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From Ulcer one Her
shoe flies across the tight little living room straight for his head and his
taped-up glasses missing him thanks to an instinctive jerk and through the
waves of a one time favorite “how can people be so cruel” he glares in anger
and speechless he hears “it’s easy” as she curses and cantankerously slurs
family finality physical environment and his past and present slamming the
door to their just as tiny bedroom he clenches his fist shakes his head then
inhales long and deep returns with an almost methodic sweep of the eye to
survey his quarters its objects the world that had come to host remnants and
threads and jagged memories and stillborn futures the stereo went on ah the
fucking dilemma of course “how can people be so ugly” it said again “it’s
easy” as he reaches for jacket scarf gloves tossed and buried here and there
making sure not to step on pillow cases corn flakes untitled cassettes and
stitched up plastic covering he makes for the outside door the air is crisp
the neighborhood asleep the dark beyond a pallid street lamp docile and
immense he drags himself to the bar round the corner on zerega ave. two there
the tune changes something about “a horse with no name” amidst grunts and
raucous laughter clinking glasses rubbing bodies big and flabby and rancid he
elbows his way to the pay phone absorbed uncaring reaches for the quarter
dials hey whatcha doing listen need to take a ride how about it then yeah
fine I’ll be there in a short while but doesn’t leave before treating himself
to a rye better yet gimme a beer to drop it in as you wish buddy pays then
downs it almost in one continued motion the music had changed barry manilow
uh that faggot his fingers twitching pulls his pants up and buttons his jacket
as he makes for the street alone he ponders looks like another night alone me
myself and my screwed up life three there
was a mounting sense of excitement as he made it across the bridge getting
his body positioned leaning forward constantly checking the thousands of
revolutions as he shifted gears keeping the willing four cylinder in the
power band he begins to breathe more than just air and slipping through the
mid-autumn night he senses the union the synthesis of man and machine for he
is still and space unreal and parkway lamps are now really only cosmic
indicators directional stability not requiring bleary-eyed technics
transfixed on their greenish martian screens monitoring futuristic satellites
oh no it needs other sensors and indescribable unquantifiable vectors to let
it snap and snake by ponderous old jalopies the dry crescent moonscape
becoming more nitid the road a glove a track a magnetic course that can not
will not but let him flow in the ether in the veins in the glances of what is
known of what is perceivable the only music adequate to this he thinks would
be a good old time stint by ronnie spector pure desire and dream and the
world a smooth flowing unreal plenum of sensation whirring and leaning left
then right then straight full blast and lurching forward with impeccable
precision with unending bittersweet joy with unbounded yearning to wheel off
the planet at a tangent. four heading
east he is pointlessly venturing into new yet familiar territories and he
seeks a source a light a smile oh how weary tiresome it all is the past he is
he knows like everyone else he’s had it with it all but he’s going nowhere
fast he hasn’t been going anywhere the past few years he’s been riding these
roads over and over he’s been riding to the north with friends and
girlfriends he’s had it with them he’s been racing cross county and cross
bronx and through ghastly and decrepit neighborhoods laughing and belching
with buddies and bottles with vans and trucks and patched up old bombs mere
memories now oh yeah in retrievable calendars in retraceable courses in
undying images that sculpted they were he’d remember them for years to come
in other realities younger spasms toward the north toward polaris he is
through with that he’s had enough of it he alters his orbit he opts for less
familiar who knows maybe uncharted topographies and virgin cement and
strangers he tries again to fix his bearings to focus on crisp referents to
tie down an entity and his body crouched and warm in the inner thighs
clutches the swift 400F whistling the modern siren a meteor on the long
island expressway five cutting
through the air and one with his machine one with the road one with the
universe feeling alive and feeling good and feeling together in the breezing
flux and mild darkness through his amber screen visor the dynamic stillness
to conspire against his feelings of just an hour ago he twitches and squints
approaching exit thirtyfour then grins grinds his teeth tightens his body no
