1. When I met Antoinette outside of the apartment we'd soon be sharing, she had her arms wrapped around a man on a motorcycle. Wisps of gray mingled in his dark and dense hairline and he nodded to me with the undertones of both a protective dad and a leery lover. Antoinette dismounted the bike and said hello. He looked immune to digs about sporting a Fonz-jacket through a midlife crisis as he sped away.
Antoinette showed me around her two-bedroom place. I basked in the absence of both luxury and total squalor that made it an affordable and habitable residence in Chicago. When I moved in a week later, Antoinette greeted me in shorts that showcased her creamy thighs. Below one of those juicy thickets was a burn mark on her calf. She explained that it was inflicted when her calf graced the muffler on the motorcycle rode by the older man who employed her part-time as some sort of a personal assistant.
A week later, a portion of all my stuff had been loaded into the second bedroom.
I'd met a pretty girl with glasses whose parents lived in the wealthy suburbs north of Chicago. It was the Fourth of July and we watched the fireworks from a cozy bolder on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. I sat with my legs splayed and my arms wrapped around the girl who, I suppose, counts as the love of my life for now.
It was a short-lived period of time, I'm sad to say. The big city chaos was indifferent to my dreams, and I was unsure exactly how to pursue those dreams, anyway. By the end of July I was hungry and defeated. A portion of all my stuff was loaded into my brother's truck and we drove back to Wisconsin.
Before I shut the door on that apartment in Logan Square for the last time, I said goodbye to Antoinette. My focus drooped once from her solemn face to her creamy thighs and downward. Along the way, I noticed that the burn from the motorcycle still branded her calf, and it occurred to me that she, at least, didn't seem to regret a thing.
2.) More or less every cell in my body is annoyed by motorcycles. They are deafening death-wishes on wheels. Motorcycles roar for destruction, boast about the victory of recklessness over sanity, run amok all over peace and quiet, and flout common sense just for the hell of it. The iota of cop-DNA that I inherited from my dad boils at the thought of motorcycles and their banshee calls for endangerment, their celebration of the rude life.
Motorcycles are embodied by the egomaniacs at the party who holler but never listen. The oaf who requests more cleavage from the back row of a movie theater may very well ride a Harley. When he's not launching soda can projectiles from spinning band-saws in shop class, that guy you knew from high school daydreamed about popping wheelies... loud wheelies.
Now, these are stereotypes that don't apply to everyone who rides the shiny hog, but still, those machines are belligerent and dangerous, and I really, really hate the damn motorcycles.
A vicious feeling like disdain never exists in a vacuum, though. Motorcycles kick-start disdain in me, which in turn sparks fear and jealousy. Badness is really more of a mafia than a dictatorship.
There are three reasons why I'm not so crazy about motorcycles (and admittedly, those words are paradoxical since I tend to go crazy about the things I'm not crazy about), and they are as follows.
3.)“They're so loud I can hardly feel myself hate.”
More so than just about anything else, music makes me feel like less of a broken loon. When it comes to music, I gush, I polarize, I analyze. I'm eager to twist and shout at the behest of the Beatles. Convincing someone that the Clash were an infinitely better band than the Sex Pistols is something I'd like to do on a daily basis. I get my heart cut out in the most compassionate way conceivable when I hear Johnny Cash's rendition of U2's “One”--and all that artsy stuff I crake wise about.
The antithesis of great music is the racket a motorcycle makes. The musical counterpart of a motorcycle would have to be one of those death metal bands that are always pissed for reasons that cannot possibly be gleaned from the incomprehensible but psychotic-seeming lyrics. If you think melodies are for pussies and that it takes a bad-ass to leave a trail of heinous noise everywhere you go, get a motorcycle and download some shitty din played by freaks from Sweden, pal.
What the hell is so appealing about a vehicle that basically blares Tourettes Syndrome from a megaphone? Why are noisy machines so much more acceptable than noisy people? People cause motorcycles to make a God-awful ruckus, and that's every bit as inconsiderate as them hollering their lungs out as they wait in line at a convenience store.
“HURRR-RUUUUURRRGGG! HURRR-RUUUUURRRGGG! Hurry up with that cash-register, lady. HURRR-RUUUUURRRGGG! Come on, I don't have all day! HUR-RURG!”
On a regular basis, I'm willing to bet, a sleeping baby gets woken up by the roar of a motorcycle. That baby, terrified, starts crying at a decibel level that nearly matches that of the departing Harley. The father or mother then enters the bedroom to comfort the hysterical baby, offering coos and cuddles—and yet the baby can't find peace and fall back asleep for two hours, and the same goes for the parent(s). Having been deprived of a full night's rest, the father and/ or the mother go to work the next day feeling exhausted and cranky. Their patience is short with co-workers and customers. They lash out irritably at things they typically wouldn't be bothered by. They have themselves a bad day, and so will you, if you spend enough time with them.
All that unpleasantness happens because one asshole rides a motorcycle after dark.
More Stories, and Additional Stories is the name of that eBook.
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