“Channel one?” Oceanna called out to him.
Mason nodded back.
The right lane of Van Ness Avenue became the 101 South, which immediately became 80 East. Mason took the left tire track of the Number One lane, and Oceanna took, the right track, staggered a few lengths behind Mason. Mason led, because he had the G.P.S., and neither one of them were all that familiar with freeways in the area.
“Look at the skyscrapers up Market St.,” Oceanna said on her C.B. to Mason. “Where the parade was.”
Mason turned to look left. They were beautiful. He turned to look right as well. He pressed his push-to-talk switch. “And there’s AT&T Park.”
San Francisco fell behind them as they rolled over the Oakland Bay Bridge.
Mason touched the screen on his Ultra Limited to set the sound system to “Media” and selected his iPod’s easy playlist. The first song on the list was “Find Yourself,” by Brad Paisley:
“When you find yourself
In some far off place
And it causes you
To rethink some things …”
Brad’s gentle wisdom floated over the world and seemed to harmonize through Mason’s soul as he rode. For a while, he thought and felt, reflected, hearing the music, a little wind noise that wasn’t filtered, his steady 2700 R.P.M. bass roar.
He thought about his new friends— How could it be that he had them now? How could it be that he never had them before?
Circumstance. He’d been in Kingman, and then the Marines— No, they were right. It was probably always around him, but he never noticed.
How did those people feel, not being noticed?
Was that by their design?
And was it lonely for them, anyway?
Through Oakland and Livermore to the 580 South, Mason sorted through everything that had happened in the previous three days and wondered how his family were doing back in Kingman.
Push it, were his natural thoughts, but he forced Be safe! messages into his mind. It’s a long trip, and it isn’t over yet. Get home safely. Watch where you’re riding.
With gentle pushes on his right or left handlebar, he guided his Harley precisely where it should be. He knew from long years of riding that there was benefit in practicing precision: If his mind ever wandered for even a second, if he didn’t automatically do the right thing, if he didn’t hold his bike in exactly the right spot even without thinking, he could wind up off the road in a ditch, and at 70 or 80, that was no place to be.
So he held it, left tire track of lane number one, just “inboard”—toward the center—of the left tire track by two inches. That was his perfect spot. Didn’t want to be in the center, to keep his distance from trucks and cars and because his tires may pick up a little oil left by unthinking cars, yet wanted as much buffer as he could get between the ditch and himself. If he were in lane number two of two lanes, he’d take it two inches inboard of the right tire track. Same thing. And if he were somewhere in-between, on a multilane road, he’d go where-ever he needed to avoid cars.
But at the moment, he was in lane number one, two inches inboard of the center of the left tire track.
Tiny push here on the right handlebar, guided the beast to the right; a tiny push on the left handlebar guided to the left.
He remembered when he thought that was counterintuitive. Pushing on the right, ought to take the bike to the left, right? Or create an imbalance that would crash the bike. But it didn’t.
It was a tiny push, and what happened, he knew, was a tiny push on the right handgrip would turn the front wheel very slightly to the left, but that would cause the bike to lean a tiny bit to the right, and the weight of the bike pulled the front tire then to the right, causing the tiny turn to the right.
Even paying close attention, the very brief front tire turn to the left was virtually imperceptible, the bike’s reactions were so sharp.
So a biker, sitting on the bike on the road, could very precisely position the bike.
Three inches inboard of the left tire track—
Mason pushed slightly on the left grip, and the bike corrected to two inches inboard of the left tire track.
Weight is your friend, in touring bikes.
He checked his mirror and saw Oceanna there behind him, in the right tire track.
They pulled off I-5 in the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley to refuel, stood beside their bikes while they did so to stretch their legs.
“I’m going in to the bathroom a sec,” Oceanna told him.
“Me, too,” he said.
They re-parked their bikes by the store and went inside.
“Ladies room?” Oceanna asked the clerk.
