Two Wheel Zen and the Art of Road Swill

By Robin Postell

(Originally published in Bikini Magazine)

All images are a copyright of robinpostell.com, and may only be used with permission.

Saturday, March 2. Almost full moon, big, bright, heavy. The second night of Bike Week, Daytona Beach, Florida. It means different things to different people. For some bikers it’s the first opportunity of the year to come out of hibernation, polish their machines, and shake off the winter doldrums. It’s also a time for heavy metal daddies to bust out and get some pussy.

To me, it means I can wear a bikini top down the street and not get called a slut.

Bike Week is now in its sixties – more organized than it once was even ten years ago, it draws upwards of a million diehards every year. Featuring a variety of parties, races, shows, exhibits and swap meets, Bike Week is supposed to be the be-all-end-all in motorcycle mania. Preceding the famed Spring Breakers who ambush Daytona Beach every year, bikers from all over the world converge on the otherwise dumpy seaside vacation hub and give it style, lend it character. In full regalia, and in full control, they’ve waited all year for this one and ain’t about to miss a thing.

For nearly fifty years the festival had been cranking up with no formal management or coordination. Finally the Volusia County Chamber of Commerce figured they ought to get in on the act. That meant they’d be making a money-machine out of it – throwing up some welcome banners, adding port-o-potties so the nasty bikers wouldn’t piss on the streets, and add the politic officiousness of a small city’s ruling class in order to lessen the impact of the incoming gore and gristle upon the year-round residents who feared Bike Week about as badly as Buckhead yuppies and their kin dreaded Freaknik’s wild assault on Atlanta for years.

So far, it looks like everybody’s got a good attitude. No Hell’s Angels, no angry lawdawgs with weapons drawn, no brawls in the street or rapes in the alleys.

 I can’t help but be disappointed.

…

The growl gets you first. As you make the slow progression into the beach city, you begin to hear it. Potent. Foul. Thousands of Harleys prowling like steel wolves throughout the day and night. Within half and hour the sound becomes part of you. It follows you into your hotel room, a din bigger and louder than Soundgarden or Slipknot or the noisy bastards from Holland full up on beer and hollering off their balconies at teenaged girls down by the pool. Even in the shower, water blasting, the sound is still crawling into you. The television – forget it. Turn it off. Give in. The sound rocks you to sleep at night. You start digging it. When you get back home, you’re gonna miss it.

Next, the smell. The air is rank and think with the pungent combination of fuel, leather, sweat and salt water. Something else you get used to. Add wafts of marijuana smoke and spilled, soured beer and you’ve got the potpourri scent of Bike Week.

My friend, Ketcher, smokes a Camel Light and hauls the big Lincoln into our hotel parking lot. “This shit,” she says, taking a drag, “Is gonna be good.” She works PR for the Braves in Atlanta, with a bunch of whitey-tighties. This is her big chance to hang out with the universal freaks she so loves. I get the impression that a lot of people here feel the same way.

It’s a pilgrimage, of sorts. Their time to say fuck it, fuck off, get fucked, ride with abandon without neighbors yelling at them and shaking angry fists. It’s freedom.

…

Main Street, where all the big bikers go to play. The place to see and be seen. Hundreds of  customized Harleys line the cobblestone street. Exclusively Harleys. Blocked off for the occasion, only two-wheelers are permitted to cruise the strip. Jap bikes are around but not here with the big hogs on Main Street. They stick together and cruise Atlantic and Ocean Avenues – safety in numbers. The rice burners are a different breed. Not nearly as loud or as stylish, they are the sporty breed with less testosterone and grease and a lot more cheese. Faster, maybe so, but lacking that gritty, wise soul that their Harley brethren exude like an oil leak.

A black and chrome menagerie, Main Street is seasoned with both polish and decay. The clothing looks a hundred years old, but the bikes are ageless. Even the oldest bikes gleam with spit-shined pride. An ocean of rawhide faces pierced with ancient eyes stare out fearlessly, hinting of primal beginnings – the tribe has re-banded, if only for ten days.

