Hot Hogs
I always had a fascination with motorcycles. No defining moment like watching Easy Rider or having family members that were into them, it was just always there. I got my first bike when I was 17 years old. I don’t even know what it was. Some kind of mishmash of different parts that I picked up over time. It didn’t last too long though. In 1965 I joined the United States Army. I was just a boy. I did my four years and then moved back home a man. Got some honest work down at the mill where I would be for the next 20 years. When I was 38 I quit and rode across the country in search of adventure. I guess that entire time was an adventure. Hell, in some ways my whole life has been adventure. Sure it doesn’t sound like it when you spend your first 20 years as a working man in your hometown but it seems like every time I rest my balls on the seat of his hog, shit gets interesting real fast.
I picked up my 1979 Harley Electra glide at the end of 82. Over the years I had made quite a few modifications and that bad boy took me all across North America. I don’t want this to turn into some kind of bike a retrospective. I might lose the casual reader. I may throw in terms that only us bikers know. Everyone knows a term like “hog” or “crotch rocket”; but how about “taint piece” or “dick wiggler”. Yep, both completely acceptable terms for a motorcycle. That is if you are in the scene. I was in the scene. I rolled around town every weekend with my gang “The lone band of individuals”. Our slogan was “United together in nonconformity”. It was great. Our bikes were all the same color. We wore the same clothes and jackets, shared the same women, and drank the same beers. I guess it was part of me rebelling against my time and the military. I spent four years in the motor pool working on olive drab trucks, in my olive drab uniform, eating, sleeping, and working with the same people every day. Fuck that. Maybe that’s why my gang was so rebellious and so hell-bent on conforming to nothing. It was me and nine other guys from the mill originally. There was Matt “Skids” Mahoney, Jeff “Wheels” Patraka, Morty The Cock, Reggie “Muffler Ass” Makay, “Blind” Artimus Jackson, Willie “Dribbles”, Jonathan “Hand Jobs” Vilks, Gay Mike Reardon, Straight Mike Frontmore, and myself. That was the group. Tearing around town on our dark green bikes with our dark green jackets and with whatever women we happened to find. Those who don’t ride can’t imagine the freedom. Riding around with those guys on your taint piece made you feel like there were no rules just the open road ahead of you. We had our bar we would all meet at on Saturday night. We would measure our beards as one of the rules of the gang was that they all had to be the same length and style. If someone’s beard wasn’t like the rest of ours we would beat the living piss out of them with bike chains and tire irons.
Dusty McKillip ran the bar. He was a good man. He had owned the place since 1949. You would always give sage advice such as “try building a campfire by using evenly spaced logs stacked on top of each other in a perpendicular fashion as an alternative to the standard pyramid.” Or “don’t use too much detergent in the washing machine. If it doesn’t rinse out it just attracts more dirt.” Or “a woman’s orgasm has contractions spaced approximately .8 seconds apart followed by a general red flushing of the chest. If you don’t see these things she may be faking it.” He had some kind of mental disorder where he would just say these things. None of us minded and we all learned a lot. We would drink beers until late into the night as it was a requirement to be in our gang and yes, things would get rowdy. I hate to perpetuate the stereotype of motorcycle gangs but we were troublemakers. We would play pool and stand around yelling and shoving each other and occasionally you would hear a bottle break. Again, I hate to perpetuate the stereotype but it was like a scene out of a movie. For hours. Now that I think about it was really weird just yelling and shoving about nothing in particular and drinking. And I never once saw a broken bottle but I would hear them break. At around 2:30 AM we would stumble out of the bar and fire up our dick wiggler’s. Looking back I would say that was our downfall. We would lose an average of one man every other month to some alcohol-related accident. Someone else from the mill would step in and take his place but that didn’t last too long as the town was just running out of men. By 1985 it was just me and Gay Mike. Gay Mike, as his name implied, was the happiest sonofabitch I’ve ever met. Nothing could bring that guy down. He would tell me these horrible stories about being raped by another man behind the warehouse at the mill. Or sometimes by a few men at a rest stop. Did he let it get to him? Hell no. He would just say things like “It wasn’t rape. I wanted it. That’s what I’m into. That’s my thing.” I always admire that. I would never be able to be that positive. To just shrug it off like that and look at it in such a way. I would tell him how much I admired his strength and he would look me dead in the eyes and say “You know I like men right? My name is Gay Mike. You do understand that I have a sexual preference for men rather than women don’t you Mark?” The crazy thing is he would say it was such conviction. Yes, I could joke about liking men in a queer way but I would probably start laughing. This guy could say it as if he was serious to take power away from those who had hurt him. That is real strength. That’s a man’s man. Sadly, he died later in 1985 from AIDS probably because he had sex with so many women.
Without my gang I had nothing but my bike so I took off and headed west. I left my job of 20 years. I left my trailer that I called home for the same amount of time but my home was the road and I felt that for years. That day in 1985 was when my life really began. When I left for the Army in 1965 I thought I knew it all. In 1985 when I climbed on that beautiful grundle rumbler and headed for the sunset I was SURE I knew it all and then some. Life in your hometown can teach you things. Life in the Army can teach you more but life on the road is a university degree. A day and a half after I left I pulled into a truck stop outside Memphis. Four hours later I had caught the worst case of VD I had ever had, swallowed all the ‘black beauties’ the truckers would spare, and was the most wanted man in Tennessee. That story is going to have to wait. It’s 7 PM and it takes this old man a little while to get through an entire bottle of whiskey so you will have to excuse me while I concentrate on the drinking. Ride on my friends.
Mark Cressman
June 2002