It was dark the night I rode into Rockingchair, North Carolina and found a small dank bar in the back of a motel. I don’t remember a name on the dark front as I rolled in on my stretched Shovelhead. It wasn’t anything to look at, and neither was I. I had ridden a thousand miles from New Orleans, hitting every bar along the way.
It was my mission. My girl packed her shit and peeled out the day before I was to ride with the Long Road crew to the SmokeOut. I was excited about the run, while she looked for a window to escape. The SmokeOut was her key out. I was a low-life sonuvabitch who wanted to fuck and ride, or ride and fuck, with some whiskey thrown in. She was desperate to control every fucking thing I wanted to do, and that only lasted through the infatuation stage.
I grabbed a small chipped and stained table in the corner, ordered a double Jack on the rocks, and sat down. The room was dark and uninhabited. The Temptations crooned “I Wish It Would Rain” from the dilapidated jukebox in the corner.
I heard another motorcycle rumble to the curb out front. I could swear it was a Panhead. Some more lifter noise rattled through the brick exterior. In walked a skinny, tall bastard, with a black full beard wearing a soiled straw hat, like the migrant farm workers don. He made a stumbling, sagging shouldered beeline for the bar and pulled up a stool.
The bartender, just a kid, who looked stressed when he stared at the cash register, as if a satellite just crashed through the wall and landed on his polished counter. He pressed buttons intermittently and hoped the outcome would open the cash drawer.
The biker ordered a beer, and then said in a gruff, foreboding voice, “I haven’t been laid in 110 days.” Then he took a deep swig on his frosty brew. His proclamation was laced with depression, the blues, and hope, as if by saying so, a passel of naked women would attack him.
But nothing happened. No one else entered the bar.
I slugged my Jack and watched as the only other scrawny patron drank his beer. I fully expected something miraculous to happen. I was floating in the same lonely boat as my unknown associate. The next day, we would ride into the SmokeOut, the largest gathering of homebuilt choppers to rock the northern hemisphere, but I never had the slightest notion of getting laid in the boisterous campgrounds, or even in one of the nearby sleazy motels, during the rampant festivities.
It just never seemed to happen at wild unruly chopper festivities, especially this one. Most of the scruffy patrons started drinking cold brews in the 90-degree early morning heat wave, laced with 90 percent humidity. It was a sweat and chrome gathering, but I could be wrong.
The scrawny biker ordered another beer and I ordered another Jack on the rocks, a double, and retreated to my corner. I remembered past runs to parks in Fresno, California to support the Modified Motorcycle Association. If there were any women, they belonged to someone and stayed close to home base. We drank beside bonfires, wrestled in the dirt, talked cops, bad drug deals, weapons charges, and motorcycles. Once in a blue moon, a turnout would appear in the back of a pickup truck, but that led to rape charges, and even more trouble. Besides, the broad wasn’t even close to a seven, and not in the best mental state to allow such a wild encounter to take place.
There was an event in Chillicothe, Ohio, where whorehouses were set up in the campgrounds. The entrepreneurial spirit was in full swing at these events. I thought back to a whorehouse run to Beatty, Nevada. There were only two girls in the mobile home brothel. One wasn’t bad, so we spent the afternoon together. Made my weekend.
I wondered if the SmokeOut would house such warm facilities, but I doubted it. I kicked my scuffed boots against the marred wooden deck, and the blues began to swell in me. I was as down as I could remember, and no escape from the malaise was forthcoming. I ordered another Jack on the rocks.
An hour passed and the pool table in the corner collected dust without patrons to joke and slam quarters on the dirty felt. My partner in the RockingWorld blues ordered another beer. He wore only a tattered HORSE silk-screened t-shirt and black dimens. His engineer boots had seen better days, and he had a sweat-soaked bandana around his neck.
Then we heard another motorcycle sliding in the gravel outside. The slap of straight-pipe fishtails filled the bar. The short, stocky young rider barged into the bar, his leather vest still flapping as if he was still in the wind.
“George,” the longhaired rider shouted, “what the fuck?”
George, the only other patron in the bar, spun on his stool to face the young newcomer. His eyes brightened, then drooped, like garage doors with weak springs.
“I haven’t be laid in 110 days,” he repeated, and turned back to his beer.
“But George,” the kid started, and then turned to the bartender. “Can you make a Cadillac margarita? George, the SmokeOut starts tomorrow. The place will be crawling with broads. There’s a babe-painting contest, and you can be a painter. I’ll hook you up. Every night there are wet t-shirt contests. Hell, there are girls everywhere.”
George didn’t move. He didn’t flinch, just took a slug on that beer bottle and stared at the disheveled bar. The kid hiked up his denims by his big flashy engraved silver belt buckle, as if he was preparing to enter a boxing ring. The short-legged biker in tattered denims jumped onto the stool next to George and hiked it toward George.
“It’s cool, George,” the kid began, wrapping his arm around the older biker’s boney shoulders. “I’ve got your back. By tomorrow night, broads will be climbing all over you.”
George wasn’t inspired, but I was. I liked every word he had to say.
“Remember the cute little hippy chick last year?” The pussy preacher was beginning his best sermon. “She was gorgeous, a free love, free spirit. Remember how she danced on stage, made out with the other broads, and took a liking to you? She might be back.”
“I doubt it,” George said.
“Remember the two sun-burned blondes, who ran around the grounds naked most of the day, then licked each other on stage? There were 40 broads on stage that night, and this weekend promises to be a bigger, more unruly turnout.”
I pushed the half-full tumbler of whiskey away and dusted off my shirt. The kid wasn’t inspiring George, but I got the full effect of his message. I decided to get a full night’s rest after a workout and plenty of situps. I might even polish my boots. By morning, my bike would shine, and I would be ready to enter the ring. George could have his 111 days; I needed to cut my celibacy to less than a week.
–Renegade
