VESPERADOS

A few nights ago, I’m sitting on the couch and scrolling through my Instagram feed. Up pops an ad for Vespa and my first thought is “Vespa, why are you wasting your time with me. I’m a sure thing.” Everyone knows that I love my Vespa just about as much as I love Josephine. My plan is to have this scoter until I’m 108 years old, but if something happens and I have to replace it, I will just replace it with another Vespa. So I say to Michael “Why am I getting Vespa ads on my Instagram?” To which he replies “It’s not me! I have not been looking. I swear.” Then I looked. I scrolled through the new line of Vespas and landed on a picture. I turned it for Michael to see and then I said “Yeah, but wouldn’t this look so much better in the garage than that giant scooter you have now?”

Michael’s current scooter is a joke. It is huge and clunky, with a large engine. The engine really belongs on a motorcycle. Watching Michael maneuver his scooter in and out of the garage, hurts my body. It looks like he’s trying to wrestle with a robot and the robot is winning. It takes up so much space in the garage that I struggle to get to my scooter. I’ve never been a fan. I’m a snob and I think his scooter is ugly. Two nights after I planted the Vespa seed, it sprouted while watching Luca on Disney+. Luca sees the Vespa poster on Alberto’s wall and asks “What’s a Vespa?” Alberto responds with “What’s a Vespa? What’s a Vespa!?! It’s only the best thing in the whole world!” Michael looked at me and I just shrugged. Then we both started laughing because Alberto is not wrong.

The next day, Michael went shopping for a new Vespa.

I rode out to the dealership with him last night so he could trade in the old scooter and finalize the paperwork on the new scooter. He settled on a 300cc Vespa GTS. He’s still got to order trunk and windshield. Vespa parts are hard to come by these days partly because of the pandemic and partly because the factory closes for a month in the summer. Afterwards, we took both scooters for a ride out to dinner. When I caught up with at the first stoplight, he turned to me and crowed with laughter. He yelled “it feels like I’m riding a scooter!” The old bike was really a motorcycle dressed as a scooter. Don’t get me wrong; motorcycles are great. They’re just different and riding a scooter brings a certain level of joy. Michael had been without that kind of joy for the last two years. He also rides this scooter differently. Before, we would be on rides together and he’d often leave me behind. Then he’d try to drive it like it was still a small scooter instead of giant beast. We were on rides ‘together’ but we were not together. Last night, we rode together, like for real together, and I got a glimpse of a previous life.

It made my heart swell.