HUMOR
Chasing Life on the Back of Death
He died as he lived: Disobeying his wife and riding motorcycles
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.
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.
MINDY: If you quote Braveheart again, we’re getting a divorce.
It seems I have no choice: For my wife’s sake, for marriage, I’m getting one.
I hear you asking, “Why do you need a bike so badly?”
ONE: I already told you: I love marriage, and this is the only way to save it.
TWO: Motorcycles are small. It’s easy to imagine there’s no bike beneath you, to pretend the bike’s speed and power are products of your body alone. On a bike, your body is mighty. It is fast.
And what a LOUD body you have.
All the better to mesmerize you with, my dear.
And, as I get older, what my body wants most is to go very fast and be very powerful and…
