level that's deeper than physical, that's something other than loneliness, I am craving a man and the release within me of pure, fireworks-grade carnal desire. Which is fine, I guess, except that it's not what I expected at this point in my life and I am bewildered by the unrelenting nature of this drive I didn't anticipate.

Thankfully, it's good to know I'm not alone in this sudden craving. Though many women report a decrease in libido connected with hormonal changes during perimenopause, others, like me, report an increase in libido. Sexual drive, I learn, is shaped by myriad factors and complex interactions. If you're feeling engaged with your life and inhabiting yourself as fully as possible, your sex drive might surge like never before. Research shows increases in libido may be linked to the reduction of two kinds of stresses: (1) a decrease in anxiety about pregnancy and thus the ability to relax and simply enjoy sexual interaction, and (2) a decrease in child-rearing responsibilities that may have negatively impacted intimacy in a coupled partnership.