Memories Of A Wheel Ass

I am everlastingly grateful that I got into the biker lifestyle before it became stupid. Things were in transition. It was an amazing time to ride. 

 OCC and all those shitheads out there repping like they were the life? Bullshit. They weren't even close.  Jesse James was bullshit. Happy as hell to sell out.  You don't get a tattoo on the palm of your hand that says 'Pay Up Sucker' if you aren't all about the cash. I know from personal experience because I DO have a tattoo in the palm of each hand (certainly not 'Pay Up Sucker' please, I have class), and that shit feels like someone  grinding a lit cigar out on you for twenty solid minutes. Two hands, forty minutes of sheer hell.  Honey you gotta be convicted as a mad motherfucker.  Ol' Jesse only cares about Jesse.

I grew up around bikers.  Lots of the dads in the blue collar neighborhood where I grew up rode, and some were clubbed up.  The main clubs going in our area were the Bandidos, The Gypsy Jokers, The Brothers Speed, the Tumbling Dice, and the Top Hats.  One of my dads' good friends was a Bandito, and another one was a Lone Wolf (no club) but rode with the Hells' Angels.

I won't go into the wheres and whyfors and politics because that's always changing.  I will say that most - not all - of the clubs on the West Coast are Hells Angels Affiliates, meaning that they've come to an 'agreement' with the Eighty-One, and won't shoot one another on sight because they've all agreed that the HAMC are the big dogs in the neighborhood.

Now I'm talking about 1%ers.  Not Susan and Dale going out for a ride on their Honda.  I mean outlaw motorcycle gangs, riding Harleys or Limeys (or Victories these days, since Sonny Barger switched to one.) I'm talking about back in the days when the old dudes were Greatest Generation guys, crewcut dudes, still living in the 1940's, super conservative, America Love it or Leave It fuckers.  They would not talk to a woman if her husband was nearby, and most would not talk to a woman at all, period. Motorcycle events were no place for a woman, and they'd make comments meant for you to overhear along those lines. Those old boys;  I never knew  single one whose wife wasn't a hardcore Fundamentalist Christian.  It sounds like a conflict in terms, but when a 50 year old woman thinks nothing of wearing a 'Property Of'  rocker, or having the same thing tattooed on her body,  then you've got a woman who is happy to hand the reins over to anything with a dick.

The thing is, all those women started out being wild ass girls, straight out of Women In Chains, and that's who those old fucks met and fell in love with when they were still able to play horsie.  I saw the new generation of wild girls come into the clubs.  They'd start out righteous and fine, all out, full bore, straight up dirty mean and nasty, and within five years time end up being a "yes, baby" ol' lady, all fried hair and broad in the beam with a Marlboro hanging out of her mouth.

Year ago my Biker rode with (but had not pledged to) a certain gang up in Alaska.  If you want to impress me, be an Alaskan biker.  Be someone who rides all winter long, in Alaska, with Spikes On Your Motherfuckin' Tires.  Then I will be impressed, and you can give me money.  He was not a member, but he was a 'bro'  back when that was totally a sub-sub-subculture term.  The other term was 'Lone Wolf', a biker who rides righteous - meaning they ride an American or Limey bike -  and hangs with 1%ers, but isn't pledging or a made member of a club. You know what, Mr. Internet is your friend here.  I'm using the terms, you get to look them up.

Anyway, we met - and deal;  a tattoo artist introduced us!  Am I badass or what? And it was love at first haircut.  The Biker came down here from poor tired Alaska with his 1970's hair and I said "Oh no that will not do" and invited him over to my place to take care of his sad, sad hair situation because I know how to cut hair, and we get chatting, and I find out that he's smart and reads and has seen Eraserhead; and it is LUV .

We ended up in the ass end of nowhere that is The Fourth Corner, WA. and set up housekeeping right smack in the middle of Bandido territory.