The sidewalks are a writing mass of pedestrians, squeezing past each other in a sweaty parade of meat and fire. Shops are packed with leather pants, chaps, vests, hats, thongs, bikini tops, silver jewelry, and any type of motorcycle accouterment imaginable.

Bars abound. The Boothill Saloon, the Froggy Saloon, and the Bank, fronting Main Street, are so filled with biker patrons you have to stand outside and wait until someone staggers out before you can enter. The Bank offers blues, resonating down the block – a tan pin-up quality babe hawking overpriced cans of beer troughed in ice at the doorway. Wearing a thong bikini and leather chaps, she’s got tits that give men instant hard-ons and make women whimper with envy. A young guy shakes like a junkie nearby, COCAINE COWBAY airbrushed on the back of his leather jacket.

“Goddam, baby,” he slurs at her. With a beer in each hand, she raises her arms in the air and shakes her ample, lush ass to the music, ignoring him utterly. He adjusts his crotch and repeats, “Goddam, baby.”

…

We’ve roamed the streets long enough tonight. Bikers bought us too many beers and we stumble to the Town Car parked in the public lot a couple of blocks off the main drag.

“I gotta take a piss,” Ketch says. She squats between the two opened car doors and does her business. “Thank you, Jesus,” she says, shaking her head and closing her eyes.

“You’ll piss anywhere,” I say.

“Damn right,” she agrees. “Better than those fucking toilets. A hundred bitches done pissed on those seats, fucking whores.”

“True dat,” I say, guarding her half-heartedly.

“Now, that’s how a real woman pisses,” says a 6’5” biker with tattoos of witchy naked women with big tits sleeving both meaty arms. I crack up. I ain’t no good guard dog. Ketcher looks at me, like, what the fuck, then looks at the guy with a nod, trying not to lose her concentration.

“Good Lord,” she grumbles.

“Don’t worry, baby,” the biker smiles down at her, crunching a beer can in his hand and tossing it over the hood of the Lincoln. He’s a real macho brute with dirty armpits, an odor which preceded and followed him, and a Harley to back it all up and make it authentic. “It’s all good, baby.”

“Shit,” Ketch says, looking up at him, “Thanks, man.”

Ketcher doesn’t miss a beat and in a minute we’re back in the car, headed for that southside motel where the strange Holland boys are staying. “You know,” she says, reflecting on macho hulk overseeing her piss, “He kinda turned me on.”

“I’m gonna tell your mama,” I say.

…

The third night of Bike Week, Sunday, is as full-on goddam riled up as any Friday or Saturday. God doesn’t even attempt to enforce anything today – what would be the point? We keep hearing about the Cole Slaw Wrestling at Sopotnick’s Cabbage Patch. Bikers tell us to sign up as we pontificate the signs advertising it. Ketch nods, thinks about it. “Hey, a thousand bucks is a thousand bucks, goddam,” she quips, thinking about our overdue light bill back in Athens.

“Well, fuck, do it,” I urge. “I’ve got your corner, holmes. You can bag that shit, easy.”

We miss the Ugliest Old Woman Contest while she’s trying to decide. Fuck, we say, in unison, deciding Ketch can call her daddy for some dough rather than her wrestling with some bulldyke in a tub full of slaw.

“I woulda,” she says.

“You oughta,” I urge one last time.

“Aw, hell,” she says, and we abandon it to hang out with some weird bikers who look like they’ve got something to say. One of the guys, with a beard to his bare belly-button, shoves a blue card in my hand. As we stroll away, I take a gander.

He Would Have

Ridden A

Harley

Compliments of the Biker Ministry of Jesus Christ from High Point, North Carolina, this is a real gem for me and I puzzle over it eagerly. Inside it reads:

He was a lot like you and me. The government didn’t like him. The Church thought he was weird. What friends he had, denied him. He was persecuted by hypocrites. He hung around people like you and me, not the good-good-two-shoes Pharisees.

