I grab my computer. Before I place it in my backpack, I hesitate. Here, at this moment, I have to opportunity to change the future. At least this is what I think.
As a child, whenever I would do something that in my mind was catastrophic, afterwards I would fret on that critical moment when I could have changed things. Once I knocked over this strange multicolored glass bowl my mother used as a decoration in our living room while playing with my dinosaurs. When that flea market trinket shattered on the floor, my mother’s anger reverberated through the house leaving me in tears. After offering her all the money I had in the world, $20, I lamented the moment I decided the dinosaurs were going to climb that icy mountain - otherwise known as the end table. She refused the twenty, and in hindsight it was less about a $5 dollar piece of glass as much as living in a house with essentially four boys, my father included. At the time, though, it was practically a natural disaster of epic proportions.
So as an adult I occasionally have moments where I reverse the process. I picture a disaster such as my computer shattering into bits on the pavement, the result of an accident on my morning commute, before actually venturing out. A strong urge to set the laptop back on my desk wells up from inside me - a mechanism of self preservation - even as I reassure myself that there’s plenty of padding, that more than likely I’ll fall face first, that a computer is something that can be replaced.
I shuffle the pack to make room for the computer. I place it in. This little laptop is a big part of my life, and its destruction would be a huge handicap to my sense of well being. It’s not hard to understand how that is. As a tool for being connected to various social circles, experiencing culture, and expressing myself, this little piece of consumer electronics is an extension of my self image - a valid psychological concept, so it’s destruction is understandable dramatic.
But my self image has faced many epic disasters lately. With the laundry list of defects in my physical appearance, personality, etc. that my ex-wife assured me were the reasons she was leaving me and with the absence of my children every other week, I’m left to reconstruct a sense of self out of the rubble left by divorce. And in the middle of cinder blocks that made up the foundation of who I was and the framing that defined me, I realize life is full of decisions and consequences.
But the choices and paths that lead to this end I don’t fret about. In other words, if at the age of 21 I where to look at the events in my life of that year and think in reverse as I did with the computer this morning, I would still proceed forward. I would do it all again.
I grab the bike by the handle bars and risk all that the laptop represents for the thrill of living because after all, human beings are obnoxiously resilient creatures, and I have a very adaptable personality.
It’s been two weeks since the kidney biopsy and even more since I last rode my bike, but finally, after a long weekend out of town with friends, I’m back in the banana seat again. Well, maybe not a banana seat but just the standard uncomfortable ten speed butt pad.
And the sore legs, short breath, and utter fear feel great. With the diagnosis of a very mild IGA nephropathy behind me, I’ve put to rest one of the many retarded problems I’m facing this year. And as the exercise evaporates the stress of life, I’m beginning to feel whole again.
So as I recondition my body and dodge tons of emotionally charged steel in the morning and evening treks, I can admit life is good. That is, life is good if you ask me shortly after the ride home when I’m high on endorphins.
In the fluorescent glow of the production bathroom mirrors, I carefully examine my hair. The morning bike ride inevitably leaves it disheveled, so immediately after arriving at work, I make a few slight adjustments and proceed to change into my work attire.
But it’s not only my hair. Lately I’ve become overly conscious of my teeth. In the light of the bathroom mirrors, they can fool me into believing they’re white, but I know in the warm yellow sunshine, they are hideous. This is a fact my ex-wife pointed out to me during the intervening months after I discovered her affair and before I filed for divorce. The whitening strips haven’t helped.
I would content that self image is irrevocably link to physical appearance. It’s inescapable, a fact of life with the exception of the few giftedly ugly, those who understand they are ugly by nature, have accepted it, and by the strength of their beautiful minds are able to transcend reality. For the rest of us, the border line handsome, it is a struggle. As I pass the mirrors on my way out, I stop and take stock. I groan in frustration.
It’s understandable that for single men, hair is important. As I rapidly approach thirty, I grieve my growing forehead. I work my hand desperately above it to create an illusion of thick lustrous hair by working what’s on the top of my head forward, but it only last for the transit to my desk, and as I walk down the hall to the main restrooms, I puff out my chest while working my hand in the same motions on my scalp as when my view my reflection hoping my hair falls in the right alignment, that a pretty girl doesn’t pass by, that I reach the mirror soon.
But this narcissism isn’t limited to single people. When married, one’s self image becomes bound to that of their spouse. It is united, and how a person feels about themselves is dependent not only on their own image, but that of the person they share a life with, maybe predominately on the other person, their living reflection. And I think like with most people, my own feelings about myself when married were complicated. At times I felt good, proud, others, ashamed.
