I left Michigan with no license, a college degree, and a love of motorcycles. I always knew that I could never make my mother proud, so I guess I was shooting for makin Dad proud. I could work on cars with relative authority already. I worked at an oil change shop, actually changing oil and being a hood tech. I worked at Auto Zone, actually selling parts and doing diagnostics. But to speak of it now, you assume I was sometimes allowed to touch tools and answer phones and run the cash register. I know, I look dumb. I’ll be what you want. I'm too tired to care anymore.
Dad used to never let me touch the air tools when we’d work on a car together, and I felt a swell of pride the first time he handed me the impact and said “go to town” on my wheels. I just never felt as good when Mom would scowl at my hair, or delight over me helping in the kitchen. I was never my mother’s daughter, and I guess it’s just time to accept that. Short of becoming a nun, she will never get the daughter she always wanted. That’s ok, a lot of us never get what we want.
So I had just let them both down hugely in September of 2007. My second DUI, more than three times the legal limit in my body and my head through a windshield. No parent would be proud. Things were rather difficult then. Sure, I was a good kid who wasn’t ripping kittens’ heads off, or out on the streets tryin to get knocked up; but I was pretty damned low after the accident happened. I took it so hard, I asked the judge to put me in jail for the maximum sentence of 365 days served. I was very prepared to go to jail. The morning of my sentencing, I took all my jewelry off: 8 earrings, 3 rings, two bracelets, three toe rings…the reality was setting in. I was ready.
Judge Phyllis McMillen didn’t let me go to jail. She told me that I would “get hardened in there and become a worse criminal.” That I “have too much to offer society on the outside.” If you take what a district judge says seriously, that’s a lot of pressure. She’s now a 6th Circuit Court judge newly appointed by Granholm. And good for her, she is a fair and honest judge who doesn’t take shit.
So now I was looking at no driver’s license, living in Pontiac without a friend for miles, working in Flint and Saginaw, and needing to get to Oakland County Courthouse twice a week for the next 18 months, and to breathalyzer testing every day for the next 18 months. Oh, and a lot of fines and restitution. I made it work for as long as I could. I made friends with a coworker at UPS and paid him to swing down and pick me up on our way to Flint. I walked to my breathalyzer tests, 4 miles, in the snow. I counted on REALLY good friends (especially Steve-O) to get me around and to police stations to blow into their machines if I was out of the county. I showed up at 7am every Wednesday for Sobriety Court and gave my progress to Judge McMillen, with my dad sitting in the courtroom. I showed up at 9am every Friday to meet with Angie, my probation officer, with my mom sitting in the courthouse waiting room. I went to MADD presentations, I went to AA and did on-line Smart Recovery meetings 4 times a week. It was hell and I deserved every minute of it.
Eventually, I couldn’t make rent on the new house I had just gotten on the lake. Then a skunk moved in underneath the house and had a spraying fit that trapped me and Andy in the bathroom with me throwing up in the toilet and him in the bathtub. It was a circus and we couldn’t leave cuz I didn’t have a vehicle. I had to call my mom to come rescue us in the middle of the night. The smell was really that bad. It was the last straw, and a physical manifestation of how bad my life stunk at that moment.
I decided to leave Michigan. When Mom finally got to Pontiac from Howell, I had boxes packed through my teary hurting eyes and loaded them in her van. She hated how impetuous I was. I told her “That’s it. I’m outta here.” I started thinking about where to go. I don’t have family I’m close to anywhere. I couldn’t come up with a real good reason to move anywhere. Seattle came up, as it had right when I graduated college. Back then the plan was to just start driving toward Seattle and see what happened. I was so committed then that I did leave all my possessions on the street in Kalamazoo, such that everything I owned fit in my Sunfire. I didn’t do it then because right before I was to go, Wolf told me he had cancer and I felt like I should stay. But I guess that was a mistake.
So, after having to move back in with my parents, and making my mom leave work early to come back to Howell, pick me up and drive me to Flint and sit in the parking lot for 5 hours…my God she was a trooper for doing that. Anyway, after making her do that and being uber depressed sitting at their house trapped without a ride for about one month, I decided to go to Phoenix for one express reason: to go to MMI and become a motorcycle mechanic. I bought a plane ticket and just went for it. Dad came with me to help get me around and find a room to live in so Mom didn't worry.
Long story short, accidentally moved in with hookers, made people hate me, roof caved in, sun was trying to kill me, hated Phoenix. John had just made a move to Seattle when shit was at its worst in Phoenix. I told him to look for a 2 bedroom cuz I was on my way. I sold all my shit on craigslist, shipped him a handful of boxes, bought a one way ticket to Michigan to see Erin and Pat get married, and bought a one way to Seattle after the wedding.
