Suzanna Danna

Yanno how when you can’t sleep and you are laying there willing your brain to just shut the hell up already with “What made me think of this?” “Oh, maybe it was this sequence of events, orrrrr…. This one?”

No? Just me?

Thanks to some random quote you heard Samantha from Sex and The City say, “You can have sex with someone you don’t like, respect… or even remember.” You find yourself making lists in your head of all the guys you have ever kissed… ok, Ok… I said OKAY… kissed, or slept with (Whore).

Still just me? Fine.

But I can not… just can not for the life of me remember that one guy’s name. Started with an S… Shawn, Stuart, Shane? Uh, almost six foot with brown hair. Thanks, that narrows it down. All I keep remembering was that his dad had this total 1970’s van sort of like a mix between Scooby Doo’s Mystery Van and a total rolling love nest for a hippy and I have to, have to, have to remember this guy’s name or I am a total skank for not remembering all of my lovahs.

Then a memory surfaces.

He said that his dad used to be the drummer for Buddy Holly and the Crickets. Or so Shawn/Stuart/Scott/Shane and his brother; no-name told me and my girlfriends. For bragging sake or to impress us? I am not sure we really cared at that point. We were young and they had motorcycles.

Seriously. What the hell is that kid’s name?

Speed Racer? That starts with an “S”.

Let’s call him Speed Racer. Deal? Oh, stop looking at me like that. I was young… and curious… and apparently a complete trollop.

My girlfriends and I went over to their house one evening. How did we know them? Friends of a friend? Lord, I so need to call Stacey tonight to see if her husband knows who I am talking about. (Stacey, Do NOT show G this page, please for the love of all that is holy… or whore-y. I will die of embarrassment. I just want to drop it into casual conversation, “So, uh… Mark had some buddies that were brothers and uh, they had motorcycles… maybe their dad is Jerry Allison from Buddy Holly and the Crickets?” – Yeah, because I’m smooth like that.)

Anyway, we went over to their house one night for some action… some motorcycle action. And my parents would kill me dead. Twice. Once for going on a motorcycle with a high school boy (college? Lord, the memory…she is gone.) and once for being such a sleazy tramp. “Before Marriage?! SUSAN! We are so disappointed in you.”

Speed Racer asked me if I would like a ride on his bike and I was all, “Sure. Whatever.” When inside I was all, “Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

So he gave me a helmet and I put it on, fully aware that it was summer and 110 degrees at 9:30 at night and my head would be a sweaty mass of fro hair when we got back from our motorcycle ride.

IF we made it back, Dum DumDUUUUUUUUUUM!

The suspense, she is building, no? What do you mean “no.”!?

So we went on a nice little ride all over the sweet suburb of Dallas we lived in. At stop lights he would turn to me and yell through his helmet to me such gems of poetry like, “Have you ever been on a Ninjaｩ before!?!?!!?” and I would shout back, “NO!” My angelic voice getting lost under the revving of the engine.

Ah, young romance.

We made it back safely and that is where the story ends. Well, not really, but I really don’t want to turn into that kind of journal.

After I went through that story in my mind as I lay there trying to sleep another sort of list formed. A list of stupid things I have done on motorcycles. Now, I am no Harley Momma. I have never owned a motorcycle of my very own. I prefer things with four wheels if they have the added value of having a motor.

During my college years I came home to my parents’ house the first two summers to work and to go to school. A friend of mine from college collected motorcycles. Well, he and his father collected them. They had Harley’s and BMW bikes. David and I had a very relaxing friendship. We could sit for hours out by my pool smoking and making up songs that he would play the music to on his guitar. We would crack ourselves up so completely with the hilarity and the sheer brilliance of our lyrics that we would sooner or later break out the boom box (I’m old. Ok, I admit it, now let’s move on.) and record our masterpieces.

We enjoyed a friendship that was able to sustain comfortable silences so he would ask me to join him on his motorcycle rides into the country. It was so peaceful and I never got tired of feeling the tingle on my skin from the wind whipping my tee-tiny arm hair and the sound of the engine.

My ex-husband’s whole family was born to ride motorcycles. My father in law rode a police issue Harley for funeral details, wedding processions and anything else required of the hog. He was also the first motorcycle cop in San Antonio in the 60’s.

My ex-husband rode (probably just to piss his father off) a Kawasaki Vulcanｩ, which I always pictured having little anthropomorphic ears. I named him Spock, which yes… was terribly clever.

He also had a tiny little Honda 50cc motorcycle that is about the size of a small dog. They bought it for riding around camp grounds and such but when my ex had a child; they thought they would save it for her to ride when she got old enough. I would ride it around the farm and my ex father-in-law said that with my long legs sticking out from the sides of the bike, I looked like a monkey humping a football.

Yes, dreadfully attractive... I know.

The stupidest thing I ever did. And boy howdy, let me assure you, there were many… was riding to the zoo with some friends and my ex-husband.

It was Chasen, Sesil, X and I. Chasen had a Ninjaｩ and he had Sesil riding with him. I was riding with X on the back of Spock. X had a rule that whoever rode with him they MUST wear a helmet. He had lost his first cousin to a drunk driver (his cousin was on a bike and not wearing a helmet) about ten years before. Chasen didn’t have such a rule.

We went to the zoo, had lunch at a restaurant and on the way back the guys decided to switch partners. So Sil rode with X on Spock and I rode with Chasen on his bike. I gave up my helmet to Sil and climbed on the back of Chasen’s Ninjaｩ. We headed home at a nice leisurely pace, doing the speed limit. We went around the loop and the boys decided to take Hwy 21 East to the house. As soon as we passed an invisible marker they started racing. I heard the whine of the engine below me and willed myself to be weightless as not to throw off the balance between Chasen and his bike.

X was on a touring bike, not a street racer like Chasen so I could hear Spock screaming to keep up with the Ninjaｩ.

I was leaning over Chasen with my hands on the gas tank. His little waist was so trim that he had plenty of room to move within the circle of my arms.

Then I made a mistake.

I looked over Chasen’s left shoulder at the speedometer and noticed that we were doing 110 mph and I knew there was a hill and beyond the hill a curve coming up swiftly. I shouted for Chasen to slow down. He laughed. I told him that I would take my hands off of the gas tank and apply uncomfortable pressure to his no no parts if he didn’t slow down. He laughed, made a motion to X and we all slowed down.

I yelled to Sil, “These fuckers had us going 110! And I don’t have a damn helmet on!!!”

It is a wonder that we lived through the nineties. Seriously.

Now, what was that guy’s name?

*Cheese ball table for one? Ya’ll during this whole post I kept having these lyrics cycle over and over in my noggin. Extra credit to whoever can name the song and artist.