And it’s a matter of control. The most power a person ever has over their image is their ability to manage their own, so when your image becomes bond to another, you lose half your control. The mornings when my then wife would roll out of bed late, her belly hanging out of her shirt, I internalized it. The days she would wear ripped jean shorts and lounge lazily on a couch with unshaven legs while company was over, I saw myself as if in a mirror. Not that my ex-wife wasn’t beautiful. She could be very beautiful, but the long stretches of time when she fell into depression, manifested it in her appearance, and then demanded that I accept her as beautiful, I lost control of how I felt about myself, knew it wasn’t in my power to change this shadow of the person. It didn’t matter what I said, but I saw myself in her, my failure to make her feel beautiful.
When we look for mates, we look for people who in some way improve, amplify, the way we feel about ourselves. The best decision isn’t always apparent, and youth has a way of letting people down. Looking back on it, the girl I should have married I let slip by for the stupidest reasons, superficial ones. She was a women when most girls where still adolescent, and when the aesthetic revolves around undeveloped bodies, it’s hard to fully appreciate a fertile figure. Aside from the deviant form of her body from that of the thin pale girls I found attractive at the time, she had qualities, that in hindsight, were priceless.
When a man finally hits his mark, and his seed begins to grow into a living being at the same time transforming the body of the woman he has sown, it clicks inside his head. As I watched my ex-wife’s body transform with the birth of our first child, slowly I began to appreciate the beauty of hips, the healthy plumpness of fat, the fertility. It seems that it takes the average woman’s body roughly a year to recover from giving birth, but when it does, it isn’t the same, it is experienced, proven, and manifest a beauty that wasn’t before realized. Suddenly, the despised standard of beauty that resembles an adolescent boy’s figure isn’t appealing, and woman is fully appreciated for who she is. She is revealed.
My ex-wife brought about this realization in me, and it was then that I regretted dismissing such a beautiful form as the girl I now feel I should have married for something so trite as a social aesthetic. I passed up not only a fertile female body, but a wonderful mind and compassionate individual who seemed confident in her own self image that, in hindsight, would have produce a productive, healthy relationship all for the ignorance of youth.
But no sense in lamenting the past. The present is where it's at. With comments on my ‘pointed’ face and bad teeth, my ex-wife, in belittling me to justify herself, has resulted in my narcissistic obsession with mirrors. A little ex-wife stands behind me while I gaze on my visage in the morning, afternoon, and evening, pointing out all the imperfections.
And it’s not only this voice, but the female form I pursue in my unattached prowl. Actively, I discriminate among potential mates for the young, firm, and a standard of female physical beautiful that I hope will reflect the youth and health of my own form. As I gaze in the mirror, the image reflected back is dependent upon it’s ability to attracted the afore mentioned, so it would seem experience hasn’t taught me anything.
The shape of body is only a part of an image. A personality can transform a homely appearance into beauty. It is meaning giving life to form, and secretly, I lust after the giftedly ugly, for someone, unlike my ex-wife, who is secure enough in themselves, physically, emotionally, mentally, to amplify my own self esteem, but this isn’t a person you can find by looking at them. It is someone you have to experience. A beauty that must be coax out of a undistinguished anatomy to reveal itself.
And this isn’t the sum of fulfillment. Sometimes a force out of anyone’s control can effect your own self image. Whereas I rode my bike to work on Tuesday, I didn’t ride it home. I spent most of the day in agony because of a vein in my leg. Whether it is because of the treatment for my failing kidneys, an over exuberant exercise routine, or just age, I have been confined to inactivity, and this effects how I view myself. I am no longer the youthful healthy guy trying to coax his hair into submission in the bathroom mirror after riding to work, but a sickly aging man who hobbles down the hallways in pain passing the youthful attractive girls with disdain for the pity I imagine they feel for me. This I have little control over. My body simply will not respond, and so I feel old, undesirable.
The mirror reflects an image, but the viewer imposes meaning on what is seen. Today, I see a sick broken individual, not even worthy of the giftedly ugly.
Like the bike ride to work, the daily perspective of the image reflected back is wrought with ruff terrain. What a pitiful metaphor, but I’ve themed this blog so eff it. During the summer as road crews gouge the pavement with monstrous equipment, the thin wheels of my bike lose their air, pummeled by the uneven pavement. It makes pedaling labored, but when I arrive home, I always refill the void and start the next day fresh with inflated tires. Whatever that means.
And maybe what it means is that when this leg is healed, I can stop in front of the mirror after the morning bike ride and the illusion of a young, healthy, handsome man will appear. My ego will once again be inflated. I will be again happily narcissistic, hopelessly superficial.