My Biker buys a Magna, and it's a nice ride, a very smooth and mechanically reliable beast, but when he enters it in the local car/motorcycle show a certain Name in 1% circles (who was featured in an early edition of 'Easy Rider' magazine no less) makes a disparaging remark about its being a Rice Rocket. Quel horreur!

The Magna was replaced with a Harley that quick.

 Now we're riding RIGHT.  Now we get respect. Now we can ride into any little town and that engine note is all it takes - all the kids wave at us and the adults look up from their crack pipe and Jack Daniels and give us a 'Sup.  Other bikers give us the biker wave as we pass in opposite lanes.  We are COOL. This just astonished me.  It was like riding around in a parade float!

We meet our friends out there, taking road trips.  Foulmouthed smart agnostics who are born to be wild seem to be drawn to the same places, and we had some interesting encounters with people all over the map.  Old people were the best.  The ones who approached us saying 'Y'know, I used to ride a motorcycle..." who rode back in the days of the Graveyard Pony and the Silent Grey Fellow, Hendersons, Ariels.  They would spin tales that left us aghast, or laughing, and every single blue-collar hero was on our side, male or female; working people with calluses on their hands.

Tattoos were part of the biker scene.  Hand in hand.  If you rode right, you had ink.  It just was.  I'd wanted ink since my cousin Carol did her own while she was in Juvie, using a needle and a Bic pen cartridge.

My first tattoo was on my shoulder, and commemorated a life event.  It reads "Defeater of Demons" in kangi, or perhaps "Dumb American paid $75.00 for this."

Either way, my cool meter pegged the needle. One tattoo!  I could walk down the street during a meet, wearing a tank top with my shoulder bare, smoking a Blackie, wearing leather chaps and boots, and the respect was awesome. Anyone who worked in a bar didn't play games - they just kept you supplied.  You tapped your empty twice on the bar and they silently came to fill your glass again. Waitresses played up to you. Managers, clerks, maids and bellmen were fast and efficient. You were what they wanted to be, and you were doing what they wanted to do.  What their fathers, sisters and brothers had done. Their mothers.  Grandmothers. Great-Grandfathers.

Sitting in the chair waiting to get a tattoo wasn't something that has ever scared me.  And the tattoos I have didn't hurt, except where they extended into an area where there was sensitive skin with numerous nerve endings. Even then, just grit your teeth and sit still.  In a few hours it doesn't feel any worse than a sunburn.  Just don't ever get one on the palm of your hand.  Unless you're into pain.  Then go nuts.  I am not into pain.  Pain hurts. I found out the hard way.

Despite all the tattoo shows on T.V., your tattoo artist does not want to hear the story behind why you wanted to get your tattoo, really.  The flesh is flying and s/he's trying to make a buck, and that means asses in the chair. He or she is wearing a plastic face shield and latex gloves, and they've had to craft their own needle clusters and keep everything sanitary, well-ventilated and organized.  You are the hazmat they deal with on a daily basis. So before you go in, take a shower, put on some clean clothes, eat a good meal, and be hydrated. Don't be high or drunk.

Be respectful.  Do not piss off a tattoo artist.  He can take that gaff, turn it on, let it angle off a surface for half a second - which makes the incredibly sharp and thin ends of the needles bend - and hook you to death.  You want to be an asshole? Better make sure you want that tattoo, asshole, because you will never get rid of it, ever.  I've seen the results of this.  That ink gets rammed into the bleeding gutter of meat that those bent needles are making, and there it stays, and there it spreads.

No.  No no no no no no no no. No no, no no no; no.  No no no. 

Most tattoo artists rode.  It wuz lak Peas an' Carrots.  At any given event in Washington State we would meet the people who'd laid on our ink, and there would be a Conclave of the Bod Mod Freaks in some bar willing to put up with a lot of flesh on display.

