V

Accessories and Pain

Michael Mulroney was a teenager when the new Corvette Stingray had a hood scoop option over a 427 with enough horsepower to smoke the wheel wells with burning rubber before gaining traction and screaming Jesus for a quarter mile or the first curve. That 427 had kid Mulroney fuel injected with desire.

So did Connie Conklin, star of his wet dream for three years in a co-feature of desire. He didn’t want to marry Connie Conklin any more than he could buy a Corvette. She was slutty with a trash mouth and genetically deficient social skills, though her legs, ass, and chest seemed naturally select. She invaded his dreams three to five nights a week, fresher and friendlier than she ever was in person. She complained that a nice girl must protect her reputation, then she slid into his Corvette and undressed in his dream to apply every skill he could dream of.

She was like a new Corvette in every way, with horsepower to spare, no subtlety or nuance, garish paint and no doubt what kind of fun could be had. The Vette was actually more merciful, another ache in his chest but far less complicated. Love was mysterious that way, and Mulroney wondered if a car could be his soul mate. A car doesn’t have a place to stick it in—not a good place anyway. But still, all in all …

A new Vette was five grand back then, which was like fifty grand now, unless you were seventeen. Then it was like five mil; fucking forget it. Mulroney had an idea: the Chevrolet dealer was so agreeable and gregarious on TV; young Mulroney would offer to drive the car around town so people could see it and want one. It would be like free advertising. Wouldn’t it?

Boy Mulroney got three steps onto the showroom floor before Big Don Hasbro of Big Don Hasbro Chevrolet shouted at his entire staff, who happened to be on a coffee break: “Why would I pay flooring on these units with the entire staff on a coffee break at the same time?” Don Hasbro turned around to the ogling kid, shook his head, and walked away. The moment showed the essence of power. Big Don Hasbro was a no-nonsense commander. Mulroney also turned and left.

He would never drive a Corvette, not sooner, when he was merely a boy with no money, or later, when the dough was incidental but Porsche seemed more fun and, truth be told, more aligned to neighborhood tastes. He could have opted for Mercedes, but Mercedes seemed so … sedentary. He would buy a Vette now on a whim if Connie Conklin were still around and still hot and still open to a ride in a Vette. But she’s not. He might find out where she is, but then he figures where she is: sixtyish and overweight. Well, hell, maybe she got good manners and turned sweet as sugar. Or not.

Michael Mulroney liked to think of himself as insulated from material need, except of course when he really liked something. But that was different. Years in the OK Car trenches left him battle-scarred and tough on the inside and shiny and flush outside. He didn’t need shit and let the world know it. He’d emerged with status and recognition, going along with the rest on pre-owned, prior to understanding just who (the fuck) Big M really was. On that note he jumped like Jack, clear of the box, and went to used.

Some people think him unpolished and abrasive, and calling his cars used is perfect. So what? Give those fuckers a chance; they’ll think the worst every time, until they beat you. Then they think worse yet.

The carbon fiber frame and fork weigh in just under two pounds—or maybe just over. Who gives a fuck? Franco fills in blanks and uses his calculator frequently, prepping the order on the finest bicycle frame in the known universe—the only bicycle frame not laid up in Taiwan but actually laid up in Ernesto Olioglo’s basement in Genoa. Franco freely rambles as he works, assuring Mulroney that a few grams really do mean nothing next to frame geometry—and don’t forget your rotational minimals, because that’s the ballgame right there. The variable cross section of the frame changes every few inches for optimal rigidity and spring-loaded power transfer at various stress and flex points for maximum torque conversion and stiffness at high speeds or in sharp turns or both. Shape shifting based on tetrahedral logarithms, or some such, sounds like twenty-four karat bullshit, which is good and bad.

Mulroney reads the same geometric profile in the highly produced brochure, practically as Franco recites it, and he nods in comprehension; this shit makes sense, kind of.

He heads to the dressing room with the riding pants that Franco calls the correct riding pants. He feels old, like the butt of his old expression: it’s just like pulling the pants off a fat girl. Or pulling them back on, shimmying, twisting, pulling the stretch fabric up but failing to get the riding pants up, which resist all the way into place. Arranging the nut sack is a stickler, and he pulls on each leg and the crotch and finally gets things sorted and settled. The next moments are difficult in a series: What the fuck am I doing here? Who the hell do I want to see me in a tutu squeezing my gut into overhang? The fuck? I’m not this fat.

“Come on out.”

“What for?”

“I can get a better measure if you need it.”

