Out of the Closet

by Aimee Norin

  “Good, good. Come on inside and meet the service department.” Mason fingered her to follow him, and he walked inside, pocket full of cash and a broad smile on his face.

  Twenty other bikers watched.

  Oceanna got off the bike, stored her stuff in the boot—when Simi drove into the parking lot, honking her horn.

  Oceanna turned to look.

  Other bikers stood around to watch.

  Simi rode up beside Oceanna and hopped off her bike. Her helmet went onto her mirror. She stood in front of Oceanna, looked up at her. Tears welled in her eyes.

  “Simi—” Oceanna began to say.

  Simi wrapped her arms around Oceanna’s neck and hugged her tightly.

  Oceanna returned the hug, and Simi began to cry again.

  People stared. “What the—”

  “Simi,” Oceanna said again.

  Simi hugged Oceanna’s neck even tighter.

  People spoke quietly to each other then looked back at them.

  “Simi, honey! Great to see you.” Oceanna pried Simi’s arms off her neck.

  Simi gave her a kiss on the cheek, glanced quickly at people watching.

  “Simi!, you did it! Look at you!” Oceanna said.

  “Thank you for all your help, Oshie. I’d have been flailing around for months without you.”

  “It takes most people a year or two.”

  They hugged again.

  “It’s nice to meet you in person, Osh. Thank you so much again.”

  Mason stepped back out of the dealership and stood among the other bikers. “This is your friend?” he asked Oceanna.

  Oceanna blinked her cry away. “Yes.” She turned both Simi and herself to face Mason. “This is Simi Fisher.” Oceanna looked as if she were thinking. “A friend.” Then to Simi, “And this is Mason Winchester. I just bought his bike.”

  “Hi,” Simi said to Mason, oblivious to everyone around them.

  “Good to meet you,” Mason said. “This is your bike? You rode this all the way from Europe or something?”

  “Mason—” Jed from the crowd began to ask Mason something, but stopped.

  “What?” Mason asked back? “Gotta look at this lady’s bike, here, Jed.” He turned back to Simi’s bike.

  “You got to be kiddin’ me!” Jed said.

  Other bikers seemed to agree, and there was a little grumbling. “We got a ride to go on,” they said. “Lets go.”

  Some bikers filed away.

  Frank stood there and watched Jed.

  Oceanna watched them.

  Mason ignored them.

  “She rode from Maryland,” Oceanna finally said for Simi. “She just got out of the Army, and—wow—she came here.”

  “U.S. Army? Not all of us have served.” He looked at Jed.

  “I have a bad back!” Jed said.

  Mason turned back to Simi, he said, “What’d you do there?”

  A few people nearby stopped to pay more attention.

  “Why is she riding your bike, Mason!” Jed asked.

  Others seemed curious.

  Mason looked at everyone. “It’s okay. I didn’t want to trade her in, because I get more if I sell it outright. I’m getting’ a new Ultra inside, there, right now. Derie finally gave in.”

  “Which one?” Frank asked, standing next to Jed.

  “Amber Whiskey, back there by the service department,” Mason said.

  Oceanna looked at the men. “Simi, we better get your bag off the back seat.” She began untying Simi’s bag, but Mason stepped in. Putting a hand on the bag, he said “It’ll be okay here,” he smiled at the people nearby. “Won’t it, Frank.”

  Mason disappeared into a room with someone to get the paperwork arranged for his new bike.

  Simi and Oceanna sat on a bench inside among the clothing department and caught up.

  Oceanna held Simi gently by the shoulders. “You okay, honey?” She looked at Simi. Her eyes dropped in concern briefly to Simi’s groin. “I’ve heard that can be delicate for a while.”

  “It’s no problem,” Simi said. “A bicycle might be a problem because it has a little seat, but the big one doesn’t hurt at all.”

  “But you must be exhausted after the big ride.”

  “I’ve never felt more alive,” Simi said. “What I don’t want to do is nothing. I’m busting at the seams! I gotta get out and live, or so help me!”

  Simi’s enthusiasm was infectious.

  Oceanna began to laugh. “So what you going to do with yourself? Something about San Francisco?”

  “Good ol’ San Fran?” Mason walked back up to them. “What’s that?”