no dice there’s no wanting the future the interstellar silence but again he
shakes his head saying to himself i’m through with her with them all really
with all of them and his mind recalls vaguely the northern ventures with the
social modalities with the feigned moralities oh yes with the perverse mundanities
he now even washes the tightlipped delusion with the shadow of a smile but lo
in disgust he recalls again as he leans over to slice by the vacuum of a
camper he rightens the bike he thinks of the time of the night which isn’t
the time of the state of the mind the buzzing actually the whizzing of the
valves the intense spewing of the exhaust that is the same he feels he
somehow knows the same as the motion of the trees barely visible intuitively
visible or the signals down the road or the flashing of a car stuck or the
flashing of a construction site at night silent or the flashing behind
scattered trees of faraway streetlamps or the kitchens or garages of the
houses of the streets of the people of the island of america who knows six those
flashing lights vanish as he turns facing ahead weaving a smooth streak over
the unrippled asphalt can’t be dilated pupils or petrified demeanor of
clenched teeth the fucking bitch he loosens and tightens his grip hardened
forearms and deltoids and lumbars heave as if to spur the stallion forward
even more and breathless there’s a smile somewhere barely visible enigmatic a
sphinx timeless and soft hued a symptom he muses there alone and one and all
with the world and all to himself with a precise sense of the earth of the
moving medium of the quantifiable vectors no time for formulas and figures
but the figure of a human bullet right here and now at the limit or almost of
the cycle’s alleged potential climbing to ninety ninetyfive
ninetyeight-milesanhour approaching the jones beach exit and still flying
cams whirring and grin now in ecstasy defiant and the exit ramp a plotted
ribbon in the stillness swishing by left and right of him he braces and
velvety the leaning the hugging of the roadway at oh such a terrific rate of
speed oh such a terrific rate of speed seven at
such moments his mind thinks about or rather imagines all over again the
fifth grade bicycle race through the baseball fields at clason point skidding
around the bases then around startled old folks behind the fence then also
around cars climbing sidewalks and knocking over trash cans and stubborn
girlfriends who don’t give up and play tough and crash and what’s the
difference if there are cars and pedestrians and dogs now weaving at fifty
and often at seventy miles per hours like that old fashioned hippy or is it
an aging angel who missed cloud and decade wiggling on the wrong motorcycle
with the wrong tires in the wrong lane but the ramp is near the gears are
quickly down and quick is the change of lane it seems unreal if only seen in
slow mo the 400F holds its own his certainly miraculous hanging in there
without ever really wondering without ever really considering what could what
would happen if but no no that is not likely bite your tongue it is not
possible in fact it doesn’t really matter eight the
northern state has less traffic at this hour fewer cars the two lanes
resembling a custom-built private secret race track he’d fantasize about with
his friends tighter bends stickier asphalt and therefore ah happiness more
speed more wild sensations more distance to cover more space to know a
greater void to rush into away from from friend and foe and family and yes
goddammit from wife from origins which means neighborhood actually at this
point he shoots to the suddenly unsafe ride as the pedals scrape the pavement
sparks flying leaving an intermittent trail in the darkness the comet the
capsule the bike embraces the curve and rolls fantastically onward and then
opening up the throttle it rights itself toward newer directions a better
road bed a shorter stretch of four lanes a short time to whiff by trees and
railings and then downward on the left side onward onward into the two lanes
only a thought a fleety doubt what if that’s right he mused relaxing his
forearm what if nine and
so the excursion into the night the plunging into the shadows deep away from
his existence his acquaintances his block in a given city in a known house
with that particular woman the whole purpose of the self-induced outburst the
trip to his friend’s house and all the turmoil and bile and darn it even the
objective danger of splattering himself all over long island all that and too
too bad the speeding metaphysical confabulation disappears ten suddenly
he is sought chased pursued by the illreputed nassau county highway patrol
but damn it if he is going to get caught now tonight that his adrenalin is