Yes, if Jesus were on this earth in the flesh he would be next to you on his Harley, telling you he loved you…enough to die for you.

On the back is the Biker’s Prayer – something about dedicating yourself and your “scoot” to serving Him. I give this some thought while I smoke a joint with a guy who introduces himself to me as Big Daddy. He smells like whiskey and pussy, although these are two smells which, when fused, come off a little too intimate so I try to keep my distance as he sidles up next to me.

After the doobie, we buddy up with Big Daddy and his old lady, Little Mama. We go hang out with them at the Froggy Saloon because I know they’re going to talk some shit and they don’t mind me scribbling notes and taking pictures of them while they nuzzle one another and get misty-eyed reminiscing about their life together being biker folk.

“When we left Michigan, it was only 10 degrees,” Big Daddy says. Little Mama nods in support beside him, rubbing his knee like a newlywed. They were on the road 24 hours with their bikes on the trailer behind their beige and yellow Winnebago and have been making this sojourn yearly since 1990. They swear they’ll keep coming till the day they check out, hell of high water.

“Is this the way you live back home or do you just bust out here?” I ask.

“This is a bust out,” Little Mama says. A seasonal lifestyle, I guess you could say. This is how we get away from the winter.”

 Ketch starts talking about the Braves to Little Mama, who is trying to scam some free tickets and schwag and shit, whatever she can. Little Mama buys Ketch a Dewar’s on the rocks and I start shifting my attention to the bartender who’s ready to gab.

“Harley folks are stylish,” he espouses. “That’s what lets them slide. All that power and volume – they got character, and character goes a long way. They might be trashy back home when they go to the grocery store, but here, they’re underground superstars. They belong. They can relax here and be around people who are like them.”

Patrick Galway, from Canada, is sitting beside me, listening in. “Uh huh,” he grunts in agreement. “I ask him what Bike Week is and he says, after a moment’s thought, “People.”

He came all the way down from Canada and does every year unfailingly. His leather jacket looks like it’s been through snow and sleet and shit and sand storms and been run over by a thousand semis. I fantasize about his lonely plight southward, making his way down to be with his own breed. I get a little choked up, seeing how impassioned this guy is, what a journey he’s endured. I ask him how many days it took him to get down here.

“One,” he says. “I flew.”

…

Big Daddy and Little Mama invite us back to their Winnebago to do a little blow. Ketch whispers to me that she doesn’t wanna get geeked out and risk getting raped by Big Mama and Little Daddy.

“Big Daddy,” I correct her, “And Little Mama.”

“Details,” she shrugs. “Little Mama weights 180, easy. Besides, she’s just trying to suck my dick to get some Braves freebies.”

We beg off, although I’m bummed because a bump or two wouldn’t have been a bad lick. Ketch gives Little Mama a slip of paper with a wrong number and says, “Now call me, you guys.”

They disappear down the street for their Winnebago. I think about their stash longingly but am quickly distracted by a legless man in a wheelchair. Motorcycles aren’t the only two-wheeled vehicles here. All the motorcycle crashes, all their survivors, are here. They look so damn happy to be here, too, rolling around, legless, crippled, all gimped up and awkward and not giving a fuck. They’d get back on a bike and do it all over again – that’s what’s in their faces, their eyes. Their smiles are almost goofy in their delight and I’m obsessed with counting them.

“Have you noticed how many people there are in wheelchairs around here?” I ask Ketch.

“Have you noticed how many restaurants are empty?” she returns. “They’re all probably geeking. I bet they’re all doing meth and blow behind the scenes.”

“I’m serious,” I press. “I swear to God…I bet I’ve seen 30 people in wheelchairs. I saw a couple of people on walkers. Canes, too. One motherfucker was in this chair that looked like a hospital bed, all rigged up with hanging bags and rigged up with a hi-tech breathing apparatus he sucked on while a nurse with a droll expression obediently tended to his jollies.

