Photograph by Damir Khabirov, iStock / Getty Images Plus

On a scale of one to ten, my hangover was about a fifteen, and I was groaning like a constipated bull. But I still planned to hit the road pronto.

In Memory of Dennis Avery

It was a hot Saturday afternoon in 1984. I’d been on the chopper for several days straight and I reeked worse than skunk roadkill. But I didn’t think the old man would make an issue of that, and what if he did? A shower would fix it. So E.T. called “home” from a pay phone near San Clemente.

Ma answered. When I told her I’d be dropping in, her voice turned shrill.

“I’ll get your room ready, Gabe! What do you want for dinner?”

“Don’t go to any trouble, Ma. I won’t stay overnight.”

“You will so! I’ll make your favorite meatloaf.”

“Ma—“

“Now listen, Gabe. We look forward to seeing you.”

Of course, Ma was just speaking for herself when she said that, and I realized it on a gut level. But I hadn’t been in San Diego for several years and you know how it is. Time and wishful thinking can do funny things to your expectations.

Pulling the Harley into the driveway, I found Pop trimming the rose bushes that grew along the front of the house. My old man had always been big on gardening. In fact, there never was a Sunday when I didn’t wake up to the sound of a lawn mower just outside my bedroom window. Pop had a regular weekend schedule and he stuck to it like a dead fly on a glue strip. There was no possibility of getting him out of that yard for a trip to the mountains or the desert. Hell, he wouldn’t even go to the Del Mar Fair. It was Ma who used to take me to that.

As I cut the engine and put the bike on its side stand, Pop just stood there, holding his clippers like a potential weapon. I pulled off my gloves and greasy bandana — we didn’t wear helmets in those days. Then, spitting a wad of phlegm onto the driveway, I wondered stupidly what to do next.

Finally walking over to him, I held out my hand and said, “Hi, Pop,” in a hoarse voice. My throat was still full of gunk despite the hawker.

Instead of shaking my hand, Pop just said, “Your mother told me you were in the vicinity. What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion. Well — I am on my way to Baja to meet some bros, but —”

“But it didn’t take you too far off course to roll in here.”

“That’s right,” I said, managing a grin.

He didn’t grin back. “You could have given your mother a little more warning. But then, you never were very considerate.”

I looked down at my boots for a second, then met Pop’s eyes again. They were blue. Ice blue. When I was doing time, I used to notice how one of the prison guards had eyes like the old man’s. I always had trouble looking that guard in the face.

“Look, Pop,” I mumbled. “I do things on the fly. It’s just the way I live.”

“Nothing to keep you from calling or dropping a line now and then.”

“Well, when you’re on the move, there’s not much time for that.”

“Or for washing your clothes? Or getting a haircut?”

Author Leslie Hotchkiss

As he started in about my grubby appearance in general, I turned and looked at the chopper. I was having serious thoughts about getting right back on it. I didn’t need this kind of shit. But for some reason, I stood there and took it. Maybe I was thinking that once Pop got all this crap out of his system, we might find something else to talk about. But he was still ragging on me a few minutes later when Ma came out of the house.

She was wearing a nice pantsuit, mostly white, but she threw her arms around me all the same. She didn’t seem to mind my vile apparel or the fact that my beard had trapped enough bugs to fatten a vulture. Ma just took me the way I was, like she’d always done.

“So, Gabe, you finally made it home again!” She dragged a finger across my cheekbone and we both laughed at the grime she picked up. “When you take your shower,” she added firmly, “leave those clothes outside the door. And anything else you want washed. You know, I just — well, I can’t believe you’re here.”

“Believe it, Ma.”

She wiped her eyes and turned away, murmuring something about “peaches from the garden for dessert.” Ma didn’t have to remind me about the old peach tree. Pop grew just about everything but cannabis in his back forty. When I was a kid, he used to make me go out there and pick vegetables with him. One day I found a gigantic old tomato, half-rotten, that I thought would look real good on the side of David Corby’s head. Corby was a well-known turd who used to follow me around school, trying to pick a fight.

I showed that tomato to the old man, saying, “Pop, if Corby gives me any more trouble, I’m gonna make him wear this.”

“I don’t want to hear that kind of talk,” Pop had scowled. “The smart thing to do is walk away.”

Right — except I wasn’t about to waste a good rotten tomato. I left it to fester in the sun for a few more days. Then when Corby got fist-happy again, I took that sucker to school and let him have it. He came at me and we slugged it out in front of about twenty kids. I ended up with a split lip and a black eye. Corby’s souvenirs were a smashed nose and a broken rib. Pop made it clear with his heaviest belt that he thought I’d made the wrong decision. But the scuffles didn’t stop. I went on fighting until it got me into the equivalent of an enlightened reform school, and later, it got me behind bars.