Seattle was full of fresh beginnings and potential. I got a job bartending at the Fisherman’s Terminal. UPS finally got me transferred so I worked both jobs for a while. Then I decided to enroll at Lake Washington Technical Institute and do their Harley program. It was February and I was riding my motorcycle—illegally, yes—40 minutes at 6am every morning, then riding it straight to work til 11pm. It was miserable, but looking back at it now, I loved it. There was something happening, and it was so important to me that I was doing something uncomfortable and irrational just to do it. You can’t trade that feeling.
The sense that there is forward motion and more purpose to waking up every day. The sense that you were onto something and would keep chasing it until it either bit you or let you pet it. It was a chase and I was all about keeping pace. It’s not until now, when I often can’t get excited to put my feet on the floor in the morning, that I realize how good I had it when things were full of potential. Sure, grass is always greener and hindsight is 20/20, but even then I had this sense that I was on the right path, and that I was lucky to have something that made me obsess over it and drew me to spend late nights and devour information about it.
One of our first assignments was to interview shop owners and mechanics to be sure that we really wanted this for a career. I loathed doing this assignment. I rode over to Steg’s shop the day the assignment was due, skipping class to get it done. Him and little Danny were there working and let me come in to warm up. Steg was impressed I had ridden up on such a cold day. I told him I ride year round. We chatted. A couple hours or somethin went by and finally Steg says “Shit. Why don’t you just drop out of school and come apprentice for me here?”
So I never went back to school. Made up a lie about my grandpa bein sick and had flights back to Michigan already to support it. They gave me my money I hadn’t paid yet back. I worked for Steg 6 to 7 days a week for free. Getting there usually before anyone was there to let me in. I separated hardware. I swept. I cut pieces of stock for them. I grinded on things. I made support brackets. I put my time in being shop bitch. Then I started working on jobs. Changing tires, swapping out belts, oil changes, 50,000 mile service jobs, tune ups, brakes. Then we got more into motors and trannys, wiring and fab jobs. It sounds stupid for me to say it even now, but I was a legit mechanic for a little bit there.
I was at the shop whenever I wasn’t at UPS, working nights as a supervisor. I made Psycho a website. I took over parts ordering and parts running. Jumping on my bike to fly on down 50 miles south to see Ziggy at Classic Thunder or blasting over to Aurora Suzuki and throwing a new tire over my sissy bar was definitely a good time. Even rolling up 45 minutes to Lynnwood Harley for Tranny Fluid in pouring fucking rain in early March was a good time. Steg had a good roaring fire goin in the shop for me when I got back and peeled layers off to see them steam and sizzle on the concrete floor. These were good times.
Rent was outrageous at the Russell Street shop. Every time I drive by the empty place I get all nostalgic about how many good feelings and potential I felt there. I felt like the motorcycle world was about to just spread its legs for me. I absolutely felt like I had found my career and was about as lucky as I could get by stumbling upon the shop that Steg had just come to own. Steg was a good friend, and really like a father to me. We spent a lot of time together working at the shop and hanging out at the shop and moving the shop and talking about the shop and being at the shop. I was a perfect roommate for John because he never saw me.
I was fucking legit. Steg and I would roll to events and ride the shovels around and it was like I was living what I saw when I had slept back in Michigan. I had respect, I wasn’t the office girl answering phones. Well, sure, I did that too. But I had such a sense of satisfaction while I worked there. We moved the shop to a new location and things never really recovered after that. Steg had moved into the shop and was battling the depression this fucking city plagues everyone with. I was living on part-time wages, but rent was low split between John and I even though we lived on top of each other in a one bedroom house. But it was a wicked good time to sit in the basement with our bikes halfway torn apart and drink Rainiers. I took for granted how nice it was to have somewhere to work on my bike, and someone to drink with while I did it.
So, in keeping with a timeline…then something kinda awful happened last year in August and I had to cut free of the shop and get square. All my trying to make my dad proud had paid off splendidly and now something horrible had happened with my mom. She worried about me all the time. She heard about me dating way older biker guys and owning guns and running with trouble. And she only heard the stuff I couldn’t keep a secret. And, she had every right as a mother to be so worried she couldn’t sleep at night. I was living dangerously. And I was enjoying it.
