Is a young man on a motorcycle in a black leather jacket, the modern male equivalent of a siren?
It's just really sexy.... until you put that bulbous helmet on, then you just look like a freak.
I had a good expensive helmet, and there was something joyful about putting it on, but running errands around town it was an awkward hulk. I would have preferred not to use it until I got out onto the highway. Then I noticed it. Some guys weren't wearing helmets at all.
I asked Samuel about it.
Arizona did not require helmets. I rejoiced.
I rode around a bit slower, not to be safer. I rode around slower because I could now make eye contact with women. I may have been a dirt bag on an undersized bike, but I was also a road warrior on a super cool mission.
I asked Samuel how to get to the university. Samuel understood my preoccupation with this reverential institution of higher learning. "Serchez les femme?" he asked doubtfully. He said it would be trouble. It was.
It would take a little heartache to prove his instincts were right. I was way too far out of mainstream society to swim in those waters.
As much as students revered the idea of adventure that I was living, the actual punk rockness of what we are doing blew their minds. It was dirty. It was unsafe, and setting up camp under a weeping willow had marked me as untouchable.
Realistically, a couple nights at a youth hostel, a shower and a clean set of clothes would have got me back in the privileged set, but being on the edge is inherently slippery. Slippery slope and all that. People judging, lower self esteem. Cheap booze, drugs help grease that slope.
We were rounding a corner, though the privileged private homes of the university set. Privileged homes buoyed just a little higher by their basements housing the underclass (but still privileged students).
By this time I had double privilege. I had the privilege of being a well educated white male from the lower of the middle class, an awesome home, a security blanket woven from money and opportunity. And I had the privilege of (pretending?) to throw it off for a second. The equivalent of momentarily taking your hands off the handle bars of your bike, on your own street, while your parents are watching.
Like I said, double privilege.
Samuel, incredibly, seemed to be the same. His parents place was so middleclass.
It's a wonder what a little mental illness can do.
Samuels instincts were correct. We had no business there.
As we came within sight of the first big indication of the university, a yawning football field, I saw a beautiful young woman bathing in the sun, with a text book on her lap. Her house was on the corner, and when I stopped to yield to oncoming traffic I was about 20 feet away from her.
Helmetless and so emboldened, I called to her. A traditional cat call, foreign to me, but ageless.
"Sugar, you are looking fine."
I was an outsider, why wouldn't I try to raise the hackles of this fair skinned beauty.
"Peace in the middle east," she cried back, apropos nothing and pointed to a giant peace sign made out of rocks on her lawn.
"Fuck yeah," I said.
In a conversational tone asked her if she was studying or attempting to cause a traffic accident.
"I'm not studying," she closed the book. "I'm quitting school."
"I'm going to Argentina, you should come," I said. She lowered her sunglasses.
"Okay," she said.
"Were on a mission right now," I said, I forgot to mention that I had a huge hulk of a man riding behind me. "I'll come back some time and we can exchange names?"
She ripped out a page and wrote her name and phone number.
This had never happened before. I never had occasion to play the field.
It would get better before it got worse.
Samuel and I got out onto a major road north bound for his parent's home.
I wasn't sure what I would find, but was kind of shocked to see a Tusconian interpretation of my parent's house. Solidly middle class, with attention to detail that the Jones both noticed and reciprocated.
I was about to pull into the driveway when Samuel asked me not too.
I parked on the street.
A tall (but not nearly so tall as Samuel) middle aged man was washing a
car. A complete fucking waste of water in the middle of the desert, the car wasn't even dirty. He didn't notice us pull up.
Samuel walked over. They exchanged glances, a word, then Samuel walked past him to the door of the house and rang the bell.
After a stretch the door opened, and Samuel went in.
The man washing the car gave me a good looking over.
"So that's the crowd your with?"
I didn't know what he meant so I didn't say anything back.
(*The tools, we need background about the tools)
What ever happened to the tools I don't know. Samuel didn't come out with them, how we would have brought them on the bike I don't know.
If I would have listened more closely that first night I would know all this, but Samuel was not for talking and at this point it seemed like asking him would wound his heart. He wasn't the kind of guy that you would prompt to talk about personal things. Maybe it would different now
This was a neighbourhood of privilege and that guy washing the car was Samuel's brother.
(*Colour of Tuscon burbs, the inanity of the middle class, the wastefulness of living in the desert).
.... write this encounter
That is until a slight breeze blew up and puts sand in my eye. Tearing, one hand instinctively trying to extract the foreign object that made it into my eye, while the open eye starts to tear, the sunglasses seem to act as a vacuum cleaner, forcing harmless particles towards my retinas. I switch hands, and the bike starts slowing down in the middle of busy traffic, I switch hands back and lerch one handed,
In Canada there would have been some advantage in not having a helmet.
(Helmet from mexico)
No comments:
Post a Comment