  “We are going to San Francisco,” Oceanna said to Mason. Then to Simi, “If that’s okay with you.”

  Simi smiled and hugged Oceanna yet again.

  “Both of you?” Mason asked.

  Simi shook her head yes.

  “Apparently,” Oceanna said. “Why not?”

  “Why?” Mason asked.

  “I’m going to go ride with Dykes on Bikes in the Pride parade there. It’s Sunday.” Simi said.

  “You’re lesbian?” Mason asked Simi.

  Simi smiled and gave Mason a brief hug, too.

  Frank, Jed, and a few others noticed from several feet away.

  “I read about it online,” Simi said. “It’s three or four hundred bikes all lined up, rumbling. They ride at five miles per hour down the parade rout to open the show, and it’s quite a big deal, so I hear. I’m new to it.”

  The salesman came over to their little chat. “Mason,” he said, all smiles. “Your bike is all ready. It’s out front, waiting for you.”

  “Oceanna—” Mason said.

  “Friends just call me ‘Owsh,’ you two. Almost as if you were going to cuss and cut yourself off. Or you think I’m a she. Neither of you know me well at all, so let me get that all down.”

  “Osh,” Mason said, trying it out. “I never heard you called that before.”

  “No friends in this town, is why,” Oceanna said.

  “Well, you do now,” Mason said. “And you left your mom’s car over at my place, so we got to go get it.”

  “Want us three to ride back to my place— Simi, you up to it? You’ve just ridden in from Europe, and you look kind of frail.”

  Simi took that as a compliment and smiled at him.

  “They put a plaster cast on her face. It’s permanent that way, now. I think it’d break if she frowned,” Oceanna said.

  Simi smiled at her even more.

  “Okay,” Mason said. “You seem fine. So we ride back to my place. The neighbors will watch Jason. We’ll get Derie to drive your car back to your place. We’ll lead her on our bikes—we got to ride these things. Then the four of us will go over to this nice restaurant we like—not far from here, actually—and have us a bit of a celebration. What say ye?”

  The four of them sat in a booth at the restaurant: Simi and Derie to the inside, and Mason and Oceanna to the outside.

  The waitress took their orders and left their table.

  Jed, Frank, and three men who weren’t at the dealership, walked in the door. “You all take the booth right beside theirs, okay?” the waitress said to them.

  They did, looking heavily at Oceanna and Simi.

  Oceanna looked sour. “Oh, no.”

  “What’s the matter?” Derie asked.

  “More diminutions,” Oceanna said.

  “Diminutions?” Derie asked.

  “I got it from a friend of mine, back in L.A.: Regina Isler. Maybe you’ve seen her on T.V.? Transgender psych professor. Promotes the Paradigm.”

  “Daily Diminutions,” Oceanna explained. “To make us ‘minute,’ smaller, less of a person. But really, when it stacks up over the years, they sit on your heart more painfully, like ‘Daily Dimunitions.’ That’s munitions, like things that really hurt us.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Derie said. “And you have to live with that? I’m ashamed!”

  “N
ot all of us get to live,” Oceanna said.

  “Oh, yes—and that poor couple who were killed!” Derie said. “And their friend in the spa.”

  Jed was glaring at them from the next booth.

  Oceanna looked away. “You mean Nuala, Sean and Jack? I know. I met them last Christmas Eve—same night a friend of mine committed suicide. God that was horrible.”

  “Your friend?” Simi asked.

  Oceanna nodded. “Nan. Transgender, like me.” Oceanna’s face took on a thousand yard stare. “I was obviously not a very good friend. Christmas Eve, and I left her alone. Net result: Dead Nan.”

  Simi reached out to hold her hand.

  “I was there watching Nuala sing at the pizza joint at the time— You know who I mean?” Oceanna’s face distorted in anger.

  “Yes. We saw her on T.V.,” Derie said.

  “You couldn’t know,” Simi said to her.

  Oceanna looked away with tears in her eyes.

  Mason tried to nudge in. “And you said three other people were killed?”

  Oceanna nodded. “The singer, her boyfriend, and their bodyguard, Jack. Out at her place in Malibu. Shot and stabbed— Regina was beside herself, which for Regina is saying a lot because she’s never rattled—drenched in blood. I sat with her for hours that night, and for weeks— It just about killed us all.”