So after the awful thing happened, I sort of snapped to. It was subconscious and conscious at the same time. I guess with hindsight I could say that I was trying to go the other route and make my mom proud. I got a boyfriend right away. I got respectable and stopped working at the shop and getting dirty. I moved out of the house with John and got a swank condo with my then boyfriend. I celebrated Christmas with his family like I had always been a normal person. I nested like crazy, I even bought an apron and made dinner and breakfast. I was my mother’s dream daughter. I quit UPS and got a full-time office job. I got my driver’s license and quit riding my motorcycle.
I feel like it happened so fast. My motorcycle felt it the most. It won’t run, and it sits in my parking garage as I type this as a glaring symbol of a confusing past. I am frustrated that I have nowhere to work on it. I am more frustrated that I chose a life that didn’t include a garage and place for my tools. I am even more frustrated that I spent so long pretending to be a motorcycle mechanic, and was so thoroughly convinced I was, to only amount to not being able to even make my own run. I have accepted that I won’t ever convince somebody I know what I’m doing…and I guess, why should I try? Yea, I’m just a girl who answers phones all day, and oh, how exotic that I own a Harley, but don’t worry, it doesn’t run cuz I don’t know how to make it run cuz I am just a girl. I am just a girl who you can tell to go get you lunch, who you can have stuff 500 envelopes because your time is more valuable. I am just a girl who goes to work at 8am in a vehicle, and goes home at 6pm to her cat, and goes to bed with her guns. Wait, that’s kind of different. Mom wouldn’t like that I sleep with a gun under my pillow.
I video chatted with my parents a few nights ago. I told them I was considering moving back to Michigan. Mom’s first response was “Listen, Chryssa, we don’t have enough money to support you making the move and living there without a job. Just stay where you are.” It was a hard blow. The reason being that everything in my life right now is built by my hands, paying rent for a place I thought I’d be living in with a boyfriend, going to work every day like a good worker bee and taking shit so I can show Mom how responsible I am. I never asked or expected her to give me anything…I never expected she would think I assumed I could live off of her. I can accept that I will never be what my mother wants me to be. Not without strangling my favorite part of myself.
I don’t know where I want to go, but I know I have to get out of here. Seattle is a place that reminds me of things that almost were, that are no more, and that happened that sucked. I can’t come up with anything I want to do, any place I really want to be, and I feel like I couldn’t be any farther from that feeling I talked about before. That feeling that I am doing something I like so much that I would walk through hell for it. Maybe it’s writing. I am doing it while I sit here at work and answer phones and click off the screen when people walk in. I am skipping my lunch and an interview phone call to finish typing this thing I don't know who will read. My life has to change but try as I might I just can’t get a clear vision of how.
Dad used to never let me touch the air tools when we’d work on a car together, and I felt a swell of pride the first time he handed me the impact and said “go to town” on my wheels. I just never felt as good when Mom would scowl at my hair, or delight over me helping in the kitchen. I was never my mother’s daughter, and I guess it’s just time to accept that. Short of becoming a nun, she will never get the daughter she always wanted. That’s ok, a lot of us never get what we want.
So I had just let them both down hugely in September of 2007. My second DUI, more than three times the legal limit in my body and my head through a windshield. No parent would be proud. Things were rather difficult then. Sure, I was a good kid who wasn’t ripping kittens’ heads off, or out on the streets tryin to get knocked up; but I was pretty damned low after the accident happened. I took it so hard, I asked the judge to put me in jail for the maximum sentence of 365 days served. I was very prepared to go to jail. The morning of my sentencing, I took all my jewelry off: 8 earrings, 3 rings, two bracelets, three toe rings…the reality was setting in. I was ready.
Judge Phyllis McMillen didn’t let me go to jail. She told me that I would “get hardened in there and become a worse criminal.” That I “have too much to offer society on the outside.” If you take what a district judge says seriously, that’s a lot of pressure. She’s now a 6th Circuit Court judge newly appointed by Granholm. And good for her, she is a fair and honest judge who doesn’t take shit.
So now I was looking at no driver’s license, living in Pontiac without a friend for miles, working in Flint and Saginaw, and needing to get to Oakland County Courthouse twice a week for the next 18 months, and to breathalyzer testing every day for the next 18 months. Oh, and a lot of fines and restitution. I made it work for as long as I could. I made friends with a coworker at UPS and paid him to swing down and pick me up on our way to Flint. I walked to my breathalyzer tests, 4 miles, in the snow. I counted on REALLY good friends (especially Steve-O) to get me around and to police stations to blow into their machines if I was out of the county. I showed up at 7am every Wednesday for Sobriety Court and gave my progress to Judge McMillen, with my dad sitting in the courtroom. I showed up at 9am every Friday to meet with Angie, my probation officer, with my mom sitting in the courthouse waiting room. I went to MADD presentations, I went to AA and did on-line Smart Recovery meetings 4 times a week. It was hell and I deserved every minute of it.
