[If you’d rather, help yourself to a printable pdf version.]
The clip-in pedals release and I am—wait! Stop the tape. Rewind. Take it back few frames, please.
Yeah, yeah. There. Slow motion, baby.
The dirt road is steep in this section. Yes it is. Okay, it’s hard to tell from this camera angle. Anyway, I attack it, carrying speed, crouched, butt hovering over the seat, arms bent slightly, head up. Note my athletic position. My knees are bent. Right here I feather the brakes, easy on the front brake. I see the two guys riding up the hill toward me. See them, just coming into the picture now? Bottom left. And…pause!
Perfect. Right here. Look how tranquil my face, how big the bulge in my spandexed crotch. I’m hung like donkey. One more frame, now. Good. Oh, this is hard to watch. The bike is now rolling forward. By rolling, you can see I don’t mean roll in the traditional sense of how a bike rolls down a hill. I mean: look. The bike has begun a summersault. This is where the pedal clips release me.
Let the tape roll. Slow. Slowly! Can you do frame by frame? You can?
Ok, there I go. Supermanning over the handle. A frog outstretched, mid-leap. A bottle rocket. You can see gravity kicking in……now. How far do you think I’ve flown down the hill? What would you say?
Ten feet? Ten feet my ass! That’s like fifty. The camera angle distorts it. Makes me look fatter and my trajectory shorter, you see. Oh wait, wait! Check this out.
Looklooklook!
Perfect Pete Rose. Sliding on my hands and chest and knees.
See the look on that bastard’s face when he rides up to me? You should have heard him. He goes, “whoa.” Dumb ass. I’m saying “fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.” They’re looking at me like I just walked away from a fiery hydrogen blimp disaster. Look at that, that guy’s taking a squirt from his water bottle now. Good a time as any for a water break, eh, pal? Thanks for offering me some, asshole.
That’s enough, you can eject the tape now.
You wanna see the rest? It’s just me going home.
Fine.
Yeah, it is crazy.
Okay we’re almost back to the car here. Yeah, there I am, all shaken up and bloody. Ha, ha, ha. See how bent my handlebar is? My chain is overlapping on the gears. It keeps sticking, that’s why I tip over right…there.
It’s not funny, man. Shut up. Shut up!
Okay this part is in my car. See that? I steer and shift with my fingertips so as not to smear the leather wheel and stick shift with my meaty, bloody palms. Then I get home and go straight to the shower. Blah, blah, blah.
Don’t look. I’m naked.
That water, though. I can assure you: It is acid. Let me tell you. I have strawberries on my knees, elbows, palms and a long, road-rash bruise/gash from the top of my hip bone to what I consider the top of my leg (where does your leg begin?).
So I washed out each wound in turn. I remember thinking about a similar bike accident as a child. I don’t have it on tape, though. My knee took the brunt of that crash. A few days after it happened, I was sitting in the bathtub in my parent’s bathroom. My mom, concerned about a purple, puss-ridden hole below my kneecap, decided to investigate with a pair of tweezers. She picked at it superficially for a while, then probed deeper. Deeper still. If my knee was the earth, then the tweezer tips were somewhere near the 4th sublevel of the depths of hell.
“Got something.”
And as she pulled the something out, a sound was made. In order to make it, suck air into your mouth while saying “ssssssssssssssss,” and right before you can’t suck in any more air, finish off the s’s by saying “soup,” still sucking in. Really pop on that final ‘p.’
Yeah, that’s it.
Dude. It was a piece of gravel the size of a marble. As she triumphantly held it before my crying eyes, I shuddered. It was like looking at a tumor or a testicle. All slimy and hard. She dropped it on the tile beside the tub. It didn’t make a noise like pebbles are supposed to make when dropped on tile. It made no noise at all, nor did it roll: it was draped in flesh.
So yeah. There I am. Still in the shower, washing my wounds. Washing, washing. This part’s kind of boring. Anyway, I work my way down to my hip. See? A lot of dirt down there, wouldn’t you say?
A. Lot.
There is lots of dirt in my butt crack. You can’t see it. And with all this shower water, it’s getting, well, muddy. You know.
There is mud, you see, in my asshole.
No shit. Roll credits.