Harley and Me (7 page)

“It is during fertility that a female loses herself, and enters that cloud overly rich in estrogen. And of course, simply chronologically
speaking, over the whole span of her life, the self-abnegation that fertility induces is not the norm.”

I spent my young adult life striving for what's been called the American dream. A nice house, a responsible spouse, the 2.3 children who do well in school and have possibilities of eclipsing their parents' lives. Those nurturing hormones helped in that pursuit, but they also excised the flinty dopamine, thrill-seeking drive right out of me, replacing it with a thick, soft blanket of estrogen. By my late thirties, I had morphed into the head room parent for my kids' grade school, a woman who cooked homemade play-dough and wore Winnie-the-Pooh jumpers paired with sensible shoes. I was Estrogen Woman with a large
E
emblazoned on my chest. Any kind of risk-taking impulses went underground. I fed that sensation-seeking part of me by attending graduate school, writing books, learning to play the cello, discovering subtle ways to experience risk. Which makes complete sense: To be a good mother, those other drives needed to take a backseat.

The awakening I'm now experiencing is abrupt and disconcerting. No wonder it looks to others like a midlife crisis. But I'm not
acting out
. In a very real way, I'm
coming out
as who I really am.

In Loh's 2014 book,
The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones
, she becomes embroiled in an unexpected affair with her longtime manager. Together they leave their respective marriages, both of which included young children. They start a new life together and live, thus far, happily ever after. I love the romance of that plot. Wouldn't it be wonderful if some handsome stranger would show up right about now? I know it's not that simple. I helped build this dying marriage. Who's to say I wouldn't do the same thing yet again?

But I know one other thing for sure: I'd love for a man to look at me in
that
way. As if I matter. As if what I have to say is important. As if I'm attractive.

In my early twenties, when I married, I saw myself as unattractive and, frankly, damaged goods. The late teens and early twenties is a
time when female self-esteem is at its nadir. I had been neither cute nor popular in high school. The young women in glossy magazines not only didn't look like me, but also hadn't experienced what I had. Thus, I was sure, I was not attractive. Which was fine as long as I was paired with someone who made me feel secure and safe.

I had faced difficulties in childhood that had bewildered and challenged me: I tended my siblings in the absence of a healthy mother, particularly caring for my youngest brother, who had mental health issues and ended up in juvenile hall, foster care, and then California Youth Authority before joining the ranks of the homeless. I had been the one to call for help when our mother became psychotic, suicidal, or otherwise dangerous and our father was away on business. In high school, when I first thought I had found someone who would stay by my side through these kinds of difficulties, I became pregnant and was quickly abandoned by that young man. I carried the child to term and relinquished him for adoption. Returning to high school after a stint in the Teen Mother program, I'd faced ostracism on campus. I had navigated these challenges alone and feared the rest of my life would be equally hard and lonely.

When I met J, I believed I'd found the Golden Ticket, someone who would stay by my side when the next round of challenges appeared. I would never again have to be as afraid and alone as I'd felt in childhood. Someone would always stand by my side.

Not the best reasons to wed, I agree, but that's what drove me.

But I'm not that person anymore. I know my worth, or at least, I have a better sense of it. That I am intelligent I learned when I attended graduate school some years back. That I am ambitious and hardworking I learned when I became a freelance writer to stay at home with my kids. I managed to write and sell three books while juggling enough freelance gigs to pay the kids' school tuition bills. That I'm a good mother and role model for my children I learned as they developed and began to look up to me.

The one thing I never learned, though, is that I might be desirable, someone to be wanted for more than her skills in the kitchen.

Built more like a teen boy than Marilyn Monroe, I do not have a va-va-va-voom figure. Living in Los Angeles, where breast enhancement surgery is close to the norm, I have often felt inadequate with my lean, athletic build. No cleavage to parade in a low-cut blouse, no filling out tight sweaters in a specifically female way. Recently, I brought this up with J. Though I don't remember what we were discussing, I
do
remember his response: “Yeah, for years I had hoped you'd get a boob job, but then I just got used to things as they are.”

