COMICS

My First Motorcycle

By ALI SHAPIRO  |  07 APR 2023

I bought my first motorcycle at a yard sale in seattle. I didn't know anything about it and neither did the seller. It is a Motorcycle! Agreed! I'll take it! It was a 1973 Hondo CB350F in excellent ocndition. That F apparently was very important. The standard CB350 only had two tailpipes but the cb350F had four. This drove men crazy. At least once a week for the three years I rode that bike, I would be flagged down by men who wanted to talk about it. When the time came to sell the bike, the first response to my ad was from a small motorcycle museum in a distant suburb. I rode thereon a sunny saturday. Perfect weather, no traffic, the kind of ride that lessens gravity for an hour or two. In some ways I was the exact wrong owner for that bike- I certian'y didn't appreciate it like the collectors did.But maybe it wasn't about me at all- maybe I was just the chaperone. The necessarily-clueless facilitator of the bike's wild rumspringa.

Ali Shapiro teaches writing at the University of Michigan's Stamps School of Art & Design. Her comics, poems, essays and reviews have appeared in various journals, including Gertrude, Muzzle, Prairie Schooner, PANK, The Rumpus, and Electric Literature.

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