So, this morning’s ride was wrought with danger. I don’t know why.
Maybe I have my own male ego to blame. Just as I started down Franklin Street this morning, another male biker, the shiny corporate kind, sped past me, the click click of his gears switching in rapid succession sounding as he effortlessly glided further and further away from me. My gears, on the other hand, are always slipping into the hardest one to peddle.
As I watched him disappear into the horizon, I pumped my legs faster and lost all sense of caution. Then I caught out of the corner of my eye a large black SUV crossing the four lane road with a timing that put me right in front of it’s silver grill at the most inconvenient moment. I slammed on my brakes.
Whether she had been aware of me before or not, I can’t say for sure, but the silver headed woman stopped her vehicle in the middle of the road and waved her boney hands in a gesture that beckoned me to continue. Stuck in high gear and with much effort I peddled on.
And then there was the green light that, at the exact moment I swerved into the middle of the lane and resolved to speed through it, changed to yellow and then to red. Bikes do not travel as fast as cars, and I forget this often. The light had been red for much too long before I wearily rode through the intersection eyeballing the waiting cars.
Shortly after that, my adrenaline racing, a tractor-trailer started backing into a plastics plant. I maneuvered to the front of it and into oncoming traffic when I realized there was a car coming from the opposite direction. I slammed on the breaks. I waited and waited feeling the hatred of all the drivers I had pissed off for the last few blocks as they too waited behind me. As the truck pulled back and then forward, I made my move circling around the back of it and hoping to escape my shame.
But the accident happened before any of this. As I was approaching an intersection, I glanced over my shoulder to check for turning cars and to keep tabs on another male corporate biker who had been behind me for a block. My bike traveling at a good clip, as I turned back around my right eye made contact with a very stiff tree branch. I came to an abrupt halt.
Being single now, I’ve felt more of an urge to compete. I can’t help. It’s innate, but I think it might kill me soon.
She chews on the cord of her headphones feverously, hands and legs twitching as she scrolls through screen after screen bearing the distinctive layout of myspace. Everyday I ride my bike to work, I watch a large demographic spectrum of people scour myspace from a cushy chair in a sunlight alcove of the public library as I wait for traffic to die down.
It is from this vantage point I usually write these entries, but when I can't, or don't, want to write, I snoop, and imagine what dramas are unfolding that cause the young and old, male and female to nervously, intently, click through page after page.
My route starts by gently climbing a large hill. Like traversing a terrace, I zig zag back and forth along neighborhood streets avoiding all the steep inclines until I reach the top. Then, like a roller coaster, I plunge down the hill on a one way street and into the river valley.
Hollywood taught me parked car doors are always opening just as a guy on a bike drives by, so I keep to the left side to avoid being abruptly stopped by one. I’m no fool. I pay attention.
This puts me in a difficult position. In avoiding one obstacle, I complicate another. The cars that are mobile must drive in between me and the parked cars which isn’t a problem in and of itself, but at the bottom of the hill, I have to cross back over to the right side, and to do this, I have to look behind me to see if anyone is there.
The loud balding fat man that taught drivers ed in high school warned me that whenever you look over your shoulder, you tend to pull your hands, and the car, in the same direction. That applies to bikes too, and as I glanced over my shoulder this morning, I veered into an oncoming car, quickly jerked the other way, and, all while speeding down a paved hill, wobbled as a weary driver sped past.
Experience has taught me I don’t want to die. My arteries filled with adrenaline, I slowed the bike down, cautiously looked over my shoulder again, and veered to the right side. I pulled up on the sidewalk and briefly consider purchasing a mirror.
The things I’ve learned about rain & bicycles:
a.) It doesn’t matter what the radar says.
b.) Brakes don’t work well when wet.
c.) A Poncho may keep parts of you dry, but it isn’t designed to make you feel dry.
d.) Wheels spray lots of water in the most inconvenient directions, namely the crotch and the posterior. It’s wise to bring extra underwear.
e.) Road debris, when wet, sticks to everything.
f.) There are no windshield wipers for eyes.
g.) When you put Polmade in your hair before you bike in the rain, it washes out and into your eyes where it stings and blinds you at the very moment you need your eyes open the most. It’s just a stupid thing to do.
It’s not me I fear for. In my backpack I carry an assortment of expensive electronic equipment that isn’t fond of swimming; a laptop, a cellphone, an ipod. Summer storms are sudden and complete, drenching with the fury of a grandmother’s kisses and leaving the recipient bewildered and very very wet.
On the radar, pockets of green and red float across the screen immersed in a field of gray. Outside, the sky looks threatening, bellowing forth its fury from some distant flash of lightening while patches of blue tempt with security. It’s full of mixed messages.
