GLAMOUR

     I like to take long drives and one of my favorites is heading north on the 5 freeway, then turning off at the 126. The road runs east and west and goes through the Sespe Valley. It's a narrow valley with low hills I feel I could touch and that makes me feel cozy and protected. The valley is beautiful, especially driving east to west. Everything is green - the miles of orange and avocado groves, the flowers grown for commercial use, other fruits and vegetables, many of which are sold at two big fruit stands along the road. Los Angeles is very far away. The road goes all the way to the ocean at Ventura but I usually turn around before that, at Santa Paula, which I think of as the town that time forgot. The main street looks as it must have fifty years ago; gentrification is not a word spoken here. Sometimes I stop and have some tacos but usually I just drive through slowly, making sure nothing has changed.      

    One day, as I was leaving the 5 for the 126, I noticed a motorcycle and its driver pulled over to the side of the road. He was sitting on the bike, dressed all in black leather and just as I was passing him he pulled off his helmet and shook out long blonde hair. My god, I thought, the quintessential California image - man, motorcycle, black leather, blonde hair. Then I thought, no, it isn't just a California image - anyone anywhere would respond to him. For the moment it took me to pass him, he was Brando and the Hell's Angels and the two guys from Easy Rider and Harley Sunday drivers - everyone who has ever hit the road on two wheels heading somewhere else.

     I thought about him as I drove on. Was he just taking a break and by now was back on the freeway, heading north or south? Was he somewhere behind me; if he was, I didn't see him. I didn't want to meet him; I wanted to gaze at him, to be in the presence of the charisma I felt in an instant. As I kept picturing him, I realized I was feeling a kind of awe, low grade but real, the kind that makes you feel you're connected to something important. Then it came to me, a word - glamour. He was one of the most glamorous images I'd ever seen. Glamour means allure, it instills fascination, it has a mystique. It compels us to stare. The motorcyclist had the glamour of the loner - the cowboy riding the range, the detective going down mean streets alone, the surfer riding the face of towering waves with ease and grace, the motorcyclist pulling over to the side of the road and shaking out his long blonde hair. 

     All of those images suggest courage, a nonchalance in the face of risk. There's a reason they've become iconic - they touch something primal in us, the desire to test ourselves, to go it alone, to ride into the unknown. I may not have the chance to do that anytime soon but, gazing at the motorcycle rider, I sense what it must feel like. His glamour comes from knowing it first hand.