I, MOTORCYCLIST

This superb piece is written by Boris Mihailovic. It is taken from his "Twisty Bits" column in AMCN September 11, 2012.

I, MOTORCYCLIST

I, Motorcyclist, am better than you, Driver. In every way, and by any measure you’d care to make, I am better than you. That is what accounts for my smug, self-satisfied grin as I carve past you in traffic wit
h unsurpassed grace and incomparable élan.

Of course, you cannot see my smile, because you are sealed inside your stinking, crawling cage being spoon-fed your idiot opinions via the radio and being a little bit outraged at the disdain I display for the apparent might of your car…and secretly wishing you were a tenth as cool as me.

Perhaps you even tell yourself that one day…one day, when the kids leave home and the wife gives you permission, you’ll consider, in the vaguest possible way, entertaining a notion that would see you make a vague commitment that might eventually lead to you actually owning a motorcycle. One day.

Or maybe you’re far too busy texting on your oxymoronically-named smartphone to even register me joyously turning you into my bitch – especially when you’re in a car that costs 10 times more than my bike, but doesn’t offer you even a 100th of the pleasure that I get every day. Either way, while you’re drowning out the universe and sealing yourself off from the glorious world by any and all means possible, I, Motorcyclist, am the living, sparkling, roaring and irremediably awesome avatar of everything that is meaningful in being a human, and drinking deeply from the overflowing cup of life.

Yes, it is true that what I do is sublimely dangerous. It is fraught with dire peril at every turn and potential disaster dogs every revolution of my wheels. And that is why I do it. And this is why I live. For to risk greatly is to live utterly. And while it may somehow satisfy you to simply exist in a coffin filled with artificial air and the odour of chemicals designed to replicate vanilla cookies, I can assure you that does not do it for me and those like me. Can you thus even have the temerity to wonder why I, Motorcyclist, hold you in such utter and complete contempt? I have sympathy for the homeless and the starving and the disease-afflicted – but for you, Driver, prisoner of your own cowardice and desperation, I have nothing but illimitable contempt.

Do you find it strange that no matter what the weather, I motorcyclist, am out there, sniffling back the snot, or blinking away the rain, or staring wild-eyed through a visor fogged with my own familiar breath as I dice willingly with death and laugh happily in the face of my oft-promised doom?

Well don’t wonder. There’s no point. I could not explain it to you in a way you could ever understand. You’re just too stupid. You must be. Otherwise you would be riding a motorcycle and wondering, like me, and those like me, what kind of abominable demon so reduces a man as to cause him to drive rather than ride, while his manhood languishes in some tightly sealed jar that is closely supervised by his sexless wife.

You see, I, Motorcyclist, know some things about your condition that you, Driver, don’t want me to know. I know these things because, but for a conscious decision on my part not to emasculate myself in a futile act of appeasement, I, would be just like you.
But I am not. I am better than you.

I may on occasion be cold. I may on occasion be wet. I may on occasion be so impossibly terrified that I forget to breath. I may have lost friends. I may have lost jobs. I may even have lost my mind a time or two.
But I, Motorcyclist, have never lost the desire to live on my own terms. And I have never taken the insultingly short life we have been granted for granted. For that is simply unforgivable in this world and the next.

And this uncompromising drive for self-gratification via a simple set of handlebars, a pair of wheels and a basic motor has seen me rewarded in ways which would cripple your self-esteem even further. I have laughed with the greatest of men. I have shared in the mightiest of adventures. I have braved the most searing hardships. And I, Motorcyclist, have danced upon the blade of a knife with my heart in my throat and the bike seat in my arse and thought it magnificent.

All this and more I have done while you, you miserable, soft-bellied excuse for a man, have driven a car.

That is your legacy and that is how you have squandered your time upon this earth – in an awkwardly mobile prison, sold to you as some kind of social status symbol, and amateurishly steered around the country to a soundtrack of whining and mewling and hectoring. You have forever denied yourself the grace and glory that is motorcycling when it is done with bright love and sweet madness – and this why, I, motorcyclist, am forever so much better than you.

And you know it.