The Man Who Would Stop at Nothing by Melissa Holbrook Pierson

Through the stormy spray it promised safe harbor beyond the treacherous rocks of engaging, smiling, the effort of looking interested. I could already feel the upswelling of relief loosed by the appearance of the green light after sliding the key card through the door lock: the lighthouse’s lone beacon. I have an internal timer ticking down the minutes I can be in the company of others before an insensible need to get away whispers urgently Go, run! This is when the Fairfield Suites sings its Siren’s song, urging me toward the soothing deja-vu of anonymity. More precisely, exhausted, to the point of panting.

You could check the menu online, give me your order, and the food won’t arrive till 8 anyway.”Īlthough I could probably make it by 8, truth be told just the thought of walking into a restaurant, asking where I might locate a table of strangers, explaining myself and then making small talk, made me tired. This was the reason I was downing Sam Adams in the first place in the Chicago airport en route to Wisconsin. He was the vague someone I was told would help procure a bike for me to ride in the vaguely understood run I’d attend the day after I gave a talk at the Black Earth Library. The name of the person who had issued it was “Jeff,” to whom I’d been “introduced,” also by text, that morning. How did I manage to hear the ding of the incoming text, even as it mimicked a tone identical to the imperative summons of the hotel desk bell, over the layered noise of so much coming and going? It configured itself from the molecules of the air of the bar at the airport Chili’s, where I sat killing two hours between flights. The invitation to dinner might have been a spring petal on the wind, gone by unseen in the turn of a head. Pierson, the author, participates in the legendary Slimey Crud Run and explores how motorcyclists stay connected, intended or not. This essay first appeared in Motorcycles Are Magic: An Anthology, edited by Melissa Holbrook Pierson with assistance from George Sarrinikolaou and published in 2021 by 10mm Socket Press.

A large crowd gathers for the biannual Slimey Crud Run in Wisconsin.

The Man Who Would Stop at Nothing by Melissa Holbrook Pierson