Lessons Learned FMT Epilogue

The final installment of "Fuck Me Twice"


I never saw The Skunk again after being hastily escorted from that back alley bike shop.  Which was probably a good thing.  I worried it might keep turning up in my life, haunting me like some mechanical apparition from which I would never be free.  Chances are it enjoyed a short repose in some scrapyard before being crushed and sent to China.  Rockabilly Rob was not smart enough or well-heeled or ambitious enough to have rebuilt it.  Maybe some of its parts ended up on other machines allowing it to live on as an alloy and steel organ donor.

It doesn't really matter.  There is no particular nostalgia in my heart for that machine and I don't pine for another one.  Not a particularly great motorcycle, neither fast nor sweet handling.  It was heavy and slow compared to the other two-strokes of the same era, the Yamaha RDs and the Kawasaki H and KH models.  That GT380 sticks out in my mind mostly because it was the first and (so far) only motorcycle taken from me.

I learned that no matter how crappy your stuff is, how little you feel like you have, there is always somebody with less that is willing to take it, along with whatever else you got, by all means at their disposal.  Not exactly a Hallmark sentiment, but true nonetheless.

My vigilance increased tenfold.  I became a savvy city dweller instead of a victim, moving furtively amongst the thieves and cabs and cops, quicker than death or skullduggery.  The price for this survival?  A little bit of innocence.

Even the most unremarkable machine can teach lessons.