Bikers took body modification out of the fetish closet into the mainstream.  I loved the shop talk and the amazing designs. The first scarification, keloiding, branding, implants, gauges, extreme piercings I ever saw were all on bikers, re'glar folk who worked in your auto shop, your bank, your grocery store.  And what was not to love?  Men in leather, women in leather, lots of skin, tattoos, motorcycles, weed and liquor, good loud music, burnouts, rapping throttles - Heaven or what?

Most meets back then, if they were open and not by invitation only, were 1%er meets, hosted by the local club.  Since - like I said -  most clubs were affiliates of the Hells' Angels, (and most small towns here in the great PNW are well aware of the fact,) they could hold it in the actual town itself; close off streets and park the bikes along each side, knowing that no running gun battles would ensue, because there was always a Red and White rep on hand just to make sure.

The businesses would all have 'Welcome Bikers' banners, and the owners of those businesses would make out like bandits. And oh my God, the motorcycles.  Amazing things. Works of art.  Speed demons.  And terrible, laughable, insane WTF things too, home built and somehow running down the road, by someone with more tools than taste.

Riding a motorcycle is the combination of driving a sports car, and riding a horse.  You are IN the landscape, not just watching it go past.

And just like a horse, a Harley stops every now and then and takes a shit.

Well, the older ones did.  You were always working on those things in parking lots and on the side of the road. They were unreliable. They vibrated so badly your vision blurred and your whole body went numb, and they always, always leaked oil.  And that's new, straight out of the bag.

 And oh, God help you with that used Harley you just bought. My husband tore one apart and found that they'd used magazine pages stuck together and cut to shape for the gaskets.  The shit we found in bikes was unbelievable. Dried chunks of dead animal. Bad welds in crucial spots. Bondo covering up stress cracks, front forks bent upward like a letter 'C' (or the Rhino) from all the miles of straight -up riding, and you don't want me to go on, but I could.

Now on the other side of that coin is the fact that the Biker and I had a nice little side gig going, customizing, painting and restoring old bikes and re-selling them, doing paint sets (Look it up, lil' buckaroo) and setting up a booth at all the motorcycle swap meets with all the old parts we'd stripped off.  One mans' apehanger handlebars are another mans abomination. We still have a shed filled with old stock.

I was such a committed sales-biperson that pretty soon our friends were putting their stuff in with ours because I was bringing in the cash, kids.  I was the only woman actively selling that I ever saw, and I can sell ice to the indigenous Alaskan persons and do so all day long. I didn't just sit there sullenly smoking, saying "My old man will be back around in awhile if yer interested." No.  I liked selling, because I got to people watch, and I met a lot of interesting folks and made good working connections. There is nothing like a big fat wad of cash between your tits at the end of the day to make you feel like 'Ick, I should put these in a bag or something.'

Victory Motorcycles came along at the very end of that era, and thank God those were reliable, turn-key bikes that went like hell and wouldn't suddenly roll to a stop, or come up with a piece of the frame split or the engine making rock-crusher sounds.  Sonny Barger said as soon as they started making a reliable American motorcycle, he'd switch to that brand; and for awhile there they did, and it was Victory, and Sonny bought one and rode it.  I met him in Arizona.  He was OK.

I've met, spoken with and talked to a lot of famous or notorious people from back in the old, old days, the Easyrider Magazine, Booze Fighters, take over a small town days. They were straight up working men, just...guys.  I only met a couple who were shitroosters.  I would target my shitrooster and walk straight up to him in front of his boys and bum a cigarette off the dude.  I always got that cigarette, because if the dude turned me down, I might go crying back to my ol' man, who might be President of the Psychotic Chainsaw Maniacs MC and there'd be trouble; he didn't know.  I was just some dumb bitch who didn't know how important he was, and he had to rep in front of his guys, and I'd walk off with a free smoke, having won my skirmish in the rigidly enforced white boy War Between the Sexes.

OK. Now I'm really going to rank.  Watch out.

