Excerpt...

I revved the Buel’s engine and leaned into the pressure of the wind letting my motorcycle helmet pierce the oncoming airstream hoping the bloody imagery would rush away with it. The bike rumbled, and through the thick Levi’s, my thighs resonated with it. Riding a well-tuned motorcycle was as close to heaven as I could get in this lifetime. 

Long after rush hour, the traffic was light and the asphalt surface of Interstate 30 lay relatively bare, with only a few night owls heading toward who knew where. I’d like to think to their homes, with their welcoming families. Or perhaps on a date. Maybe even an old-fashioned drive-in, which was located just a few miles out of the Dallas city limits. Making up stories about others was a habit of mine. Not a great habit. It revealed my own insecurities, imagining other people’s mundane lives as something I envied. My rather prosaic attempt at being normal. Something as yet unattainable, yet so very desired.

I let the bike soar, the white-dashed lane dividers blurring into long stripes on either side. Other vehicle lights twinkled like red and white Christmas lights in the summer dusk. Twenty miles later, I downshifted, letting the bike’s momentum carry it through each gear as I swerved onto the exit ramp and off the freeway.

After a right on Grand Avenue, I slowed to the posted speed. Refurbished clapboard houses lined the street, some remodeled into businesses closed for the evening. The further I drove from the highway, the more dilapidated the houses became with peeling paint, sagging porches, and boarded windows. Night was settling in with a never-black grayness dome over the city. As I drove, aged dwellings loomed with deep, forbidding voids; their doors and windows yawned and breathed.