Since I married young and experienced scant dating, I had (and still have) no idea what my value might be on the dating market.

So now I'm left wondering about such things. Am I attractive, even as I approach fifty? And if I am, what does that mean in the divorce consideration? I know women who would divorce only if they knew there's someone better waiting for them. That's not for me. If I strike out on my own, it's going to have to be for reasons other than another man's bed. I need to do this for me.

• • •

A few days later, an insurance adjuster issues a check for the lost Izzy and I think about buying another motorcycle. Rebecca has been suggesting a larger bike that would be more comfortable, but I'm not sure. I scan the bike inventory at her shop and pick a day to test-ride a few. Quentin meets me. I trust him; he sold me Izzy. That had been the first time I'd ever ridden a bike larger than the bantam Buell Blasts from my introductory weekend.

That day months ago, Quentin had trusted me to ride safely on the large, loud motorcycle I'd soon adopt. He'd let me take her on my own. I felt heartened by his faith. However, he came searching for me when I didn't immediately return to the dealership. By the time I pulled up, Quentin was circling back on his own bike. He set his kickstand next to me.

“I was worried maybe something happened,” he said. He hadn't even taken the time to put on a helmet.

That night, a tiny spark of a crush started to develop for this man who was completely unlike me. A Delta blues singer and guitarist with long, sand-colored slicked-back hair and tattoos covering most exposed flesh, he is the polar opposite of J. Perhaps that explains it. J believes me so capable and self-sufficient that the thought I might need help never enters the equation. I was touched by Quentin's concern. Over the months that have passed since then, we've engaged in a mild flirtation. He seems to perk up whenever I stop by the shop. He makes me blush.

Unable to decide on a new bike, I take a loaner so Rebecca and I can continue riding. I'm always on the lookout for my next motorcycle. Whenever I see one that draws my eye, I think,
Wow, I like the profile, I like that look
. But when we get closer, I see it's just another version of Izzy. Eventually, I decide that I'll simply make myself a new Izzy. I buy a brand-new Iron model from Quentin and have the dealership change out the stock pipes like Izzy. They also change the handlebars. Again, to be like the old Izzy.

Not having her to ride has been painful. Without the passing glances of other motorists, I feel like I'm starting to disappear. Most of my life, I've wanted to fade into the background, to be quiet and unobtrusive, to take up as little space as possible. Suddenly I want to be seen and heard.

The new bike I christen Izzy Bella.

• • •

Meanwhile, my crush gains steam. I ask my therapist a few weeks later, “Can I have an affair and live with myself?” I tell her about Quentin, though I'm still determined that the word
divorce
has no place in my vocabulary. “Maybe a little affair would take away my discomfort with the marriage, might make all of this go away?”

I tell her about the dreams that have been plaguing my sleep and the sparking desire I feel. I'm not so much convinced it is Quentin
I'm running toward as much as the sadness at home I'm trying to escape. Whatever the reason, something has to change.

Sure, the grass is always greener somewhere else, she tells me, but an affair is not an accurate appraisal of another option. “What about just leaving your marriage?”

“That seems too harsh, like that would hurt J too much. With an affair, I might be able to get some of what I need without hurting him, too.”

“But if you're miserable, don't you deserve a chance to be happy?”

“I guess. But not at someone else's expense.”

I have worked hard for emotional balance, for a sense of integrity and peace, for a kind of clearheadedness that requires my ability to face myself in the mirror each morning. Could I have an affair without giving that up? My therapist suggests I take the coming week to think about it.

• • •

At couple's counseling that week, I want to scream in frustration when J monopolizes the time, repeating the same stories about what a poor wife I've been, how I don't appreciate him. I'm confused why he wants to stay married when he thinks so poorly of me. Our therapist tries to cut him off to give me a chance to speak.