“Life in the fast lane,” Ketch says.

“Check it out,” I say, nudging her.

A chick in a thong bikini walking around in spiked heels smiles like a runway model as the bikers whoop and holler. This is her gig – no bike, just tits and ass, by god. She’s white as a sheet and has little cellulite dimples in her ass cheeks but she’s busting out and goddam proud of it, thanks.

We marvel at her balls, wonder where the fuck she got em at.

“Don’t see that shit everyday,” Ketch muses.

Day Four. We’re nursing angry hangovers Monday morning. Strolling down the beach, smoking a joint, a 1967 Camaro SS with a personalized tag that reads DARLING slows to a noisy creep beside us so its passengers can gawk and go mmmm mmmm mmmmmmmm.

“Hey, babies,” the driver says. “Y’all know the difference between parsley and pussy?”

“You got me,” I say, knowing something good’s coming that’s probably really bad.

“Nobody eats parsley,” he guffaws.

Ketch passes the joint to him and says, “I do.”

“Do what?” he asks, dragging.

“Eat parsley,” she says. “I juice it, actually – with spinach and carrots. Awesome diuretic.”

“You shore got some nice titties,” he leers at Ketch’s bikini top.

“Go on,” she urges and DARLING finally thunders off.

“Fucker stole our joint,” I said.

“Damn sure did,” Ketch realizes, shrugs.

We want to ride so we flag over some big ass Harleys and spend an hour rolling up and down the beach with Big Pete and Rex from Hartford, Connecticut. All that steel vibrating between our legs gets us worked up. We’re swearing we’re gonna get Harleys. Not the little pussy ones for chicks, either. No, we want the big motherfuckers that build up your quads. This year, we pledge, for sure. Gotta do it, Damn. Awesome. They’re the shit. We’re hooked. We’re junkies now for the strangling growl. Ketch figures she can dump the Lincoln for enough jack to buy at least one, maybe two – we don’t know. Then we remember the overdue light bill and the fact that I ain’t sold a story in like, six months.

“Well, anyhow,” Ketch says. “We’re gonna.”

“Damn right,” I nod.

…

Back at the Bank, we come here to drink the sun away. Beer’s flowing, black leather and sweat smells funky and almost sexy. Almost. If I stayed here long enough I’d start getting used to the lurid, steamy gazes and think I was getting turned on. And fuck, maybe I would; you never know.

There are a lot of fat-assed girls wearing way-too-tight out-dated stonewashed jeans. You can see their fat squeezed in the burdened denim like vacuum packed peanuts. Chunky chicks in white leather jackets with fringe hanging off the sleeves do some corny dance together and we realize they’ve probably been practicing that shit all goddam year for this very moment. We’re impressed, and horrified, all at once – riveted until they finish up and we clap because, holy hell, they deserved it.

All these people look like they eat beef jerky and pussy – and lots of it. The older women look worn out – skin loose like a pair of old man’s testicles, and just as discolored. A hard life has robbed them of a pretty middle age, but they don’t seem to care. They don’t exhibit any self-consciousness. They’re the kind of women who get the shit beat out of them regularly and who can throw a damn good punch themselves.

I know I gotta work for a change so I start honing in on the real blue-bloods, the ones who you know were spit out of a bike’s ass at birth, sucked on the teat of it’s exhaust pipe. They are a special lot. There’s a gaping chasm between real bikers and bike enthusiasts, of course. You can tell them apart as easily as you can the president of the senior class from the pothead drop-out.

The enthusiasts have the crisp, neat Harley windbreakers instead of the tattered leathers – or they have leathers that are so freshly preserved that no matter how long they’ve had them they’ve been carefully stored in between events like this in plastic hanging clothes bags in the hall closet. They might sell insurance, maybe even teach school or work behind some desk doing something like crunch numbers or write loans.