Eventually, I couldn’t make rent on the new house I had just gotten on the lake. Then a skunk moved in underneath the house and had a spraying fit that trapped me and Andy in the bathroom with me throwing up in the toilet and him in the bathtub. It was a circus and we couldn’t leave cuz I didn’t have a vehicle. I had to call my mom to come rescue us in the middle of the night. The smell was really that bad. It was the last straw, and a physical manifestation of how bad my life stunk at that moment.
I decided to leave Michigan. When Mom finally got to Pontiac from Howell, I had boxes packed through my teary hurting eyes and loaded them in her van. She hated how impetuous I was. I told her “That’s it. I’m outta here.” I started thinking about where to go. I don’t have family I’m close to anywhere. I couldn’t come up with a real good reason to move anywhere. Seattle came up, as it had right when I graduated college. Back then the plan was to just start driving toward Seattle and see what happened. I was so committed then that I did leave all my possessions on the street in Kalamazoo, such that everything I owned fit in my Sunfire. I didn’t do it then because right before I was to go, Wolf told me he had cancer and I felt like I should stay. But I guess that was a mistake.
So, after having to move back in with my parents, and making my mom leave work early to come back to Howell, pick me up and drive me to Flint and sit in the parking lot for 5 hours…my God she was a trooper for doing that. Anyway, after making her do that and being uber depressed sitting at their house trapped without a ride for about one month, I decided to go to Phoenix for one express reason: to go to MMI and become a motorcycle mechanic. I bought a plane ticket and just went for it. Dad came with me to help get me around and find a room to live in so Mom didn't worry.
Long story short, accidentally moved in with hookers, made people hate me, roof caved in, sun was trying to kill me, hated Phoenix. John had just made a move to Seattle when shit was at its worst in Phoenix. I told him to look for a 2 bedroom cuz I was on my way. I sold all my shit on craigslist, shipped him a handful of boxes, bought a one way ticket to Michigan to see Erin and Pat get married, and bought a one way to Seattle after the wedding.
Seattle was full of fresh beginnings and potential. I got a job bartending at the Fisherman’s Terminal. UPS finally got me transferred so I worked both jobs for a while. Then I decided to enroll at Lake Washington Technical Institute and do their Harley program. It was February and I was riding my motorcycle—illegally, yes—40 minutes at 6am every morning, then riding it straight to work til 11pm. It was miserable, but looking back at it now, I loved it. There was something happening, and it was so important to me that I was doing something uncomfortable and irrational just to do it. You can’t trade that feeling.
The sense that there is forward motion and more purpose to waking up every day. The sense that you were onto something and would keep chasing it until it either bit you or let you pet it. It was a chase and I was all about keeping pace. It’s not until now, when I often can’t get excited to put my feet on the floor in the morning, that I realize how good I had it when things were full of potential. Sure, grass is always greener and hindsight is 20/20, but even then I had this sense that I was on the right path, and that I was lucky to have something that made me obsess over it and drew me to spend late nights and devour information about it.
One of our first assignments was to interview shop owners and mechanics to be sure that we really wanted this for a career. I loathed doing this assignment. I rode over to Steg’s shop the day the assignment was due, skipping class to get it done. Him and little Danny were there working and let me come in to warm up. Steg was impressed I had ridden up on such a cold day. I told him I ride year round. We chatted. A couple hours or somethin went by and finally Steg says “Shit. Why don’t you just drop out of school and come apprentice for me here?”
So I never went back to school. Made up a lie about my grandpa bein sick and had flights back to Michigan already to support it. They gave me my money I hadn’t paid yet back. I worked for Steg 6 to 7 days a week for free. Getting there usually before anyone was there to let me in. I separated hardware. I swept. I cut pieces of stock for them. I grinded on things. I made support brackets. I put my time in being shop bitch. Then I started working on jobs. Changing tires, swapping out belts, oil changes, 50,000 mile service jobs, tune ups, brakes. Then we got more into motors and trannys, wiring and fab jobs. It sounds stupid for me to say it even now, but I was a legit mechanic for a little bit there.
I was at the shop whenever I wasn’t at UPS, working nights as a supervisor. I made Psycho a website. I took over parts ordering and parts running. Jumping on my bike to fly on down 50 miles south to see Ziggy at Classic Thunder or blasting over to Aurora Suzuki and throwing a new tire over my sissy bar was definitely a good time. Even rolling up 45 minutes to Lynnwood Harley for Tranny Fluid in pouring fucking rain in early March was a good time. Steg had a good roaring fire goin in the shop for me when I got back and peeled layers off to see them steam and sizzle on the concrete floor. These were good times.
