Is it Really Just a Number?

It’s been said that a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.  True, but is a theory you’d want to test out if the rose was instead named the All-American Summer Armpit?  I don’t know that I’d be brave enough.

All that to say, I’m having trouble with this “40” thing.  And I kinda have been, actually.  Since, like, I don’t know…I was 39 or so.

At first I was excited.  Big time.  I have, what is known in some circles as a “baby face” and I thought, that if people at least knew that I was 40, that they would give me a pass on the face and think me more cultured and mature.  Turns out, I was sort of deluding myself a bit.  People are shocked when they hear that I am 40, but it hasn’t bought me any more “boy, you must have some real life experience” credits than before.  Kind of a bummer. 

All that aside, though, I’m starting to feel a tiny bit of…well, what can only be described as panic.  There are a lot of things that I am no longer, at 40.  I’m no longer able to metabolize yesterday’s stack of comfort pancakes, for example.  They seem, now to simply reform themselves, much like the Robert Patrick terminator, in my stomach, where they proceed to turn on their end and push outward against my belt. 

I am no longer able to find an occasional gray hair.  I see them every day, every time I look in the mirror, as they stand up to say good morning no matter what hour of the day.

I am no longer able to drink a six pack and wake up the next morning ready to drink another.  For that matter, I am no longer able to get in the morning without grunting, groaning, inhaling sharply, cracking or popping something or farting. 

I am no longer able to walk into a bar wondering if I will need to grab my id out of the glove compartment. 

I am no longer able to take for granted that, if someone is wildly interested in what I am saying, it’s because he or she really wants to fuck me.  Further, I am no longer certain that a dinner invitation means I’ll be working off the meal later that night.

I’m no longer able to tell myself that my Harley isn’t a mid-life crisis vehicle, that I don’t look like I’m trying to hold onto youth when I’m driving my Jeep, or that playing my radio too loud isn’t more annoying than cool.

I think my days of free passes are over. 

So yeah…40 is stressing me out.  I’m hoping that, by 41, I will be a little more comfortable in mid-life shoes.  That I will embrace my adulthood with a “yeah, bitch!” attitude and the confidence to match.

I hope.

On the Road Again...

So…last year, I bought a motorcycle.  My first.  Not only had I never driven one in my life—well, unless you count that time a friend of mine let me try his out in a parking lot and upon stopping (after approximately 18 feet of driving), promptly went over on my side.  But, I don’t count that one.  So, not only had I never really driven one, but I’d barely spent any time riding on one. 

But I have a friend, John.  And, I suspect we all have a “John” in our lives.  He’s the friend that agrees with you when you say, “I think that a quick jog down the middle of Main Street wearing nothing but a clown nose is exactly what I need right now.  What do you think?”  Last year, when I said, I’m thinking of doing the Coney Island Polar Bear swim the first weekend of March, he’s the guy who came with me for the seven plus hours in the car with the stop off in NJ to visit Shades of Death Road. 

Anyway, John started cruising Craigslist when I once cavalierly announced that I wanted a Honda Rebel.  And then he got me cruising Craigslist…just out of curiosity.  I, to this day, have no idea what possessed me to call on the ad that went in one Saturday morning for a Honda Rebel for $1,000 obo.  And I have no idea what I was thinking when I told the guy that I’d like to come look at it.  And I sure haven’t a clue why I ultimately bought the thing for $750 that I didn’t have and had to borrow from John. 

But, all those “no ideas” notwithstanding, I bought the thing and when we got it back to my place, John said, “ride your bike up the driveway.”  I, literally, looked at him as though he’d spoken Farsi in a falsetto voice.  I just couldn’t comprehend the idea that I was going to get on a motorcycle—my motorcycle—and drive it…even such a short distance as the length of my driveway.  But I did.  Holy shit, I drove a motorcycle and didn’t crash and didn’t tip over and didn’t kill anybody.  Holy shit, I just drove a motorcycle…my motorcycle.  Heh.