The clerk looked at her suspiciously and indicated the bathroom keys.
Oceanna took the ladies room key and went that way.
“You gonna let that happen?” a man in the store told the clerk, who looked at him helplessly.
“Nothin’ I can do about it, man,” he said.
“Nothing needs doing,” Mason said, taking the men’s key for himself.
They got as far as Barstow when Oceanna called it quits.
“I’ve got to stop,” she said to Mason over the C.B. “It’s been just over six hours and I’m beat.”
“Sure,” Mason said.
They pulled into a motel to stay for the night.
“One bed or two,” the clerk asked.
“Two,” Oceanna said.
Oceanna plopped her bag on her bed, and Mason sat his on a table next to his.
Oceanna dropped on her bed to rest.
Tuesday morning at dawn they rode east on I-40 past Ludlow.
This time, Oceanna was in the lead with Mason staggered behind her, as no G.P.S. guidance was needed. I-40 East would take them across the rest of California, through Needles, and on up into Arizona to Kingman.
“This is the best time of day to make this part of the trip,” Mason told her over the C.B. “Weather Channel says it’ll get to a hundred and ten, out here in the desert later today, or more like down by the state line.”
“Great,” Oceanna said. “Because it’s sooooooo good right now.”
Mason pressed a button on his 2014 Ultra Limited. “My bike says It’s all of seventy-eight, right now. But we should be in Kingman before it gets very hot.”
The sun melted like molten gold over the landscape ahead.
“Would you look at that,” Mason said.
“The most beautiful sunrise I’ve ever seen.”
Mason had used some black electrical tape to make a couple of lines across the top of their face shields, which came in handy. Both of them lowered their heads against the sun to block out the glare.
CHAPTER
19
On the freeway as they approached Kingman, they said so long on the radio to each other and waved. Mason peeled off to the exit on the right to go to the feed store. Oceanna continued on to her mom’s house.
Mason rode up to the front of his store and got off his bike.
The parking lot was empty.
Bugs all over the front of his bike, he stowed his helmet, jacket, gloves, in the boot, put on his cowboy hat like God meant, pulled his ear plugs out and dropped them into a waste can, and went inside. His boots clomped on the wooden floor.
“Mason!” Derie jumped at him from an aisle where she had been stocking.
“Daddy,” Jason said running with his mom.
They had a three-way hug.
“It’s been so long,” Mason said.
“Five days,” Derie said.
“Four and a half,” four-year-old Jason said, holding up his fingers.
“And there’s so much stuff to tell! I don’t know how we got so much done in that time. Lets go to lunch, and I’ll tell you all about it. You won’t believe half of it.”
“Did you have a nice trip?” four-year-old Jason asked.
“I did! And you’ll like it. We saw San Francisco, a million people, hundreds of motorcycles
, and the biggest bridge you ever saw!”
“This big?” Jason spread his arms.
“Exactly!” Mason said back to him, reflecting his enthusiasm. “So big I thought it took a whole day to cross!”
“A whole day?” Jason asked.
“Well, it seemed like it,” Mason said. “Lets go have lunch and talk about it.”
Derie looked worried. “I brought lunch, honey.”
“Okay. Great.” Mason picked his son, Jason, up and held him. “Then lets picnic right here.” He looked around. “Where is everyone?” he asked. “Seems kind of dead around here.”
Derie looked around on reflex, though she ‘d been there the whole time.
Mason sat his son back down on the floor and walked up the horse aisle a little, looking. The shelving was low enough for him to see over all of them. He walked over and looked out the back door, out the front door, again, at the empty parking lot, then back to Derie.
He could see the worried look in her face.
“No, honey,” Mason said to her. “It’ll be okay. They’re God’s people.”
“The transpeople?” Derie asked.
“Everyone.” He went back over to her, giving her a big hug. “Come on. We’ll have our sack lunch tonight, but today, we got to celebrate. We’re going over to the steakhouse and have us a great lunch. I’ll invite Osh to join us—”
“Mason?” Derie’s worried look persisted.
