For the past few weeks, when I’m about to climb on my Ducati and go for a ride, there is a space inside my mind that pauses, briefly, all the while my body keeps moving forward and I have to wait for my mind to catch up, which doesn’t take very long, and inside that [...]
When I hit the ignition on my Ducati, it makes a click-click-click noise that I have heard before, probably three times total, and this sound does not make me smile—it is the sound of a dead battery, but I try to fire it up again anyway, only there is no click-click-click this time. Now there [...]
For a few minutes, while I am sitting at the bar reading a magazine, one of my favorite waitresses—the one with the tattoo on her back who hugs me every time I see her—sits down next to me. She is fiddling with the schedule, drawing lines and filling in boxes, and we talk casually for [...]
Just so you know, I think about you often. I think about the way your body changed its shape when I wrapped my arms around you. I think about the way that you smelled when my lips were close to your ear. I think about the way that you made my veins burst with life [...]
When I get home, turn off the bike and stand on two feet, I can feel the stabbing ache in my knees, and I shake my legs for a few minutes like I’m doing the hokey pokey until most of the ache is gone and I’m able to walk through the back door without falling [...]
On my last motorcycle ride, my ride to Long Beach, WA, I find myself in that middle-space—when no one is in front of me and no one is behind me—and I do that thing that I do when I find myself in that moment: I let go of the handlebars, and my arms rise up [...]
They have been fighting lately, she tells me, squabbling really. She thrusts her right hand in the air and mimics a talking hand, squeezing her four fingers together with her thumb and mouthing what I think is a squawking-like squabbling noise. They laugh, the two of them, and tell me today was going to [...]
It is not sunny in Seattle today, and I grin when I hear people in the café talk about how it is “chilly” or “too gray” and make comments about “where summer went.” I cannot stop grinning, really, because today’s weather—barring the absence of enough rain—is one of my favorite reasons for living in this [...]
Most days, I am not good at being around others for very long. I am, as it were, an introvert, a loner; and occasionally I dip my toes in the pool of misanthropy. Some people I work with like to point this out to me, point out my antisocial tendencies whenever we work together because [...]
Itell him, in the transient space of about 90 seconds, that I am glad—thankful, really—for the gray sky and the clouds and the possibility that it will rain. He looks at me quizzically, scrunches his eyebrows and tries to comment about what I’ve said but his words come out a little jumbled and confused. I [...]