My Ship, My Responsibility

The other day, Dawna and I were heading out to breakfast on Nyx. Now, you've heard me say that Dawna inherently makes me ride slower. When she's on the back, I don't feel the same need to race through traffic or pin the throttle in an attempt to find God somewhere between the folds of time that apparently only become visible at triple-digit speeds. She makes me want to slow down and savor the ride.

But sometimes she also asks me to ride slower. Maybe she's feeling a little sick. Maybe she has a headache. Maybe she just doesn't want to be blasted by the fucking wind that particular morning. Whatever the reason, they're perfectly reasonable requests, and when she asks, I don't argue. Why the fuck would I? We're going somewhere together. What do I care how quickly we get there?

The problem isn't Dawna asking me to slow down. The problem, I've realized, is what happens inside my own fucking head when she's on the back.

I'm already a little nervous riding with her behind me. Not because she's a bad passenger. Quite the opposite. She's fucking amazing to ride with. She's tiny, weighs practically nothing, knows how to maintain her balance, and doesn't move around doing weird passenger shit. Physically, I barely notice she's there. Emotionally, though, I notice every fucking second, because I'm carrying precious cargo. I'm carrying my wife-to-be. I'm carrying the person I love more than life itself. I would give my fucking life for hers without hesitation, and the idea that something I did on that motorcycle could result in her getting hurt would destroy me.

And that taps into something pretty deeply ingrained in me. There are two roles traditionally reserved for husbands that I cling to pretty fucking tightly: protector and provider. Dawna and I don't divide our relationship along gender lines. I don't walk ahead of her, and she doesn't walk behind me. Hell, that's literally part of what I told her when I proposed. I don't want to ride ahead of her. I don't want to ride behind her. I want to ride beside her.

But I was born male. I was raised male. I spent decades moving through the world that way before I finally came out as transgender. I registered for Selective Service. I joined the military. I spent years in a traditional marriage. Those experiences shaped me, and they shaped some of the values I still carry. I'm not a woman. I'm a transgender woman. There's a fucking difference, and I'm perfectly comfortable acknowledging it.

So yeah, protector and provider mean something to me. I get up before dawn and go to work because I want to provide financial security for the life we're building together. And when something threatens the woman I love, something deep inside me says it's my fucking job to put myself between her and whatever that threat happens to be. Dawna is perfectly capable of protecting herself. She's a fucking spitfire, and God help anyone who mistakes her for helpless. I also know she'd do everything in her power to protect me. But none of that changes how seriously I take those roles.

And if you're currently preparing a lecture about gender roles and how I'm doing transgender wrong, kindly go fuck yourself right in the ass with the working end of a fucking claw hammer.

Just saying.

That instinct to protect her follows me onto the motorcycle, and that's where I've discovered a problem. When Dawna is behind me, I become cautious in ways I'm normally not. I'm thinking about whether she's comfortable. I'm thinking about whether I'm accelerating too hard. I'm thinking about whether I'm leaning too far. I'm thinking about whether I'm riding too fast. I'm thinking about whether she's scared. I'm thinking about all of these things because I love her and because I feel responsible for the person who climbed onto the back of my motorcycle and trusted me with her life.

And that's the fucking problem.

I'm thinking.

When I'm by myself in traffic, I don't consciously make most of those decisions. They're instinctual. That's part of why I ride fast. I see the line through traffic no differently than a skier sees the line through a field of moguls. I see cars beginning to drift before they actually cross the line. I see gaps opening. I see the idiot staring at their fucking phone. I see the car that's going to change lanes before the driver has even decided they're going to change lanes. I have an exit strategy without consciously formulating one. I move fast, think fast, react fast. Get to the fucking front. Find the edge.

That's how I've trained myself to ride in traffic, and whether other people understand it or not, that's how I keep myself comfortable and alert in an environment full of people piloting two-ton machines while apparently doing everything except fucking driving them.

But when Dawna is behind me, my desire to protect her can make me second-guess those instincts. And if she asks me to slow down, I can compound that by trying so fucking hard to honor the request that I don't just reduce my speed. I change the way I'm riding. I become hesitant. I start questioning moves I normally wouldn't consciously think about at all.

And hesitation on a motorcycle can be fucking dangerous.

The other day proved it.

Dawna had asked me to take it easy that morning, and I did. But let me be perfectly fucking clear about something before I go any further: what happened next wasn't because Dawna asked me to slow down. Her request was reasonable. She wasn't controlling the motorcycle. I was. She wasn't making the decisions. I was. Whatever happened out there was my responsibility.

