still wake-up dreaming about solving problems at work. Or dreaming about being entrusted to; it never much mattered if the real problems were ever actually solved.
Since last installment, I have been hit by a car, received a refund of my security deposit from my former landlord (which = my former lease is dissolved, which = my apartment is soon to be 'former' as well), and bought a bus ticket to Washington, DC, to join the Inaugural Protests there on January 20. And last night I found a very intense, intelligent, challenging, and beautiful website. Actually, the gushing font of creativity responsible for it, Shane Luitjens, can't keep it all in just ONE website, so there are three (or so it seems). But begin here.
First, the car. Riding through snow to Stephanie's house for dinner, a car approached and stopped at a road which entered from the right. Apparently, the driver thought 'if it doesn't have headlights, it doesn't matter.' He said he didn't see me, but he looked at me, twice. I was not moving fast, which is necessary in order to come from out of nowhere. I was slogging uphill, through snowfall. To be fair to him, it was night, and he might simply not have been paying attention—though I really think he has the imperial attitude of many motorists; that the big, powerful, worshipped American auto is the King of the road, and demands deferrance from all in its path. In other words, he saw me and dismissed me, expecting me to stop dead in my tracks because The Car was going to cross my path, and The Road is made for The Car, and the bicycle is an intruding, unwelcome alien. Sorry, pal, but that's not how the law views it. Not yet.
I was wary of the possibility, and just as I passed in front of him, he gunned it, and slammed into my right side. Then he stopped. I picked up the bike and looked for damage. The driver stayed in his seat of power, and stared at me sheepishly. I think he wanted me to apologize for being in his way. I think he wanted me to go away, so he could continue on his way. I was in the center of the road against the front of his car, and he still had not taken it out of 'drive'. I waved both hands in a gesture that said, 'Back-up'. And I glared. He looked disappointed, reluctantly complied.
This fuckin dick head just hit me, and HE is unhappy?!? I threw the bike under the front of the car, just to be sure he would have difficulty if he tried to drive off, and I walked over to his window, which I think I pounded on. "Call the fuckin cops!" I screamed into his face. He was about 6 foot 3, 30-ish, had very straight black hair and didn't quite yet have english as a second language. I'm guessing he was Romanian, or Greek—I don't know. He would have been scary, except that I was still riding on the testosterone wave that started when I walked out of my job the day before. In fact, if it had not been for the balls I grew the day before, I would have probably apologized for being in the way when he hit me, and for taking so long to get out of the way, and then I would have dragged my bike to the curb, and wished him well. Except for them balls.
After ten minutes of 'no cel fon' and 'nopen', I yelled, "Well then, we're going to stand here all fucking night!" There was a girl, about fourteen, and a baby in the back seat. The girl called to the man, he leaned in and they talked for a minute. I figured she was giving him a pen.
The driver emerged from the tete-a-tete and said, "Fifty doler." What the fuck is it with me and fifties? Everytime there is a disaster, there's a fifty. But I am no dummy, and I just quit my job, so I made sure the bike had no damage; amazingly it was fine, and so was I. So I said, "Fine. I'll take it. But from now on, watch out for bicycles!" I felt like a New Yorker. Thank god for undiscovered balls.
except for so-called 'limited access' roads, like Interstate Highways, expressways, tunnels, and toll roads, public thoroughfares shall not exclude public access. Until bicycles are outlawed—a day which is coming—I will continue to ride in full possession of the right to be on a public street, and to excercise my right of way as defined by law. I hope I'm in your way. Fuck-off!
Most people consider bike riding in the winter, like I do it—and just bike riding like I do it in general, in the midst of traffic with car fenders and door handles swiping my thighs—to be a little frivolous and risky. They consider my attitude about safety cavalier. They are right. But that's how I want it.
One night as I rode home from work, some idiot college boy—hanging from a car full of drunk college boys—screamed out at me, "..HEARD OFTHE LAWS OF NATURAL SELECTION? HA HA HA HA.." As they sped by me from behind, they swerved toward me threateningly. I kinda wish the driver had lost control, gotten himself into an irrecoverable sideways skid that would have stressed the sidewalls of his tires until they gave way and then the rims of his wheels would have gouged the pavement and flipped the car. Then there'd be at least one smashed pumpkin—a 20 year old skull—and all the rest of the boys would be scared, hurt, and desperate for help. And then they would be glad to see me, like when I was an EMT; they'd be willing to let me help them, they'd allow me to take care of their injuries, and to calm their hysteria. They would need me, and they would let me touch them.
That didn't happen. Those boys think they'll live forever, they probably still think so. And they think they'll never need another human, and they say so through their random insults and uncaring insolence. Unless there's a hole they want, and the girl—or the guy—who belongs to it demands compassion prior to passion. Then the boy will say, 'I need you,' and he'll get off. He'll get off from the pumping penetrations, but he'll get off even more and better from his little adolescent realization that some people are so lonely that you don't have to pretend that you care, you just have to say the words; and though your feeble lie may be blatantly obvious, the lonely ones will rip themselves open for you. It's quite a trip. Enjoy it.
the apartment is event number two since last installment. I'm quite sure the new owner, Farrell Properties, would be happy to let me stay. If I had a job. You see, everything is up in the air since my 'turning point', the epiphany which led to me walking out of work, which revealed to me that even one more second of business as usual will kill me.
One second... A visitor.
Well, that was refreshing; I just had an unusually hard-banging plow by Bobby, the preferred of the two cabbies who seek my affections from time to time. Bobby is the boyish blonde with the winning smile, and the heart of gold. I love eating his ass, and I know that violates all my rules for descriptive writing; it sounds gross, it's cliche, it plays on vulgarity... But you don't know the pheremones of Bobby, the powerful arousers carried on the scent of his skin, concentrated in those places of him where no one else ever goes—where I have just been. The smell of him is in my beard, on my chin and my cheeks.
I move my tongue and he squirms and twists his ankles out-ways. I push in between his cheeks, add suction and stop breathing, and soon he softly says, "I don't want to come yet." And I'm not even working on his cock. Then he asks to take me...
I cannot begin to calculate what that does for me, when he asks to take me; what mountains of soul-slush it moves, and sets to flowing once again; all the heaps of defensive cloaks it moves me to cast aside, like a pile of old winter coats no one will ever wear again. Or maybe I don't want to reveal to you what that does for me, maybe I want to keep it secret; I just want you to know that he did it, that he was into it, really into it. That he gripped my shoulders, until it made its home in me. Then he put his hands on my back while he found a rythym, and then put power in that rythym, and more power and more, and then he had to hold my hips, to hold on tight, to keep from losing me, to keep me from losing him, until he lost it, and lost it good.
Ahem.
finally, is the bus ticket. I'm thinking of wearing a T-shirt to the Inauguration: President Al Gore. But it is winter, so maybe a sign would make more sense. I can hear all the booing now. All the 'sore loserman' chants, from all those can't-think-for-themselves boobs whose need to belong to something—anything—is far greater than their need to create something—anything—which might reflect their own individual inner truth.
Welcome to Dubya-B-Fantasyland, where you are invited to destroy whatever you want, from queers to Sequoias; where you will never be asked to look within yourself, for a lurking inconsistency, a pesky irrationality, or evidence of an intellectual dishonesty. A land of self-delusion and happy-happy which serves the needs of the state, or rather, serves the needs of whatever soft-money happens to currently own the state.
Really, I go there as a witness, to acknowledge the crime of a stolen election, and to remember that crime in the precise place where such recollections will be LEAST welcome, and most necessary. I go there to know among many who choose not to know, and to shed tears among many who have no eyes.
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