Chapter 27

the sound: Them – Baby Please Don’t Go, Bob Dylan – Ballad of a Thin Man, Rivieras – California Sun, Vince Guar aldi – Cast Your Fate to the Wind, Marvelettes – Danger! Heartbreak Dead Ahead, The Beach Boys – Don’t Worry Baby, Vogues – Five O’clock World

I had been at work in the bar and for some reason unknown now had decided to dress a’la school girl. I’d worn my short red plaid pleated kilt with a white blouse and a black blazer. I’d worn thigh high black stockings and black lace garters and my waist long hair piled up on my head using a myriad of pins.

I smiled as I remembered Dallas grumbling while she’d put my hair up. “One more fucking bobby pin and yer head’ll weigh too much and you’ll fall over!” she’d bitched.

So the end of the work night finally arrives and Mike, as always, shows up to take me home. Only this time he shows up on his brand new Harley – fully dressed with one of them brand new radios in the fairing that everyone’s been talking about.

I’d teased him about how he’d loved that radio more than he’d loved me and he'd kept telling me "it's all about the tuneage Baby"

As we locked up for the evening and Mike gets ready to back the big bike out of the carport he hands me a helmet and I hand it back.

“It’s only like 6 blocks and it’ll take me a freaking hour to get all these pins outta my hair”.

We argue a bit and in the end Mike (mostly cos it’s 2 o’clock in the morning) gets offa the bike to help me take my hair down and then hands me my chaps. I mutter about him being an “old woman” and slip on a pair of jeans before putting the chaps on because I know that nothing compares to the chaffing done by leather chaps on bare skin and my skin is definitely bare between the stockings and the panties.

Once I’m all zipped in and turn around Mike has this funny look on his face and as we get on the bike he suggests that maybe I’d like to dress like that at home on occasion, just so he can find out what it would be like to get me outta all that gear.

We both laugh as we take off.

We are driving in the inside lane of 2 lanes, heading towards the clubhouse when we come up behind a couple of people in a gold coloured Chevy Nova SuperSport. Mike paces behind it a bit and then guns the motor to swerve out into the outside lane and blast around the car.

As he swerves into the outside lane, the driver, in his infinite wisdom, turns right from the inside lane.

We hit the car broadside, almost in exaclty the same manner as that guy that had T-bone’d Mike earlier in the year. I went off the back seat over Mike and over the car like I’d been shot out of a cannon.

I remember hearing the bike go down. I remember seeing sparks and then I hit the car…the first time. I later found out that I’d actually hit the car once on the roof with my helmet and once on the hood with my pelvis and then came down on the road on my helmet…skidding like an upside down rag doll till I came to rest against the curb.

It all happened so fast that when I first opened my eyes and looked up all I could see was the pitch dark 2 AM country sky and I’d thought to myself “alright Baby…this time you’ve done it…..yer dead!”

I thought that right till I started to breath again, and that hurt so bad I knew I was alive.

What seemed like a long time later but was likely a matter of seconds, I tried to move my head to get up and I couldn’t get it to move. I panicked...thinking that my neck was broken and I began to scream.

Mike came running to me and in the end had to cut the chin strap from my helmet. Seems my helmet was caught in one of those under the curb culvert things....jambed tight actually.