Rent was outrageous at the Russell Street shop. Every time I drive by the empty place I get all nostalgic about how many good feelings and potential I felt there. I felt like the motorcycle world was about to just spread its legs for me. I absolutely felt like I had found my career and was about as lucky as I could get by stumbling upon the shop that Steg had just come to own. Steg was a good friend, and really like a father to me. We spent a lot of time together working at the shop and hanging out at the shop and moving the shop and talking about the shop and being at the shop. I was a perfect roommate for John because he never saw me.
I was fucking legit. Steg and I would roll to events and ride the shovels around and it was like I was living what I saw when I had slept back in Michigan. I had respect, I wasn’t the office girl answering phones. Well, sure, I did that too. But I had such a sense of satisfaction while I worked there. We moved the shop to a new location and things never really recovered after that. Steg had moved into the shop and was battling the depression this fucking city plagues everyone with. I was living on part-time wages, but rent was low split between John and I even though we lived on top of each other in a one bedroom house. But it was a wicked good time to sit in the basement with our bikes halfway torn apart and drink Rainiers. I took for granted how nice it was to have somewhere to work on my bike, and someone to drink with while I did it.
So, in keeping with a timeline…then something kinda awful happened last year in August and I had to cut free of the shop and get square. All my trying to make my dad proud had paid off splendidly and now something horrible had happened with my mom. She worried about me all the time. She heard about me dating way older biker guys and owning guns and running with trouble. And she only heard the stuff I couldn’t keep a secret. And, she had every right as a mother to be so worried she couldn’t sleep at night. I was living dangerously. And I was enjoying it.
So after the awful thing happened, I sort of snapped to. It was subconscious and conscious at the same time. I guess with hindsight I could say that I was trying to go the other route and make my mom proud. I got a boyfriend right away. I got respectable and stopped working at the shop and getting dirty. I moved out of the house with John and got a swank condo with my then boyfriend. I celebrated Christmas with his family like I had always been a normal person. I nested like crazy, I even bought an apron and made dinner and breakfast. I was my mother’s dream daughter. I quit UPS and got a full-time office job. I got my driver’s license and quit riding my motorcycle.
I feel like it happened so fast. My motorcycle felt it the most. It won’t run, and it sits in my parking garage as I type this as a glaring symbol of a confusing past. I am frustrated that I have nowhere to work on it. I am more frustrated that I chose a life that didn’t include a garage and place for my tools. I am even more frustrated that I spent so long pretending to be a motorcycle mechanic, and was so thoroughly convinced I was, to only amount to not being able to even make my own run. I have accepted that I won’t ever convince somebody I know what I’m doing…and I guess, why should I try? Yea, I’m just a girl who answers phones all day, and oh, how exotic that I own a Harley, but don’t worry, it doesn’t run cuz I don’t know how to make it run cuz I am just a girl. I am just a girl who you can tell to go get you lunch, who you can have stuff 500 envelopes because your time is more valuable. I am just a girl who goes to work at 8am in a vehicle, and goes home at 6pm to her cat, and goes to bed with her guns. Wait, that’s kind of different. Mom wouldn’t like that I sleep with a gun under my pillow.
I video chatted with my parents a few nights ago. I told them I was considering moving back to Michigan. Mom’s first response was “Listen, Chryssa, we don’t have enough money to support you making the move and living there without a job. Just stay where you are.” It was a hard blow. The reason being that everything in my life right now is built by my hands, paying rent for a place I thought I’d be living in with a boyfriend, going to work every day like a good worker bee and taking shit so I can show Mom how responsible I am. I never asked or expected her to give me anything…I never expected she would think I assumed I could live off of her. I can accept that I will never be what my mother wants me to be. Not without strangling my favorite part of myself.
I don’t know where I want to go, but I know I have to get out of here. Seattle is a place that reminds me of things that almost were, that are no more, and that happened that sucked. I can’t come up with anything I want to do, any place I really want to be, and I feel like I couldn’t be any farther from that feeling I talked about before. That feeling that I am doing something I like so much that I would walk through hell for it. Maybe it’s writing. I am doing it while I sit here at work and answer phones and click off the screen when people walk in. I am skipping my lunch and an interview phone call to finish typing this thing I don't know who will read. My life has to change but try as I might I just can’t get a clear vision of how.
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