“Why not, Derie?” Mason asked her.
* * *
A tired Oceanna rolled her Harley into her mother’s driveway and sat on her bike. She didn’t even try to open the garage door.
The neighbor, Stephen, was in his front yard watering dry spots in the grass with a hose. He looked at Oceanna, but didn’t wave.
Oceanna looked at him through the face shield on her helmet and exhaled, slowly getting off her bike and standing beside it, removing her jacket.
Oceanna’s phone rang in her pants pocket. She laid the jacket on the seat of the Harley and reached for her phone, thumbing it to accept a call.
She put the phone inside her helmet, between her left ear and the helmet’s padding.
* * *
Mason, Derie, Oceanna and Jason sat in a booth at the steak house for an hour and a half eating, drinking ice tea, and talking none too quietly about experiences in San Francisco.
Other people noticed and began to pay attention.
The ice tea helped Oceanna revive.
“Hi, Jerry,” Mason said, waiving to another table. “It was a great trip. I highly recommend it—though bring your wife’s credit cards. The Marriott there is nice but a little expensive. They charged us forty-five dollars a night just to park the bikes. For a little spot.”
“But it’s primo,” Oceanna said, “right there by the door.”
“True,” Mason said.
Mason paid more attention to people at other tables. “It’s right there near the attendants. No valet parking needed.”
Derie began to see what Mason was doing and helped. “So one time when you walked out the hotel, there were a thousand bikes riding on the street?”
Mason nodded, but told the people at the other table. “Bicycles—the kind you have to pedal with actual muscle. Seemed like a thousand. They just kept going and going.”
“And some of them were nude,” Oceanna said.
“Women, too?” another man asked her.
“Actually, Kelly,” Mason said. “I think it was only men. Two of them, I think, that I saw.”
“I saw three—” Oceanna said.
“—so it may have been four?” Jerry asked.
Mason nodded. “Or more.”
“A gay bike ride?” Jerry asked.
Mason and Oceanna looked at each other.
“I don’t know,” Mason said, confirming with Oceanna by the look on his face. “Just men that I saw.”
“I assume women could go, but it’s not my ride,” Oceanna said. “I just didn’t’ see any.”
“Circumcised or not?” Jerry asked.
The woman next to Kelly slapped Jerry’s arm. “Jerry! We’re at lunch. The kids!”
Everyone looked at the two kids who were with them.
The girl was eating; the boy was playing a video game on a tablet.
“I know what that is,” nine-year-old Debbie said with a know-it-all smirk.
“How do you know that?” Hannah asked her daughter.
“Internet,” she answered. “It’s Kingman. It’s not hell.”
“Mark?” Kelly asked the six-year-old boy.
“What?” Mark asked, never taking his eyes off his game.
“So what was it?” Jerry asked again.
“The ones I saw weren’t circumcised,” Oceanna said, looking to Mason for conformation.
Mason nodded.
Jed walked into the restaurant, followed by Frank. They stood none-too-happy near the lot of them.
Mason noticed, but stayed with the conversation. “But that was just that bike parade. There was so much, you’ve never seen anything like it. The whole town puts on the dog. We rode in two parades, really.” Mason said.
Oceanna looked at him.
“The Dyke March—” Oceanna said.
“Well, and the Trans March,” Mason said. “Maybe it was— If I count ‘marches’ as a parade? Not sure.”
“This one I get,” Jed said, referring to Oceanna. “But you, Mason? Did you have to wear a pink ribbon or anything to be there?”
Mason didn’t take the bait. “It’s still a bunch of people making their way down the street,” he said to the table.
“Maybe a parade has floats,” Hannah said.
Mason pointed at her as correct. “Okay, then: We were in one ‘parade’ and two marches. But we had a string of bikes in the Dyke March, as well. Look at this.”
Mason dug out his phone and moved to sit at their table. He began showing them pictures.