Flashing back on that day in the garden, I realized that Pop’s ideas about “the smart thing to do” were the same as ever, only more rigid. I hadn’t been in any bar brawls lately, but it would take a lot more than that to impress him. I’d have to shave my beard, get rid of my tattoos, wear a suit, work for an insurance company, join the Moral Majority, and swap the Harley for a Lincoln Continental. Since none of that was likely to happen unless I got a lobotomy first, I decided to quit sweating it with the old man. Instead, I’d just make the most of my visit with Ma and split the next morning.

As if reading my thoughts, Pop mumbled, “I suppose you’ll be pulling out early for Baja.”

“Yeah, pretty early. That reminds me, I’ve got to tighten up some nuts and bolts. Better do it before I take that shower.”

“Hold it.” He caught my arm as I started to walk away. “If you’re going to be working on that motorcycle, you’ll have to move it into the street. I don’t want it dripping oil on the driveway. In fact, you’d better leave it in the street.”

“Yes, sir!” Jerking my arm free, I rolled the bike out to the curb while he went into the house. By the time I’d followed with my pack, Ma was setting the table for supper and the old man was leaning back in his easy chair, watching the news on the tube. Everything was the way it had always been. Same old chair. Same old lamp next to it. Maybe a new TV. But same old Stone Face.

I headed straight for the shower. The scalding spray hitting my back felt damn good. I lathered up my hair and beard and watched brown suds swirl down the drain. Then I put on a fairly clean change of grubs and snuck outside to smoke a joint. Coming back in with that doobie sucked down to a roach, I was flying pretty high. Maybe a little too high. I even sat on the living room sofa and tried to strike up a conversation with Pop. I asked him how bad the water bills were, what kind of mulch he’d been using, goose piss like that. Well, he didn’t happen to be in a conversational mood. All he wanted to do was rag on me some more.

“How can you stand being so aimless?” he groused. “Aren’t you ever going to want more out of life?”

I propped my feet up on the coffee table. “Sure, Pop, I want more out of life. More of the same. I mean more long days on the road and nights sleeping under the stars. More partying with my friends. I’ve never asked anybody to pay my way. You see, I work enough here and there to get by, so I figure my life’s my own.”

His mouth twisted with disgust. “I don’t know how you turned out this way. You could have finished high school, at least. You could have done something useful with your life. But you just threw all your chances away. You’re what, twenty-four now? What have you got going for yourself? Nothing! Get your feet off the coffee table.”

It was the same thing all through supper. Wish I could say I didn’t give a flying white rat’s ass how he talked to me in front of Ma, but I’d be lying. His sanctimonious bullshit was putting a knot the size of a fist in my stomach. I finally threw my fork down and said I’d had enough — to eat, that is. But I’d had enough of him, too.

Ma got up and followed me into what used to be my old bedroom. “Where are you going?” she asked, as I zipped up my jacket.

“Out. I’m gonna take a ride.”

She looked depressed, so I gave her a hug. It wasn’t enough. She left her hand on my shoulder, saying, “You know, Gabe, your dad doesn’t mean to criticize you.”

“Yeah, he does. He means every word of it. Face it, Ma. Pop and I are never gonna get along.”

“Well, I know you and he are different, but —”

“Hey, don’t you get it? Pop can’t take my being different.” I stood back and started raising my voice. “According to his way of seeing things, I’m wrong because I didn’t come out of the mold the way he expected.”

“He has a lot of good qualities, Gabe. Maybe you’ve overlooked them.”

“Okay, maybe. But don’t expect anything to change, Ma.”

She started to leave the room. Then, pausing in the doorway, she said, “If you come in late, you’ll find a key under the blue flower pot on the front porch.”

“Thanks, Ma. I mean it. Thanks.”

I cruised the beaches until I found a bar with a lot of choppers parked out front. Soon as I walked into that noisy, smoke-filled room, my bummed-out state of mind turned into an instant high. The sight of all those cut-off Levi jackets and tough, weathered faces made me feel right at home. There were some decent chicks in the place, too. It didn’t matter that I’d never met any of those people before. They were friends — automatically. Before long, I was guzzling drinks, losing at pool, and telling a tattooed woman in a red tube top that I’d look her up after Baja.