  Oceanna turned to Jed, Frank and the table of idiots. “That kind of thing happens to us,” she said to them. “Hate crimes. No one knows how many, or what all kinds, because those kinds of records aren’t kept very well, but it’s a lot. And it’s because—”

  Jed looked worried.

  Oceanna stopped, visibly shaken, as if she might take her anger out on them.

  No one at Jed’s table spoke.

  Simi’s face was white.

  Derie was upset.

  “That kind of thing won’t happen here,” Mason said, looking to Oceanna but speaking to everyone.

  Mason looked sick for his new friends. “I apologize for the world’s behavior,” he said. “I hate that sort of thing for every reason in the book, and all I can say that might be positive here is that we can learn from that and do better.”

  “That’s why I love him,” Derie said, giving him a peck on the cheek.

  “Nothing is more important than life, and that also means the quality of life. So in resolution, here and now—in their name and everyone’s honor—I’d like to propose a toast to set a better course.” Mason raised his glass.

  They all reached for their glasses of water, except Oceanna.

  “I will, if it’s in a can,” Oceanna said.

  “Why?” Mason asked.

  Oceanna looked around on reflex before answering quietly to Mason. “Because, if you haven’t noticed, some of the people around here are hostile to me, and I swear: in a place like this, I half expect someone, frankly, to spit in my glass or on my food before I get it.”

  Mason, Derie, and Simi all looked alarmed at that.

  Mason turned his head to look at the kitchen. He couldn’t see the cook well from that angle, but he could see he wasn’t happy.

  “That’s Zane,” Mason said.

  Zane frowned at them and turned back to his grill.

  “Paranoid bitch,” Jed said with a smile from the next table.

  “You mean as opposed to being discriminated against or beaten up or killed?” Oceanna demanded.

  Mason looked at the booth of five men next to them, then at the other three people at his own table. He took the cloth napkin off his lap and slapped it down on the table. “That tears it,” he said.

  Mason got up and looked around the restaurant. “Marge,” he said to the server. “We’re moving to that booth over there.” He turned to his group. “You all, lets move over here.”

  Mason looked to Jed and the other men in the next booth and tipped his hat. “Gentlemen.”

  Mason showed his entourage to the other booth that gave him a clear shot into the kitchen. “Now if you ladies will excuse me for a second.” He walked, without permission, behind the counter into the kitchen to have a friendly chat with the cook. His smile was broad but firm.

  Oceanna sat dumbfounded, in her side of the booth that faced the kitchen. She could see the cook clearly, and the entire path her plate would take on its way to her.

  Jed, Frank, and their friends moved to a table near their new booth and stared at them.

  Mason came back to the booth and took a seat by Derie, his back to the kitchen.

  “Maybe we should leave?” Oceanna asked. “I’ve been doing this twenty years, and I can tell—”

  “It’s okay, Osh. You’re on my turf. You got to make a stand for your life. There will be no problem. We’re going to have a good meal come hell or high water.” He glanced at the five men sitting at the next table.

  “So, what are you going to do in San Francisco?” Derie asked Simi.

  A slightly shaken Simi gathered herself. “Well, every year,” she told her table, quietly so the five men wouldn’t hear, “they have this huge parade down Market St. in San Francisco. The Pride Parade? L.G.B.T. All manner of carrying on. I don’t even know it all, because I’ve never seen it, but I’ve seen part of it on YouTube.”

  Derie giggled, leaning closer to Simi.

  “And at the head of it,” Simi continued, “to get it going, are these, maybe, three to four hundred bikes with mostly women on them, riding in columns of two. They gun the engines, rev them up, and the crowd of a million people goes wild.”

  “Sounds fun,” Mason said, then turning his head quickly to Jed’s table. “Doesn’t it, Frank?”

  “Yes,” Frank said.

  Jed sat up straighter in his chair. “Faggots and fairies,” he said. “Faggots can be fairies, and fairies can be faggots.”

  “Hard to tell ‘em apart,” Frank agreed.

  “’Cause there ain’t no difference,” Jed said.

