HUMOR

Chasing Life on the Back of Death

He died as he lived: Disobeying his wife and riding motorcycles

illustration by author

This year, on the brink of my 40th birthday, I’ve begun to covet other men’s motorcycles.

Every time I hear a bike engine, that seductive grunt, I whip my eyes to the road. I want to see the bike, badly. I need to know, “Can I picture myself on you?”

I’m not interested in bikers. I hardly look at them. Some well-meaning folks endure their midlife crisis by ignoring the bikes and climbing onto these bikers.

illustration by author

Not me.

I want to emerge on the other side of the crisis still married to the wife I have now, but with a bike.

It’s what our marriage needs.

What I mean is, our marriage won’t survive another conversation about me getting a bike. If I don’t get one, what’s going to stop all the bike-talk?

I’ll lose her.

ME: I need one.

MINDY: You’ll die.

ME: Every man dies, not every man really lives.