The real bikers usually put off an odor, not so much a stench as it is a perfumed musk of nasty authenticity. These guys might be high steel men, pipe fitters, welders, mechanics, or maybe just fucking bikers who make meth in their clubhouses and gangbang chicks on pool tables while Motorhead plays on the juke box.

We’ve scammed a couple of chairs at a table with a guy from Boston, eyes glassy, blissful, tongues loose. “First year down,” he offers.

“What do you think?” I ask.

“Unfuckingbelievable,” he says passionately.

“What do you like about it?” I press.

“The madness,” he says, turning back to the band and his beer, his eyes tearing up as he purses his lips and shakes his head like a zealot. He’s at Mecca, at last, and he’s one happy mother.

A head-bobbing crowd in the dimly lit blues bar surrounds us. A Stevie Ray Vaughn clone on the stage sets the mood. Girls undulate, getting sexier with every sip. A drunk older woman in full Harley garb bumps and grinds against a pole while the band cranks out their rendition of Little Wing. The old drunk lady, who probably isn’t even forty, is feeling good. Her eyes are dull and droopy and she’s forgotten how sad she is beneath the booze and Ketch and I look at each other with compassion and amazement because she’s really putting on a show even though nobody but the two of us are watching.

Inhaling the smoke-filled air, you become part of the organism that is Bike Week. After a couple of days, a willing outsider slides the event on like a good old pair of leathers. It doesn’t take long. It doesn’t hurt. You could disappear inside this and forget who you are or who you had planned on being. You could let some musky biker with dirty nails convince you that you were born to ride. It could happen.

Crazier things have.

…

Day 5. Tuesday morning. We’ve been there, done that. Seen every bike there is to see. Ridden enough to get saddle sores on our inner thighs, walked the boardwalk, ridden the rides, got our mugs snapped in the portable photo booth for two bucks, then spent two more so I could take some with my mirror-lensed $3 aviator sunglasses on. We’ve even paddled around in the ocean and almost got laid by the Holland crazy men in the room next to us but Ketch suddenly realized she was too drunk to make a responsible decision so we bailed and went to the room and watched a fat biker lady beat the shit out of her skinny biker husband, wearing only a black leather jacket and a pair of red bikini underwear and flip-flops because she said he was looking at this other chick’s ass, which he was.

We even hit the titty bars because everybody likes looking at titties. I figured I could get some good quotes from them. I stuffed dollars in their G-strings and they told me stuff like, “Yeh, it’s cool, but these guys get so drunk they ain’t much for big tips,” and another one said, “I met my husband here last year,” and pointed to a little bald-headed man who waved and smiled coquettishly from a table nearby. They were too busy shaking tail to really give me any real beef so I saved the rest of my dollars for the long ride back home to Athens.

A champagne brunch in our hotel restaurant is jam-packed with hungry bikers, almost all of them from across the pond. Our Holland tribe is still hollering and red-faced at the table next to us and Ketch mouths, “Thank God I didn’t fuck that dude, Jesus,” and some others from Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Scotland all cackle and speak in tongues most Americans haven’t ever heard.

Ketch says she’s got to get home and stop all this partying, get a manicure, detox. She takes a sip of her flute of champagne and take a bit of a cheese blintz. I look around for somebody to interrogate or eavesdrop on, taking some last notes on a napkin next to my plate of omelet and strawberries. A 300-pounder in a Harley T-shirt and leather vest is talking to a guy from our Holland bunch who came here to join the parade.

“When my kids were young I had race cars, but sometimes we only had $13 in the bank after paying all the bills. My wife said, ‘It’s either me or the race car.’ I said to her, ‘Can I get back to you on that?’ That’s when I had to ask myself, what do you do when you have to go fast but you don’t have a lot of money? So, I bought a bike.”

Makes sense, Ketch and I agree, nodding graciously.

After breakfast, we load up the Lincoln and go down the beach to say farewell. I fish around in my jacket pocket and pull out the blue card from days back. The Biker’s Prayer. We read it aloud.

Amen.