  The other men remained silent the whole time, but their expressions were clear.

  Derie’s mouth fell open.

  “We’re raising children in this town,” Derie told all five of the men, angrily, “and I will not have it go that way here.”

  “I’m going with her,” Oceanna said, jerking her thumb at Simi. “I haven’t done San Francisco, yet. It’s a right of passage.”

  “Do they let men come?” Mason asked.

  “Only with other men,” Jed said, laughing with his friends.

  Mason turned to face all five men.

  “You want to come, too?” Simi asked Mason.

  “Would I be welcome?” Mason asked loudly so everyone could hear.

  Simi smiled broadly at him.

  “Yes,” Oceanna answered. “But muggles don’t usually associate much with people like us. And your friends would know.”

  “Muggles,” Mason laughed, glancing at Jed and his cronies.

  Derie’s smile, after her husband’s look to the other table, was both friendly and threatening.

  “From the ‘Harry Potter’ books—” Oceanna said.

  “Yeah, I get it,” Mason said. “No problem. Can I get away for a few days, Derie? What about the 4th of July festival next Friday? The band—I don’t know how we got Journey for this little venue—now that’s a big deal—”

  “Journey is coming here?” Oceanna asked.

  “Next Friday,” Derie said.

  “How did I miss that?” Oceanna asked.

  “I don’t know,” Derie said.

  “Different set of friends,” Mason said.

  “No friends,” Oceanna said.

  “You do, now,” Simi told her.

  “Talk about alone in a crowd,” Oceanna glanced at Simi.

  “It’s coming together fine. And the committee is still here finishing it. I think you should go,” Derie said to Mason, loudly enough for others to hear. “Take that bike out for a spin and see what she’ll do. And when you get back,” she said loudly, “please tell us all about it.”

 
; Jed stood up and faced Mason. “You go with them, and you’re a faggot, too.”

  Mason stood up and looked down at Jed. Mason was taller by a good four inches.

  Two of the men at the table began to get up, but Mason’s stare forced them back down.

  “I don’t have to give up myself to stand with friends,” Mason said.

  CHAPTER

  6

  At dawn, Simi on her 2009 Heritage, Oceanna on her 2011 Ultra, and Mason on his 2014 Ultra, rode south on I-40 out of Kingman on their way to San Francisco. An orange glow to their left, out of the east, formed into a distorted orb of the sun at the horizon, hot butter melting in reverse motion.

  The whole countryside glowed like Simi.

  All three of them wore full helmets, for safety, and Oceanna and Mason had ear phones piped into theirs from the Ultras’ sound system.

  “I swear I can see her smiling through her helmet,” Oceanna said to Mason into her helmet mike.

  “We could ask her, if she had a C.B. on that thing,” Mason said back to her on his. “How well are you reading me?”

  Neither the roar of Oceanna’s bike nor the wind noise under her helmet were as strong as the speakers in her helmet at her ears. “Fine. Good tip, thanks! I can hear better with the ear plugs in.” Mason had shared with her that if she would put in some polyurethane earplugs to mask the higher frequencies of things like the wind noise under her helmet, and turn up the volume on the radio or C.B., then she would actually hear things better enroute.

  Simi rode ahead of them as if eager to get everywhere. Oceanna rode behind her in staggered formation, and Mason took up the rear.

  “You know the position you’re in is called ‘drag,’ don’t you?” Oceanna asked Mason.

  “Yeah, I do. But don’t tell people, okay?” Mason joked. “I’m in the closet about it.”

  Oceanna laughed at him over the air. “No, I know: It’s so you can keep an eye out for us.”

  “Yeah. Drag is actually a leadership position. I usually ride there with my local HOG Chapter,” referring to the local Harley Owners Group. “I could see if any of you had a problem, from here.”

  “What we need is a leash to put on Simi, maybe a tether. She’s got us doing about eighty.”

  “Probably alright to do, until we get to Barstow, anyway,” Mason said.

  Oceanna could not stop herself looking at the view. “God, it is beautiful out here.”

  “Life can be beautiful everywhere,” Mason said, “if you make it so.”

  At Needles, just west of the state line into California, they stopped to get gas at the Chevron, for the long haul to Barstow.