People from another table moved to stand nearby and look as well.
Jed and Frank gawked at everyone.
“See here?” Mason showed them on his phone. “I don’t know anything official, but it looked like there may have been a hundred thousand people in Dolores Park—look at that! You can’t even see the grass, the people are so thick. And here’s the Trans March.”
People got closer to Mason’s phone.
“Where—” Frank said. “Go back.”
Jed asked, “What is that?”
Mason flipped back and used his fingers to enlarge the photo of a transwoman.
“Is that a man or a woman?” Jed asked.
Mason looked at it a bit, as if he wasn’t put out with Jed. “You know I don’t know.” He showed the photo to Oceanna, who had no idea, either.
Oceanna said, “Sometimes, that’s the goal, sometimes.”
Jed’s smirk was obvious. “You mean, they don’t want to be either a man or a woman?”
“Or both,” Oceanna said to him with a forced a smile and a sarcastic tone. “Some people don’t like to be boxed in by what they see as an old-fashioned, binary stereotype.”
“Neither or both?” Jed laughed.
Frank laughed with him. “So, what then? Maybe they can have sex with themselves!”
“Probably each other,” Jed said. “Because no one else will want to.”
Mason stood between them and Oceanna. “That’ll be enough, you guys.”
Jed faced him. “Mason! I don’t know if you’re a faggot. You have kids, but you went to that fag town. But you’re actually gonna stand up for these—people? Do you think these,” Jed pointed to Oceanna, “are actually real people who deserve respect? Panties and all? Is that what you think?”
The waitress and the cashier both overheard and began to pay attention.
Mason indicated Oceanna. “’People’ is right, Jed. Frank. You two up front! They’re people. As real as anybody. And yes, they do deserve respect.” Mason’s tone was hard and his stare was threatening, when he
finished. “Are you sayin’ you don’t get it?”
Jed backed up a little, looked at the others present.
“Is that what you all think, too?” Jed asked everyone.
“Yes,” Frank said back to him.
The others remained quiet and looked at him.
Jed looked a little caught off guard, embarrassed. “I do not believe what’s happened to you, Mason.”
Jed stood to leave, with Frank behind him, but didn’t go far.
The server went back to her work.
The cashier went to the kitchen.
“This is why I don’t like to eat in hostile places,” Oceanna said to Mason.
“It’s no problem,” Mason said, a quick look at the cook. He returned to showing pictures to people at the table and mentioned one of them to Oceanna.
“This one you don’t know well, Osh. She’s Susan,” Mason introduced. “She works over at the grocery store. Not everyone has a four-by-four up her butt.”
Susan smiled at Oceanna.
“I remember,” Oceanna said. She extender her hand for a shake and got one.
“And what is it you want to be?” Susan asked Oceanna.
“Susan!” Derie said.
“I didn’t mean to offend,” Susan said, patting Oceanna’s hand. “Honestly! But I’m not sure!”
“It’s okay,” Oceanna said, turning to Susan. “Me?” Oceanna thought. “In my younger years, I’d have sworn ‘woman,’ but in my older years—I don’t know. Maybe ‘neither’? It’s not a goal to be neither, but I kind of drifted there, I guess. I’m just me.”
“How does that work?” Jerry asked.
Oceanna shrugged. “I— My designation is female, but I know I’m not, really. Biologically. It all just kind of settled into place years ago while I adjusted to life.”
“What bathroom do you use?” Kelly asked.
Hannah slapped him on the shoulder or that, even harder than she had slapped Jerry’s.
“What is it with you, today?” Kelly asked, rubbing his shoulder.
“Be nice, both of you!” Hannah said.
“It’s what we’re talking about!” Kelly answered.
“Women’s,” Oceanna said.
“But you’re not really female?” little Debbie asked.
“Not here,” Oceanna said, indicating her lower body. “But my social identity is ‘woman.’”
“So you’re in the women’s room with a penis?” Hannah asked.