I was driving back from Ballinger the other day. Driving through this part of Texas is all sky, no earth, mostly silence.
I felt the vibration first. Then I heard the thrum of an engine rise behind me. I adjusted my rearview mirror and caught a flash of black, of leather, then nothing.
Then a motorcycle hurled past me on the highway, like a tightly muscled cat caught in a sprint. I turned to watch it pass, and I saw a woman on the back of the bike. I saw her face for an instant, and thought, Here she is.
She had her head tilted back, one hand gripping the handle behind her, one finger looped in the belt of the man driving. Her eyes were closed, like she was listening to a song she hadn't heard since she was a girl, something half-forgotten and strange, something she still couldn't get enough of. She was tall.
Her hair was long, whipping behind her like waves, bleached like bones in the sun. Her skin was tanned to leather, constellations of age spots running from her cheeks to her hands. A tube top kept a loose rein on her body. Everywhere you looked, there she was.
Here is woman, one of her faces. I saw it in her, the thing that magazines and television tell me is so elusive, is tied up somehow with slim thighs and really white teeth.
This woman was old. She looked dangerous, but she also looked like a mother. Like she could break the end off a pool cue and pin you to the table, then cup your face in her hand, calloused from gripping handlebars, soft from Jergen's lotion. She probably has a daughter somewhere, I thought.
She is free. She loves things like roads and leather. There was a line on her face for every awful and wonderful thing that she has done, that has been done to her. She was absurdly beautiful.
People would say, She's a hundred and seven. What is she thinking, wearing a tube top? No one wants to see that. But I'll tell you this, no woman alive has her body.
She has an originality that it will take me fifty years to match. I bet she laughs when people tell her what she can't do. I'll bet that when she drives the bike, her husband can't keep his hands off her.
I saw her man, too. He was old, massive, like a tree that shields everything. He didn't look like he'd be modeling Clavin Klein briefs any time soon, but I saw his arms, his shoulders, the massive muscle rippling there, his age making him, if anything, stronger.
I thought, Here is a man. He knows where to take her, he can protect her from anything. She is safe in his arms.
My point is, it felt good to see a woman, next to her man, without the sarcastic commentary, without the jury of my peers shooting them down as not sexy enough.
There is so much more to it than we realize, and they're not slowing down to give us any tips. They have a pool hall to get to.