Yeah, I had a dynamite time. The only problem was, I overdid it with the booze. Around 3 am, just as I was stumbling up the front porch looking for the blue flower pot, I felt something like a vise take hold of my guts. I puked booze and sour meatloaf all over the porch, and after I’d finally managed to locate the house key, I barely made it to the can in time for my next heave. That’s the last thing I remember doing that night — kneeling on the bathroom floor, hugging the porcelain god. The next thing I knew, I was waking up to a nerve-shattering roar from hell. It sounded like fifty choppers were circling my bed! But it was only the familiar noise of Pop’s lawn mower, painfully magnified by my sorry condition.

On a scale of one to ten, my hangover was about a fifteen, and I was groaning like a constipated bull. But I still planned to hit the road pronto. Glancing out the window, I was glad to find the weather in my favor. Then, suddenly, I noticed the bike taking a soaking from a portable sprinkler. The old man had deliberately set that thing right by the curb where I was parked! More water was hitting my teardrop gas tank than his friggin’ pansies! I charged through the house and out the front door, yelling, “Hey, man, what’s the idea?”

I sent the sprinkler flying. Of course, no harm had been done to the scooter, I knew that, but you just don’t treat a Harley that way. Not mine, anyway.

Pop shut off the mower as I continued to rant.

“Just what the hell were you trying to prove, man? Would you spray your neighbor’s car like that? Of all the shit-for-brains stunts!“

I walked up so close to him that we could smell each other’s breath. Pop got the worst of it there, but he didn’t blink.

“Why do you always have to be such a total asshole, Pop? Why?!”

“Watch your tone. This is a respectable neighborhood.”

“Aw, screw your respectable neighborhood. That’s a respectable bike!”

“I said watch yourself.”

“Hey, man, I’ll say anything I want.”

“Not on my property, you won’t!” His face was turning a dark shade of purple. “And I’ll tell you something else you won’t do again. You won’t come staggering into my house late at night, leaving your vomit all over the place like some kind of an animal.”

Looking straight into the deep freeze of his eyes, I muttered, “Fuck you, man.” Then something snapped in both of us. He came at me first and landed a powerful blow right in the middle of my face. I’d never realized he had it in him, but I didn’t waste any time being surprised. Forgetting that he was my old man — forgetting that he was anybody but a lowlife scumbag who deserved a thorough ass-beating — I let him have it. Before either of us knew what had happened, he was flat on his back and his nose was a fountain of blood.

I wanted to finish him off. At that moment, I didn’t care if I ended up on death row. I just wanted to kill the son of a bitch. But when I saw him spitting a tooth out — and then another one — my rage subsided into nausea. I felt sick and cold all over. Extending my hand, I said, “Let me help you up, man.”

“Just get out of my sight.”

“I plan to. But at least we can put on a show of being civilized. Otherwise, Ma’s never gonna get over this.”

He finally held his hand out and I got him up. By that time, Ma was running out of the house, crying.

“It’s all right, Ma,” I said, supporting the old man’s arm. “Pop’s just gonna need a little dental work.”

“Gabe, how could you do this to your own father?”

“My face is bleeding, too, Ma.”

She hurried him off to ER. Meanwhile, I went back in the house and found the clean laundry she’d left me. After stuffing it into my pack, I washed up a little and got right on the bike. Good old hog, she fired up on the second kick. I blipped the throttle a couple of times just for the sheer pleasure of hearing her sing, and then I was off.

Baja was great. So was the tattooed woman in the red tube top — I caught up with her later — but that’s another episode. By the time you’ve been riding for as long as I have, you’re lugging a load of road stories in your pack. Of course, they’re not all worth telling, but I thought this one was. Funny thing, though — now that I’m actually looking at it, I have no idea why it stuck to me or what was so all-fired important about it. Sitting in front of this glaring computer screen, I feel nothing but a drooling, slack-jawed numbness.

I only saw the old man one more time. That was in ’87, after he’d had a massive stroke. I rode down to the hospital where he was dying and tried to talk to him, but he didn’t know me. Safe to say he never did, and I probably didn’t know him, either. But what’s over is over. You ride on. After he passed, Ma spent the rest of her life in Ramona with her favorite niece. She seemed fairly happy whenever I dropped in on her.

As for the here and now, things aren’t a whole lot different except that I own a pretty lucrative repair shop — and my pit stops have changed. Instead of going to biker bars, I drop in on biker sobriety meetings all over the country. That’s right, they have meetings especially for guys who gotta ride, even old ones. My life depends on those bros. But they can skip the cake when my twentieth “anniversary” comes up next month. Truth is, I hate being sober — just not as much as I’d hate to crash a good Harley.