“I'm not done talking,” he says.

• • •

Thoughts of Quentin keep distracting me when I should be focusing on my marriage. He invites Rebecca and me, along with a bunch of the guys from the shop, to see his band perform one night. He's on a stage only a few feet away from me, rocking his guitar with his pelvis. This is killing me. He smiles and winks in my direction. Later, without my knowledge, Rebecca tells him I have a crush and reports his response back to me.

He may be edgy and a bad boy, but when it comes to marital fidelity, he's a stickler. “She's cute and interesting and I like her a lot. But I cannot get tangled up in anything like that.”

And, as it turns out, I discover I'm not the kind of person to start an affair. I don't have it in me. It's clear in no time: Nothing's going to happen.

• • •

Nearly a year earlier, J had booked a family cruise. Ten days in Alaska to celebrate our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and his birthday. In the past twenty-four years, we've taken only one family vacation that didn't involve tents, a Coleman stove, and sleeping bags. The kids are leaving home soon. If we're ever going to do a proper family vacation, now's the time.

But I can't bear the thought. I ask him to cancel the cruise.

It's not that I don't want to go to Alaska, or that spending time with the kids wouldn't be ideal. I just feel sick at the idea of publicly celebrating our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. I don't want to keep going with the terse conversations between us in therapy, straining the frayed threads of affection that are supposed to tie us together as we maintain a facade that everything is fine. The duplicity eats me alive.

Perhaps we find ourselves stuck in these roles because we don't know any others. My parents did not have a good marriage. My mother's severe bipolar disorder made such a thing impossible. Still, they stayed married until my mother's death, because that's what Catholic couples are supposed to do. J's parents had a downright ugly marriage. His mother regularly spoke ill of his father. She'd been railing for a divorce for a decade before I entered the picture. Every year, the date of their anniversary was pointedly ignored. And yet they, too, remained married until his mother passed. Her animosity reached even beyond the grave with a stipulation in her will that excluded her husband entirely from her estate.

Given our models, how were J and I to know what a good marriage felt like or looked like or how to construct one? We knew only that marriage is supposed to be for life. When I gently introduced the fact that we were both miserable and maybe our marriage had run its course, the ire and rage directed at me was epic.

J never followed up on canceling the cruise. He was determined we were all going to go. The night he selected for our anniversary celebration was to be the formal night on the cruise. My daughter and I dressed in floor-length gowns. J and our sons wore suits. We looked stunning as a family. But I felt awful. I was supposed to be a woman celebrating twenty-five years of married love and yet I felt so estranged from this man and so hushed about my own unhappiness I was close to violence. The pretend-it's-all-okay vibe was no longer working. I plastered a smile on my face to make the night unfold as easily as possible, but when I got into an argument with one of the kids after dinner, the feeling of disconnect only grew.

J and I retreated to our stateroom. Anniversary balloons adorned the door. The room steward had folded bathroom towels into kissing swans and placed them on our bed as a special reminder of our anniversary. The falseness of the entire night cleaved my chest. J went out to get a drink. I stripped off my lovely gown—worn less than two hours—and looked at my naked self in the mirror. I was an attractive, fit woman, but the stress of the last few years had inscribed a deep worry line between my brows.

I wanted to break the mirror. I wanted to cut the dress I'd just worn to shreds. I wanted to jump overboard.

And then the scariest thought of all came. I had stopped using alcohol and all mind-altering chemicals when Jarrod was an infant twenty-four years earlier in the hopes of maintaining my sanity. I was determined not to follow my mother down the rabbit hole. Sobriety had been a wonderful gift that allowed me to be the best mother I knew how. But sitting in that stateroom, my gown a puddle on the floor, makeup smeared, every fiber in my body started to scream: I want a drink. I need a drink. I need to
not
feel this.

Had there been alcohol or drugs in the stateroom, I would have used them.

Just wait for it to pass. This will pass.