Read Online Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Paul Neilan
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too bourgeois and expensive, and it made me homesick for Greyhound. It was too far to walk and I was too fragile to run.
So I bought a bike. I’ve always liked the idea of riding a bike. It has something to do with childhood, the sound of baseball cards stuck in the tire spokes ratcheting as you pedal home just before it gets too dark. That’s how I like to think of it, even though I’ve never seen a kid do that in my entire goddamn life. It was big back in the fifties though, when kids were stupid and didn’t know how much baseball cards were worth.
But it was more than just the stupidity of an older, greater generation and the mythic nostalgia for something I’d never had. Bicycles are the perfect harmony of man and machine. You work the pedals, use your muscles to create motion, pump your legs and grip the handlebars. And then there’s speed. The wind whips around you so it’s the only thing you hear, and once you get going you have your own momentum and you can take your hands off the handlebars and raise your arms over your head like you’re the featherweight champion of the world, or swing them at your sides like you’re sprinting really fast with hardly any effort, or spread them straight out like you’re flying or being crucified, like you’re Meg Ryan in that movie about angels right before she gets plastered by the logging truck.
And that’s exactly how I felt riding my bike. I felt like Meg Ryan, seconds from a tragic death. It was fucking harrowing.
I bought the bike from a junk shop for twelve dollars. It was an old-fashioned cruiser with a high aristocratic seat and handlebars, the kind beautiful Italian girls with perfect posture ride in films set in the 1940s, pedaling past olive groves and waving, never suspecting that war will tear their family apart and that they’ll bear the child of a stoic yet kind American GI who will die heroically saving her country from itself. Something about it didn’t look right, but it was the cheapest one they had and I didn’t feel like shopping. I knew I had made a mistake when some dirtbag kid yelled after me on the street, “Hey faggot! Nice cruiser! My little sister has one just like it!”
It was a girl’s bike. So that was a shame.
Still, I could handle the taunts of dirtbag kids, even though they really fucking pissed me off. But besides being humiliating, my Italian woman’s bike was also a death trap. No matter how tight I screwed them the nuts and bolts were always loose and rattling. The handlebars shook going downhill and sitting on the too-high seat it felt like I was riding a slinky down a flight of uneven stairs. Only the front brakes worked so whenever I stopped short I was almost thrown over the handlebars, and the front brakes didn’t work in the rain so I had to stop by dragging my feet on the ground like fucking Fred Flintstone.
And it rained every day I worked at that goddamn insurance company. I was forced to buy a pair of rain pants and a slicker from Goodwill. The pants were black and three sizes too big and long, and I had to pull them up to my armpits to keep them from catching in the chain. The slicker was yellow because my piece of shit bike had no reflectors and I didn’t want to die riding home at night. Visibility is important. The only helmet they had was designed for an eight-year-old pinhead and the strap was already worn thin, but I bought it anyway because of safety. It’s the law.
I looked like a hobo sight gag with my mix-and-match rain gear and my junk shop bike, but for a while I thought I had some local color, some neighborhood folk hero charm. People in their cars would wave and give me the thumbs-up whenever they saw me, and they wouldn’t scream curses out their windows or even honk as I slid through an intersection dragging my feet, unable to stop on the slick road, causing minor traffic accidents as cars swerved to avoid vehicular homicide. I was something of a celebrity.
Until the day I caught my
So I bought a bike. I’ve always liked the idea of riding a bike. It has something to do with childhood, the sound of baseball cards stuck in the tire spokes ratcheting as you pedal home just before it gets too dark. That’s how I like to think of it, even though I’ve never seen a kid do that in my entire goddamn life. It was big back in the fifties though, when kids were stupid and didn’t know how much baseball cards were worth.
But it was more than just the stupidity of an older, greater generation and the mythic nostalgia for something I’d never had. Bicycles are the perfect harmony of man and machine. You work the pedals, use your muscles to create motion, pump your legs and grip the handlebars. And then there’s speed. The wind whips around you so it’s the only thing you hear, and once you get going you have your own momentum and you can take your hands off the handlebars and raise your arms over your head like you’re the featherweight champion of the world, or swing them at your sides like you’re sprinting really fast with hardly any effort, or spread them straight out like you’re flying or being crucified, like you’re Meg Ryan in that movie about angels right before she gets plastered by the logging truck.
And that’s exactly how I felt riding my bike. I felt like Meg Ryan, seconds from a tragic death. It was fucking harrowing.
I bought the bike from a junk shop for twelve dollars. It was an old-fashioned cruiser with a high aristocratic seat and handlebars, the kind beautiful Italian girls with perfect posture ride in films set in the 1940s, pedaling past olive groves and waving, never suspecting that war will tear their family apart and that they’ll bear the child of a stoic yet kind American GI who will die heroically saving her country from itself. Something about it didn’t look right, but it was the cheapest one they had and I didn’t feel like shopping. I knew I had made a mistake when some dirtbag kid yelled after me on the street, “Hey faggot! Nice cruiser! My little sister has one just like it!”
It was a girl’s bike. So that was a shame.
Still, I could handle the taunts of dirtbag kids, even though they really fucking pissed me off. But besides being humiliating, my Italian woman’s bike was also a death trap. No matter how tight I screwed them the nuts and bolts were always loose and rattling. The handlebars shook going downhill and sitting on the too-high seat it felt like I was riding a slinky down a flight of uneven stairs. Only the front brakes worked so whenever I stopped short I was almost thrown over the handlebars, and the front brakes didn’t work in the rain so I had to stop by dragging my feet on the ground like fucking Fred Flintstone.
And it rained every day I worked at that goddamn insurance company. I was forced to buy a pair of rain pants and a slicker from Goodwill. The pants were black and three sizes too big and long, and I had to pull them up to my armpits to keep them from catching in the chain. The slicker was yellow because my piece of shit bike had no reflectors and I didn’t want to die riding home at night. Visibility is important. The only helmet they had was designed for an eight-year-old pinhead and the strap was already worn thin, but I bought it anyway because of safety. It’s the law.
I looked like a hobo sight gag with my mix-and-match rain gear and my junk shop bike, but for a while I thought I had some local color, some neighborhood folk hero charm. People in their cars would wave and give me the thumbs-up whenever they saw me, and they wouldn’t scream curses out their windows or even honk as I slid through an intersection dragging my feet, unable to stop on the slick road, causing minor traffic accidents as cars swerved to avoid vehicular homicide. I was something of a celebrity.
Until the day I caught my
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