I Crashed My Vespa

By Cintra Wilson

The first thing I happened to notice in Crown Heights is that the local cops are allowed to have tattooed necks, hands, and faces. “They’re all in different gangs!” My great friend and neighbor Mo told me, gleefully.

“Cop gangs are everywhere!”  All the cops at the precinct near my new apartment looked like they’d spent time in prison.  I don’t know what kind of edge this gives them with criminals, but it certainly looks like it gives the cops a certain kind of parity.

And so, your writing girl commenced full-time labor at a wine bar/bookstore in deepest Brooklyn.

It turns out it’s a great fucking gig.

I didn’t know if I was going to be able to physically withstand the fulltime bartending job, I’ve been so inert the last few years.  Apart from frantic bouts of middle-aged flamenco dancing, I’d largely said “fuck it” to being in shape – I was actively avoiding men, so it was working out fine.  I started practicing nonviolence on my body, and the gym started to feel stupid and masochistic — I felt like a gerbil on the treadmill that was starting to question its life choices and the values of its world in general.

In short, I didn’t care about fitness — nonetheless, I have gotten through the last couple of weeks of frantic wine pouring and bar maintenance quite well, despite years of defiant physical weakness.

I am the age of most people’s moms, at the bar.  I serve wine to the literary and publishing children of today, and nobody knows I am a writer; I am merely the bartender, and this is strangely befitting and fine.  I packed the yellowing interviews and reviews of my writing career into Banker boxes and shoved them under the couch. Only one of my books was available to order — the rest are out of print, and only available used.

The real estate agents told me I was living in prime Crown Heights, but when I got the apartment I asked three different residents where we were, and got 3 different answers: Prospect Lefferts Gardens, “The Cusp” of Crown Heights and PLG, and East Flatbush.  I tell people I live in East Flatbush, because prime Crown Heights is in a  neighborhood it costs me $17 an Uber ride (including tip) to get to and from —- which is one of the reasons I bought a Vespa in the first place.

The other reason was the West Indian Day Parade, which was like some kind of French comedy.   I knew that Eastern Parkway, the main boulevard separating my neighborhood from my job, was going to be closed in honor of West Indian Day, so I decided to try to take the subway.  (My neighborhood is pretty much exclusively Hasidic Jews and West Indians — there are schmata shops, nail salons and hair-braiding boutiques.  My branch of Chase has bulletproof windows for all the tellers.)  When I exited the subway, I discovered that I was on Eastern Parkway, dead center of the parade.  Suddenly I was a lone white speck in a sea of black bodies, mostly half-nude, some splattered with paint.  The tattooed cops wouldn’t let me across the street.  “We have to stop the parade, ma’am,” the tattooed face of the cop told me.  Shiny golden parade floats were barreling down the parkway to deafeningly thumpy music.

I was shoulder to shoulder with a sudden breakaway bunch of people that managed to escape to the other side of the street through a hole in the blockade, and miraculously made it to work on time.

So, to avoid both Uber and the subway,  I bought a black Vespa I found on Facebook Marketplace.  It looked ultra nasty, like something the Sisters of Mercy would ride around Rome with Audrey Hepburn as their hostage.   I got lost easily (the Vespa has no way to anchor a phone on the handlebars)  but generally had no problem riding it — although it did accelerate without warning once and launched me into the middle of the street.

I felt completely confident about riding it with no experience since it was an automatic, and I am used to motorcycles.   How tough could a Vespa be without a clutch?

I felt so suave parking it outside of the wine bar, that one day.

Then, the first evening I tried to drive it home, I tried to turn it around on the sidewalk, and I gave the throttle the slightest of rolls…and the thing completely zoomed out of control with me on it and splatted me hard against the side of a parked car.

I have no insurance for the Vespa yet – I didn’t even have license plates, and the car was majorly dented and scraped.  My front fender was shattered.  The chef from my wine bar had to help me pick the Vespa out of the gutter.   “Oh fuck!  I am so freaked out!” I kept yammering, drinking cold water.  I slammed into it so hard my teeth crashed against each other.  I have a bruise that goes from my right forearm almost to my armpit, and my thumbs were somewhat sprained from the impact, but by and large, all I kept thinking was, “I fucking crashed my Vespa and walked away!”  That, in some way, felt rather baller.  Showing off the bruises at work felt quite macha as well.

I had never been in an accident before on any of my motorcycles.

“Vespas are very quirky,” said Punkrock Joe.  “They’re Italian.  They have personalities. You have to get to know their idiosyncrasies.”

The accelerator, I decided, was fucked.  The Vespa is at the scooter hospital now, and will get a thorough spanking by the mechanic.

The night of the crash, I was considering turning around and selling the thing again, after fixing the fender.  Now I think I should give the Vespa another shot.  It just looks too cool, and besides, Brooklyn is absolutely lousy with scooters these days; it’s like Djakarta or Morocco in the nineties.  Cars are accustomed to watching out for them; they’re everywhere.   Now I just need art nails and hair braids.