Like every evening I ride my bike, I head to the downtown library to catch up on some writing before making the twenty five minute ride home, but tonight I sit next to a window nervously watching the low flying clouds skip across the tops of buildings as the banners that hang from light post blow in a steady wind. The radar promises a break, but when and how long, I don’t know.
On any paved surface used frequently for vehicle travel are grooves, slight indentations breaking the thoughtfully constructed arch of the road, where the weight of daily activity is impressed. I slip along the far left side of the street, too light to leave my own impression.
It’s no secret. The brain likes repetitive behavior. It wrinkles up in excitement leaving huge canyons which direct the flow of behavior. Even the motivations that lead my wife to break her commitment were the spark of childhood memories and a complete reliving of her late teens. In the last months of our marriage, as she swung in a playground swing, she was so lost in reminiscing that she was only vaguely aware of me and children, trap in an idealized past, stuck in the ruts of good memories and childhood lovers now miraged by a 31 year old department supervisor/death metal drummer.
But just as routine can be the ruin, it can also be salvation out of trying times. As I transverse the complex intersections, I catch myself lost in thought, using only lower functions of the brain to negotiate the traffic and am made slightly nervous by the realization, but the sense of satisfaction derive from the morning ride now reduced to subconscious activity is so complete, that I feel an overwhelming sense of well being, the triggers for all the insecurity of the last three months washed away by endorphins. It is a daily cleansing so satisfying that even the sharp pain emanating from my right foot, possibly broke from the strain of running on concrete bare foot at a water park, isn’t enough to keep me from the ritual.
Just as much as the grooves in the road are caused by the barrage of tires, they seem to hold those wheels on course. Such is the way with wrinkles. This is healthy behavior that transforms the ruin of my life into an optimistic future, and even though the weight of my vehicle leaves no visible impression on the concrete I travel, there is a rut there, keeping my course fixed.
Let’s talk probabilities.
My route intersects a handful of busy roads. Although they can be typed by their properties, each intersection offers it’s own set of unique variables based on geographical location, time of day, and likelihood of being run over by a heartless moron.
My first major intersection is a six lane highway crossing a four lane road with turn lanes in each direction. It is the main artery for morning traffic to the downtown area, and even though my commute starts well before morning rush hour, traffic is heavy enough to be confusing.
As I approach, I survey the terrain taking note of the light sequence. I have to cross twice, so whether I cross the four lane first or second depends on which set of lights are green. This morning it is the six lane that is go, so I start to cross the four lane looking over my shoulder first.
The real threat at any intersection is turning cars. Whether it’s a sneaky right hand turn, or someone gunning a left across traffic, either can spell death, or, at the least, a cracked skull. A women in her fifties with a convenience perm eyes at me coldly, her right hand flasher blaring an angry yellow. The way her lips sit frozen in a horizontal line signals a threatening disposition. I stop as she doesn’t hesitate coming close to the curb, her mouth salivating for a taste of my spilt blood, her beady eyes glaring at me through the passenger side window.
As the rush of semi’s, SUV’s, trucks, and the occasional economy class come rushing by, I cross, uneasy of the speeding drivers and their human emotions.
Shortly after crossing the six lane, I coast down a quiet side street for several blocks then hit a busier but wider four lane road. Light traffic dominates until I hit a series of four laners feeding the downtown business district. It is these brief crossings where the statistical probability of my being smashed goes from a soothing blue to a saturated red. The rhythmic patterning of my breathing becomes erratic as I lift my head from the immediate pavement and process all the factors of a very real time problem.
And this is how I approach my impending love life. As I adopt the bachelor title, I shrug off the suggestion of the bar culture I must become apart of by virtue of my new definition. In the gradating scale of probability, my hope of finding a meaningful relationship in a judgment impaired environment of desperation is a cold blue. Getting laid on the other hand, a steaming red.
As I survey the landscape for potential mates, I factor in the variables and assign color values to the various places I can invest my time. The library, a moderate green. A film festival in the arts district, a warm orange.
But in all the places in this city I have evaluated, there isn’t a single red. My chances of finding a girl are less than my chances of getting my skull cracked.
But it doesn’t pay to be rational in love. Riding a bike through busy downtown roads is a game of measured risk, but crashing into a relationship with a member of the opposite sex is an occurrence that once transpires must be dealt with through compromise and work. Red, green, blue, it doesn’t matter, the factors are too numerous to calculate, and many of them are well beyond anyone’s control.
And the probability of that accident happening blankets the landscape in red, whether amorous or contentious, it’s all the sum of human emotions.