Out of all the bigots, racists and butt-ignorant cocks 'o the walk out there in my world, clubbed-up, 1% bikers are by far at the very pinnacle of the shitheap. The vast, vast majority of them were rednecks. Rabid conservatives.  Disenfranchised,  edge of the herd types who willingly let their lives be run by the loudest and most violent person they could find, wore the same clothes, followed the same rules, had ranks, won medals, paid dues and fines, pretending that they were still in High School or the military, and were the badasses that they'd never been and would never be without that patch on their back.

The soldiers - ordinary members with no rank - were sorry as hell.  Those guys were treated like nobody.  Imagine being a scrawny, 70 year old dude, never gone up in rank, still being called 'Critter' by your 'bros', working in a lumberyard or out in the woods, chain smoking, hard drinking, dumb as a box of rocks - and then you put on those colors and you're SOMEBODY. And your idea of being 'somebody' means that everyone assumes that you're a violent criminal, nobody trusts you, and you just might get hit by a car, just for kicks, out in America's heartland as you're working on your busted bike along the side of the road and the cops will not do shit about it. That still happened. And that was your life.

Now  1% club women came in three varieties:  1. Ol' lady, unmarried. Dumb and sleazy, but cheerful and fun   2. Ol lady, skinny, rode hard, only talked to other 'ol ladies, sour old harridan;  and 3. Wives, the lite and fluffy Born Again Christian women in their mom jeans, wearing their 'Property of Ratprick' patch on the back of their vest, with a 'Jesus is Lord' patch over their heart, who followed behind their husbands and never said a word.  They all smoked Marlboros, and they all drank Budweiser. Well, Born Again lady would carry a Budweiser around all night, but you'd catch her dumping it out a bit here, a bit there.

These are all stereotypes, and things don't become stereotypes because they never happen that way.  This is what I saw.

Toward the end, coming up on the 1990s, you'd see a few women come riding in on a Wide Glide or something, and it was invariably her late husbands bike.  This is how she signaled 'Single, need a man,' and that big ol' motorcycle was the bait she was dangling, because after twenty five years of not working (Heaven forfend; a woman's place is in the home) hard, hard partying and not enough money for plastic surgery, your ass needs bait. And this worked.  You'd see the recently bereaved all sitting on a bench in the shade, while the men came by and ogled their bikes with the 'In Memory of Ballsack' sticker on the oil tank. She'd see one she liked and would go out and attempt to engage that man in conversation.  The Widows' Bench always had a line of cigarette butts in front of it an inch thick by the end of the day.

I never drove a bike.  I was always a passenger.  I do not have the coordination it takes to steer, shift, accelerate, clutch, and brake or whatever order that goes in. The one and only time I ever drove a motorcycle, I whiskey-throttled my way straight out of the driveway, across the road and into the far wall of a deep drainage ditch.  The bike came to an abrupt halt; I did not.  Five airborne seconds of "Gracious! I'm going to die now!" followed. I ended up in the emergency room with my bra full of dirt and baby corn plants, my shoe full of blood, missing a chunk of meat out of my calf.

Now we road trip in cars.  In a car, when a bee hits you, it does not hit you like a bullet and sting you - it just spatters on the windshield.  If it rains, you don't have to find a coffee shop or a motel and wait it out. If that logging truck up ahead drops a length of bark, you have the luxury of cussing the driver.  You don't have to ditch and dive.

It's all right.  It really is.  And I've got excellent memories.
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*I grew up in what had been, 70 years before, The Howling Wilderness. The Wildest Part Of The Wild West.  Most people could not afford an automobile - but they could afford a motorcycle, or a motor for their bicycle.  The further out into the backwoods you went, the more people would wave you over, sit you down on the porch and show you their dauguerreotypes, great grandma as a young girl standing next to her Cyclone, or great grandpa with all his kids in a sidecar, next to the house, on his Hazelwood Colonial.