We were in the left-hand lane behind some slow motherfucker, and I decided to move around him using the middle lane to my right. There were three lanes on this stretch of road, and as I began moving into the middle lane, the fucking dipshit in the outside lane decided he wanted that same piece of pavement.

He didn't look.

Not fucking once.

He just started coming over.

Suddenly there we were, converging on the same lane, and I did exactly what my instincts told me to do. I gunned Nyx and shot ahead of the car I'd been trying to pass, getting us clear before the other driver could push us into him.

Barely.

And I mean fucking barely.

I've already been hit by a car once, remember? I know exactly what that feels like. I know what asphalt feels like when the motorcycle suddenly disappears out from underneath you. I know what comes afterward. I know how close I came to dying the last time some asshole in a car failed to account for the motorcycle occupying the same fucking road.

I have no interest in teaching Dawna those lessons.

My adrenaline was fucking screaming. I cracked the pipes at the guy. Nothing. I flipped him off. Dawna flipped him off. I screamed at the fucker. Dawna screamed at the fucker. I cracked the pipes again, and he never even fucking looked. He just kept driving, completely oblivious to the fact that he'd almost killed two people.

But Dawna knew exactly what had just happened inside my head.

She could feel how tense I'd become. She could probably feel the fucking adrenaline coursing through me through the seat. And from behind me, she reached up and put her hands on my shoulders.

She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. She just touched me, and I felt myself start to come back down. Her hands on my shoulders reminded me that she was still there. We were okay. The danger had passed.

And there's something kind of beautiful about that. I spend all this time worrying about protecting her, and after I got us out of danger, she reached forward and took care of me.

I've spent the last few days replaying that moment in my head, tossing it around and looking at it from every fucking angle. And the conclusion I've reached has nothing to do with Dawna asking me to slow down. It has everything to do with me needing to separate speed from decisiveness.

Those aren't the same fucking thing.

I can ride slower with Dawna. I can accelerate more gently. I can take corners easier. I can cruise down an open highway without treating every straight stretch of pavement like Bonneville. I can make the ride comfortable for the woman sitting behind me, and I fucking want to. I don't need to ride with her the way I ride when I'm alone. I'm not trying to prove anything to anybody. I have nothing to prove.

But when we're in traffic, surrounded by distracted drivers and people who apparently don't understand that mirrors are installed on cars for a fucking reason, I cannot allow my desire to protect her to turn into hesitation. I can't slow my thinking down until I'm frustrated and second-guessing myself. I can't sit passively inside a pack of cars because accelerating through them feels contradictory to the idea of taking it easy.

I have to ride the fucking motorcycle.

Maybe what I really need to do is man the fuck up.

Yeah, I know. I'm a transgender woman telling myself to man the fuck up. You'll survive the contradiction.

Because when Dawna climbs onto the back of Nyx, she's trusting me. She's trusting my judgment. She's trusting my experience. She's trusting me to know when we can relax and enjoy the ride and when I need to get us the fuck out of somewhere. And if I'm so consumed with protecting her that I stop trusting myself, then I'm not actually doing a very good job of protecting her.

At the end of the day, Nyx is still my ship when I'm sitting in that seat, and I'm the fucking captain. That doesn't mean I get to ignore my passenger. Quite the opposite. Her comfort matters. Her fear matters. Her headache matters. If she asks me to slow down, I fucking slow down.

But my first responsibility is getting both of us safely to wherever we're going.

Comfort matters right up until safety requires something else. Speed doesn't matter at all. Sometimes slower is safer. Sometimes faster is safer. What matters is recognizing which situation I'm in and acting without fucking hesitation.

So going forward, that's what I'm going to work on. Not riding faster with Dawna. Not ignoring her when she asks me to take it easy. Not deciding that my way is right and she can just hang the fuck on. I'm going to work on trusting myself.

I'm going to slow down when we can slow down. I'm going to savor the ride with the woman I love sitting behind me. I'm going to enjoy the fact that sometimes I can feel her helmet against mine at a stoplight and know that the person I want beside me for the rest of my fucking life is right there.

But when the situation changes, I'm going to take control of my ship and ride the fucking motorcycle. Because if I have to twist the throttle for five seconds to put daylight between us and a pack of distracted fucking idiots, I'm going to do it.

I'd rather have my fiancée smack me on the shoulder and tell me to slow the fuck down than not have a fiancée at all.