Despite his ache (and my own) to do something wrong, something harmlessly illegal, something victimlessly criminal, John wouldn’t take me riding until I’d gotten the bike registered and insured and passed my motorcycle permit test.  Understandable, as I wouldn’t have wanted to get caught, which I was certain I would.  I had melodramatic visions of pulling out of my driveway and immediately be surrounded by police cars racing from either end of my street to box me in and pull weapons before I could make an heroic getaway a la Thelma  & Louise.  A helicopter would be circling overhead, its floodlight pinning me to the street like an insect to a specimen board. 

Melodrama aside, I got my permit; I got the bike registered and insured and John and I went riding.  He came over one night and said, “Let’s go.”  And we just went.  No fanfare, no drama, no jerking around.  We simply got on the bikes and rode. 

Terrifying.

Exhilarating.

Addicting.

Terrifying.

Exhilarating. 

I don’t have a short clue as to why I ended up waiting so long before I did this.  Seriously.  I let my apprehension…cowardice…get the best of me sometimes.  I exaggerate things in my brain and then just get frozen in place.  It’s stupid, but it happens.

Anyway.  It wasn’t long before I had my eye on something a bit more grand in scale. 

In poking around—as I am often wont to do—I discovered a relatively new bike in Harley’s line of Sportster models.  The Iron 883. 

When I was younger, I’d seen someone, somewhere on a Sportster.  I couldn’t tell you the model, the color, the anything more than I immediately fell in love with it.  It was another The Terminator moment in my life.  When I was a freshman in high school, the original terminator movie came out.  And, I don’t know if you remember, but at the end, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) was driving off into the Mexican sunset in a topless red Jeep Renegade, German Sheppard at her side.  Since I’d already fallen in love with her ninety minutes earlier, I fell in love with the Jeep.  Being who I am, I knew that, when it came to be time for me to buy a vehicle, there wouldn’t be another one that would make me happy.  In 2000, I finally got my own Jeep.  It’s black, not red, and I haven’t yet driven off in to the Mexican sunset, but I have taken it cross country, top down, music blaring. 

It was just about like that with the Iron.  It was not exactly what I thought of when I thought of Sportsters, but it was better.  Matte black tins and tank, low to the ground, me sized.  I fell in love at first sight and knew that that was “the one”. 

In July 2010, I bought my very own Iron 883. 

It’s in the shop right now.

Once I get over my anger at it for making a second trip to the shop in about a month, I’ll post you further. 

Dear You...

I feel like I’ve written this a hundred times…and that I’ll be writing it a hundred more.  Of course, it hasn’t been nearly that many, but…it might be some day. 

Through all of the writes and rewrites, what remains consistent is the fact that I am utterly taken by you.  No matter how hard I try not to be, I can’t seem to help it or get over it.  No matter how much I reason with myself, nothing I say makes enough sense.

I see you here and there; I know a little of you—enough to make me want to know more—and I can’t help but wonder what it might be like to hold your hand…to sit down somewhere and talk, just you and I…to look you in the eye through it all.

I know…you have yours and I have mine…I might stray; I would never ask you to.  Were I someone else, someone a little bolder, a little more confident, a little more reckless, I don’t know that I wouldn’t.  But I’m not, so I guess that means you’re in the clear.  Right?

God, I don’ t know what it is about you!  What is it that makes it so damn hard to get you out of my head.  I read books, I watch TV and movies, I fill my days with work and distractions and still, the minute that I am unencumbered, the minute my head is free, you slide back in like water through the slightest opening in my wall, filling my head with images of someday being allowed to kiss you.  Moving pictures of our lips meeting and the intoxication that always accompanies those first kisses.  Inevitably, the kiss will play itself out in my head, sometimes a gentle brush of our lips leading to a measured, rhythmic ebb and flow of kissing, sometimes a frantic, near manic crush of mouth on mouth.  Whatever the beginning, whatever the act, the dream always leaves me feeling as though I’d been physically struck.

Sometimes, you come to me at night…inhabiting my dreams, convincing me that you are real, that you are really looking me in the eye, touching my skin, kissing my lips.  Sometimes, for long minutes I believe that you are there, that we are together, that all of the images that fill my head are finally becoming something more than lingering thoughts and desperate wishes…….

But then, invariably, I awaken to find you are not there, that all I have is the memory of what it felt like for our lips to meet……..