The helmet�s still hanging off the handlebars, and the seat�s just as brilliantly yellow and fashionably slim as I recall. Not to be uncouth, but I distinctly recall that thing being a bastard on the old genitals. Balancing on a banana as I rode past that group of teenagers who always hung out at the street sign was awkward, but I remember having fun on that bike.
I wheel it out tenderly, wincing at the dust and the rust stains. This bike has seen a lot. But a quick tire-pump and a check of the brakes and I realize that most of it�s just surface damage. A bike doesn�t need to be pretty.
So I take it out to the street, where the curve slants slightly and the sun is faintly brilliant among the dying leaves, and I let myself go. Relaxing on the downhills, swinging my weight to turn, this is the release I have been craving, not some silly job pushing books around. I miss this, and I can�t imagine how I had let it slip away. I can delude myself, for just a little, that I am running away, without ever getting far enough that I cannot make it back home. It�s a comforting escape, allowing me to pull just enough on my anchor, my ball and chain.
NO. Nina isn�t a ball and chain; I can�t believe I just said that. All this talk of how settled I am makes me feel like Andrew�s sitting on my chest, sucking the life from me. We�re not that old, and I�m not that sedentary. I�m nothing if not sick to death of this whole insane �who is younger, who is more viable and virile� pecking order all over this fucking country. Why can�t a twenty-nine year old feel twenty nine? What has happened to our country that a twenty-nine year old can�t think of what twenty-nine is supposed to feel like? Why are we spoon-fed Friends and Cheers and Seinfeld?
I pedal harder. You can think on a bike, you can observe where and how you�ve gone wrong and objectify problems and concerns, determining which is the more pressing, and evaluating things. On a bike, you can keep your eyes on the road all the time, so you don�t have to keep your eyes on the road like all those terrifying D.A.R.E. commercials. Didn�t Robert Pirsig say something along those lines in his Zen book?
I can�t remember too well, not now. I�m zooming through Peach and around the corner of Glen St., where the big old willow bends sloppy branches to the motorists, looking for all the world like one of those maids a-blushing, the ones who send favors to woeful knights so they�ll kill the dragon. This one fat and grayish-green, with long pond weed for hair and tiny green peridots for flowers. It�s hardly a maiden, but I�ve grown to love it, in a weird, �Our Town� kind of way, so I give it a friendly pat as I twist through the corner, tamping down concrete and cementing my place as a citizen, resident and biker.
The air feels robust and renewed, renewing, born-again oxygen and nitrogen. Like someone helps the flow through my nostrils and out somewhere else, out through the pores in my chest because I�m not panting. Not even breathing hard and I�ve gone at least a mile now, zooming like the fly-by on the wall you never expected. I peer in windows set at head height, count sidewalk blocks until I am dizzy. It�s 1987 again and I�m going through a small town called Dewport, Michigan on my bike, calling out hello to people because I was a friendly child who people respected. I was Jon Daven, son of Robert Daven and Evie Daven, who made the best upside-down pineapple cake the world of Dewport had ever seen. AIDS was far away and concerned only with the homos (and probably the blacks), and Reagan had everything under control (and even when he didn�t, it was always resolvable). My parents were cynics, my parents were Jews�hey, Billy Crystal could pull it off, right? The whole �I have a big nose, my ancestors died in ovens, et cetera, et cetera� thing, funny, yeah, but wasn�t it just another form of oppression? Self-oppression, maybe?
I jab the handlebars to the right without really noticing and swing up to North Windsor, pedaling hard to master the hill there. It�s a long one, winding and steep, culminating in a cul-de-sac. All that trouble for nothing, huh? I used to do North Windsor all the time, probably startling the residents to no end. People don�t go on these streets anymore. If I were a crotchety old man I�d say it was because of all these SUVs and all the new ways people have found to kill themselves. All the ways we suffocate our bodies with oil and fat and smoke, blinding our souls from whatever we�re doing in this crazy little world. Self-preservation, et cetera. Self-destruction, et cetera.
And in a way this new planet works for people. Our absurd idea of body image makes some people work themselves harder, and make themselves fitter and happier in the bargain. But do those people want to talk to weeping teenage girls who throw up every meal and squeeze fat into unreasonable jeans. The ones who spend and hour and a half straightening their hair?
No, I didn�t think so.