pumping gallons of bile to hell with cops and laws and rules and traditions
and constrictions the moment the private bumps into the public society itself
should be razed to the ground given to the dogs each and everytime it lashes
out to pride and status and feelings and his pocket fucking flatfooted
beerbellied pigs creeps the whole bunch of them don’t give me none of your
shit they’re protecting us they are the pliable tentacles of god knows what
financial moguls constantly rearranging the suffering venues of us poor
taxpaying shmucks abiding they are and loyal and true to a whimsical ghost
and trained to stay in wait like bloodthirsty panthers stalking motorists not
even the freedom to enjoy one’s hangups burning rubber on a deserted highway
chasing them as if criminals nailing them as if convicts toting their six
shooter at the click of the door to the devil them all we’ll see as he pumps
the accelerator leaning into the wind and focusing on the upcoming sweeping
bend damn it never stops does it but getting caught never never eleven things
haven’t been rosy for the past few years not to need an occasional bike ride
like a shot of heroin to put up with to contend to coalesce accommodate and
perform with a full spectrum of greys like the birthday gift and then the
school registration and the mother-in-law’s ramblings that sanctified blubber
bitch com’on man these guys won’t let up but you ain’t catching no one you
pickle-nosed fat-asses and oh the parkway turned formula circuit is even
smoother now no one in sight the air is dark and the sky crisp like the
machine bristling out of the apex of the bent the carbs on the honda a throaty
sucking to the max in third nearly eleven thou rpms kick into fourth hind
shocks compressing before thrusting up then speedshift into fifth are they
kidding with that oblescent obese aberration of car the odds my friend are
really not against him as he straightens the bike pointing it up on the
wantagh this time again alone no one ahead but the blur of a distant sign
zooming at alarming rates of speed hey wonder what she’ll do topped out his
friend might mind but this is an emergency an insurgence an escape piercing
the tenebrae toward jupiter maybe saturn yeah out of the solar system but no
he can’t get caught he’s got to stay here and opt out for he won’t spend the
night in jail putting up with the absurd questioning and specious contentions
imagine getting kicked in the butt and muscled into their jalopy and then the
blood curdling clang of the cell door like that time near the reservoir when
he was racing his friends and luckily the cops didn’t find the pot but only a
registration mistake wheeuw no way man not this time though he was bitter and
mad and slightly anxious he was in control and he wasn’t going to call his
friend to bail him out nor his wife or father and his brother is a lost case twelve in
the silent buzzing of the rearview mirrors he sees the cops behind faraway he
can’t hear their blaring but only the multicolored twitching above the
headlights clearly determined to capture the perpetrator we’ll see guys we’ll
see straining the eyes until there after the overpass there’s a hill they’ll be
out of line of sight there’s an exit which one no time to recall wherever it
takes he’ll be there he leans downshifting forcefully gracefully right shoe
whisking by a millimeter off the pavement frozen knuckles cranking up testing
the brakes approaching a signal light looks familiar luckily it’s green a
quick glance left slowing down he can hear the engine and feel its heat as he
points east on route twentyfour this must be levittown uhm he slips by a
couple of lumbering sedans no sign of the pursuer yet he knows he can’t
outrun radio dispatches those bastards must have woken up the entire nassau
county force yeah why not the national gard while at it you goons for there
are no nearby open roads and few side streets for a moment the noose tightens
he relaxes hi grip the bike and the biker assume a boulevard composure but
shit soon they’ll be swarming all around him they might even shoot you can’t
put it past these excitable suburban cowboys eyes darting in search of
something he is the prey sensing the hunter it’s like cause and effect basic
survival you wanna save you ass then be a fox a snake a chameleon get off the
road vanish blend into the ceilings of the night like a bat let’s turn at the
next intersection there those lights a parking space almost full good there’s
even some people in fact it looks familiar holy shit so here we are his
friend’s disco joint hopefully he’ll appreciate a surprise visit then another
quick check behind all is normal as he pulls between two cars and shuts down
his steed locks the helmet cracks his knuckles runs his fingers through his
hair looks up at the huge sign reading decameron |