Motorcycle Story
There was a spectacle, and the unwitting participants had, for the occasion, twisted themselves into a circle the likes of a grade school bullying ring. The day was cool, and the weatherman had predicted rain, but at the moment the air was more heavily saturated with noise than with the dull throb of humidity. With the sun ricocheting off the masses of sweating summer bodies, but a hulking grey cloud a mile past the horizon, the boulevard was speckled with a rash of sunglasses – black and bold, transparent, liquidic, graceful sharp or loud – and the world never appeared to enjoy its last gasp of vibrancy so much as it did today. At that moment, this very exact one, right now: now! — the center of the earth happened to be the cobbled boardwalk, grey with the smut and soot of a million trampling footsteps, linking the far away embraces of two bohemian alleys in downtown Manhattan. And on the bullseye of the world, two crowds formed, like moist fungal colonies. Music pulsated, physically tattooing against pedestrians’ backs, toes, necks, and fingernails, from all corners of the wold: the window with the construction-paper curtains, the naked man on the balcony (he will die in two days when the rotting wooden railing collapses), the ground-floor apartment with lipstick petunias and plastic pink flowerpots, the near-homeless man (sign: OLD SCHOOL HIP HOP BY TIMES FEETURED ARTIST, $12) who wears a fleecy black beard that, little known fact, harbors all the world’s secrets – until a whisper or well-lubricated tongue releases them, that is to say. At one end of the street a team of break dancers performs to techno and the marching, lockstep sound of clapping from the crowd. They are spattered in red and white, du-rags and gel soaked spikes like a jaded dragon’s ridged spine; one blonde girl (from Connecticut but she says she’s from the ghetto) with a streak of orange flame alighting her hair; the dark faces of aged ebony with the smell of Africa, that hidden world of Before, still spicing their Macy’s colognes. Step right, left, right left clap twice, while a man spins the world from the rounded fulcrum of his brow (How does he do it?). Having completed the feat, the man with crow eyes who can turn the world on his head floats the rims of his chafing lips upwards, and while the argent caps of his teeth are artificial, the smile is a genuine one.
From that mirror of a tooth is reflected the universe, in all its glory. The iron-hewed nebulae of Sirius and his shaggy tufts of hydrogen, which a team of Scientists at NASA, armored and guarded by their degrees of plenty, have been laboring to capture in their telescopes for the past two months, resides in that tooth. (It is a string of a quark of an electron of an atom of a freckle on Atlas’s shoulder, but! it is there should you ever care to find it.)
But closer than that (or farther, depending on how you care to view it) you might see the cyan of the awning of the P.J. Mayo’s (HAPPY HOUR FIVE TO SEVEN, THURSDAY IS LADIES NIGHT) across that cobbled sunning street.
Here, between the Riverock, the restaurant, and bites of egg white omelet and sips of cafe au lait, a second crowd began to form. Although, of course, one can never be certain of these things, the I ♥ NYs and Ambercrombies that hardened the arteries and softened the stature of this new york city street appeared to be attracted to each other in one particularly noteworthy spot on the basis of a motocycle’s whining catcall in heat, a tumbling, gasoline-choked growl of revving motor. A girl with shoulder length sandy hair, sterling earrings, and a tailored plaid shirt sunk her nails into the back of a leather clad set of biceps – a man – who captained said vehicle of din. The crowd, perfectly circular as though grasping hands under the smoothness of a dinner plate – and indeed, this was their source of organismal appeasment, according to the drip-drip of their hanging tongues – enlarged, swelling under a steady flow of onlookers from adjacent stores and those drawn from the dancers across the alley.
The gurgling of the motor droned on, the crowd grew, the sun intensified its glare. Soon, the cocktail of tourists and cosmopolitans had grown to such a mass that those about their business were unable to pass, so that they, likewise, joined the pack of spectators. Mumblings, too, were trapped by the blockade of human bodies, and they dutifully reported to their owners. “What’s the holdup, here, exactly?” one curled mustache inquired. A dusky soulpatch edged past several other fellas to charge, “I think it’s a show of some sort.” Pause to find the words: “Motorcycle tricks.” A freshly trimmed goatee, intrigued, wished to know when they would be performing the wheelies.
The engine groaned; the girl released a gleeful scream; the motorcycle sputtered and fell on its side, a slain beast, and the crowd averted its gaze to avoid the shame of such majestic folly. From the depths of the street, an emaciated boy swathed all in blue ran on tremulous legs to the motorcyclist. “No, no, you can’t drive that way, you’ll ruin the transmission, and worse,” — this last was pronounced without conviction — “you’ll cause an accident and kill yourself!” The salesboy, staring ever so slightly at his chin, continued, “Thank god you hadn’t gotten it properly going yet.”
At this, the boy waved his hands to dismantle the crowd, and the horizon inched forward to reveal the anvil of a storm ahead.
