Mike DeStefano - Franny's Last Ride

 

 

When I was a kid, I wanted to get a Harley really bad. I was about seven, and I saw these guys riding it. I was in my dad's car in the back, and these dudes were driving by in his Harleys. And I remember looking at him and saying, “I want to do that, man. I want to be free like those guys.” And I started doing heroin a few years later, so I couldn't really get a bike. I couldn't get toothpaste and shit, let alone a $15,000 motorcycle. When I was 18, my parents found me in the house, overdosed, almost dead. They took me to a hospital, and then they took me to a detox and into a rehab. When I was in the rehab, I met Franny. She was a beautiful, beautiful girl.

 

The first time I saw her, I was just like, wow, amazed. And we started becoming really close, and we went through the rehab. She had been there a long time before me, and she was finishing up, and I was just starting out. And she finished the rehab, and I was still in there. And then I finished, and we started dating. And life was pretty good, it was hard to get off of heroin, but I was able to do it. And I went to college. I started in college, and Franny and I were together and dating and just having a good time. 

 

And one day she had a really bad fever, I took her to the hospital, and 12 hours later, they said that she had this pneumocystic pneumonia. I didn't know what it was, and they said it was from AIDS. And I didn't know what to do. I loved her, and I wanted to be with her. New York got her sick a lot. She coughed a lot and had bronchitis all the time. So, we moved to Florida, like, when old people moved down there. We went down to retire. I figured that we would live as much as we could and do everything we could. And for some reason, I just wanted to make her life the greatest life. And we got married, and we were living in Florida, and I thought the warm air down there would help her heal and feel better, but it didn't. 

 

She went into the hospital one night, and the next morning, the doctor told me that she had pneumonia again, and that they couldn't really cure it and that she might have a few weeks to live. And that was the first time I was told that. And I was devastated, and she was devastated. They put her in a hospice, and two weeks later, they sent her out of the hospice because she started to get better. She was thrown out of hospice for not dying, [audience laughter] and only she could pull that off. She was a young Italian girl, and she was not interested in suffering and dying, like, who is? But she was extra, not fucking into it. [audience chuckle]

 

A few weeks later, she got sick again. I took her back to the hospital. They put her in. Doctor told me the same thing, she's got few weeks and she's going to be gone. So, they put her back in hospice. A month and a half later, they sent her home again. And our families-- my parents and her parents were happy about it, “Oh, she's going to be better.” But I know how the story's going to end and a few weeks later, she ends up back in the hospital.

 

And on a Thursday of that week, my motorcycle, my Harley Davidson, was ready to be picked up, so I went that Thursday to get the bike, and it was beautiful. She was in the hospital, and I got a call that she went back to hospice. So, the day I got the bike, she was back in hospice. So, I drove the bike over to the hospice, and I didn't know what to do. Do I even-- should I show her the bike? What the fuck do you do? So, I went in, I brought the bike out front, and I went into the room, and I said, “Franny, I want to show you something.” And I brought her outside and showed her the bike. And she was mad, she's like, “What the fuck is that?” I brought it to her because it was our dream together, and she was still very important to me, and I just thought that would make her happy, but it didn't.

 

So, the social worker came over to me and said, “Mike, people are never dying. They live and then they die. And dying is in a moment. And she feels that you're treating her as if she's dying and you don't need her anymore and you don't love her anymore,” and that wasn't the truth. And I didn't know how to tell her. And I told her every day. We used to go out for dinners and stuff. She wanted to go out, I would take her out. She'd have her oxygen tank with her, and I'd take her to a restaurant, and I'd look around, and there'd be-- I'd see another couple with the husband and taking care of the wife, but they were 80, we were in the 20.

 

So, I went home, and I didn't know what to do. And I came back to the hospice, and I brought a few of my work shirts with me because she loved ironing for me. [audience chuckle] She was here now, she'd fucking yell. So, I came back a couple hours later, and my shirts were all ironed, and she was walking around the hospice dusting, like she would clean the place up. She was on a lot of morphine and some of you that never did it, it's wonderful, [audience laughter] and it makes you feel excited about things. And then she saw me and she's like, “Where's the bike?” Like everything I wanted her to feel in the beginning, she felt because I asked her to iron my clothes, and I said, “It's outside. Let's go see.” And I took her out and she said, “Let me sit on it.” So, I put her on it, and then she said, “Can you start it up?” And she's still alive, so she's still a woman and this is not enough, I want that. [audience laughter] 

So, I start the bike up, and it's rumbling. It was a loud bike. It was gorgeous. And then she's, “Well, can you just take me for a little ride? Like, just around the parking lot here?” And I'm like, “Fuck.” I'm thinking she's going to fall off the bat, and I have to tell her family, “Yeah, she almost died of aids, [audience laughter] but then I killed her on my bike.” I promised her that the rest of my life would be-- first of all, I was going to live for her, [sobbing voice] like I mean really live. And I would always talk about her. I don't want to be here telling this story. I promised her I would. So, now we're riding around the hospice, and she got the morphine pole next to her. [audience chuckle] We were junkies. We were junkies. We were different. We were fucking freaks. We were-- people across the street when they saw me, and her, she was a prostitute. She was a fucking drug addict. I mean, all the shit that-- you know what I'm talking about some of you, I can tell. So, this was amazing. 

 

So, we're riding around this hospice with this morphine pole, fucking channeling, and all the staff come out and they're watching us, and they're cheering us on. It's all these gay dudes and people that cared about people dying. [audience laughter] Yeah. None of my friends were there, Frankie and Vinny, they didn't show up. So, they're all watching it and then I hear the pole fall, and I literally think she fell off the back. She unhooked the morphine bag, which means I want to go out on the street a little bit. So, I take her out on the street a little bit, and then she just put her arm around my belly and started rubbing. And she said, “Can we go on the highway?” [sobs] And I thought of all that we've been through and all the suffering, and I said, “Yeah, we could do that.” So, I was on. We got on I-95 and added up to 80. She was just screaming happiness. Morphine bag was--

 

And for ten minutes that wind. I always imagined the wind on a bike making you feel free. It's so powerful. For ten minutes, we were normal. And that wind just blew all the death off of us. Here I am in Aspen. I won a special in HBOs and money, but nothing I'll ever do will be that grand. Thank you.