Mulroney steps out and Franco stretches his tape hither and yon, taking notes like a New York tailor, then announcing, “Perfect! We’ll have you ready to ride by noon Tuesday. You want to get your things now?”

Luck, as it were, holds on the things, because The Spokesperson happens to have all accessories to suit the non-buff rider in stock. The hi-tech shirt has many zippers, pockets, wicking capacities, and cooling vents for the precision machine that will soon be Mulroney. Yellow socks with hula dancers, a space-age headband with wicking technology actually developed at NASA—“Fuck me. You don’t sweat in space”—and $400 shoes good for nothing but riding a ridiculously light and expensive bicycle round out the ensemble.

“It feels right,” Franco assures.

“Can you feel it?”

Franco defaults to the quarter smile, which is a half smile on one side only. Mulroney knows how it feels, and he feels he’s learning Franco’s repertoire of smiles for all ironies. He was selling before this kid crawled. Yet he admires the articulation. This is retail therapy. And he’s impressed with the commitment: Sure, Frankie’s the owner and probably knocking down a forty point margin, but the middle digit of each finger on both hands is tattooed with a single letter to spell L O V E, twice, for a two-fisted sales tool that would be hard to beat. Or imagine.

Every real salesperson has tools. But who would tattoo L O V E on his fucking fingers if he didn’t believe in his product? Maybe it helps him with the girls. But why would he tattoo the fingers of both hands? These kids.

Franco pushes paper—no less paper than if a transaction was underway for a high-end performance roadster. Of course, such a transaction is underway, but who’d a thunk it would come to be? Mulroney helps himself to a perfect espresso, but he is quickly interrupted by another helpful spokes consultant standing by to serve and to protect the espresso machine from idiots. Mulroney doesn’t mind and doesn’t need to point out that his espresso machine has two-gallon boilers and can pull a shot in a heartbeat that makes the most miserable fucking life in the world feel like it’s worth living, at least for the next few minutes. Never mind. He doesn’t need to win a pissing or espresso contest with these guys. They’re not bad guys, not his type of guys but still. He thanks the friendly fellow who really does know how to get the most out of a cheap shit espresso machine, and he savors the moment, pondering quality, service, and product knowledge, along with closing skills. He contemplates relative desire in a man or a boy anticipating a new bicycle or Corvette. Can life end up so far afield of the early dream? Not that life is ending, or that distance is bad. But a man wonders what’s left of the boy he used to be. Very little is the short answer, and he wouldn’t call this full circle. He doesn’t seek the inner-child or miss the outer child for that matter. These are the days, mobile and affluent with the spice of life at hand on any given issue. The boy had something that went away. And the man has something else, allowing him to ride a bicycle designed for the most successful.

Mulroney drifts to the far wall of accessories to browse riding trifles while sipping his espresso. He selects a few high-energy candy bars, some electrolyte replacement powders, two water bottles, more sox, another shirt, a rearview mirror, a Velcro windbreaker caddy, an ear warmer, and on and on but only to five hundred dollars, which ought to round out the package for now. He wonders if the candy bars actually deliver high energy or just keep you from dropping dead. Or are they another cog in the scam—candy bars at five bucks a pop for some peanut butter and chocolate in a wrapper that babbles immortality and world peace, in the end going to the mid-section?

He’ll eat one to test the effects—this one that looks like shmushed dates and bat shit with sesame sprinkles, but no; he’ll wait. Other cyclists coming and going seem so focused on the miles ahead or a difficult past or an awkward relationship with the moment at hand or compensation for something or other or a need for grueling pain or self-effacement. Mulroney tries to feel the challenge but can’t. So he eats the fucking energy bar, tonguing his gum line for pesky sesame sprinkles and gooey detritus.

Just beyond the bibs, jerseys and shorts, a group is glued to the big screen TV showing a bicycle race that looks like any other race but isn’t. This race stands out, because Cadell Evans would later say he knew he’d won this race—until Lance pulled out with uncanny acceleration to take the lead and the race, not by a nose but a furlong. All the boys mumble and moan over Lance. That would be Lance Armstrong, the best rider in the world until he got discovered for performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions.

“What a bummer.”

“What a bum.”

“What a terrible thing to do to what we love.”

“He doesn’t even care.”

“What a goon.”

“That guy.” They lambast Lance round the bend. What was wrong with modern bicycling? Lance. Mulroney had heard it before, not in detail, but enough to know that Lance had become a villain, because of his drug habit. Then again, Big M has a drug habit, not as complex and purely recreational, but a case could be made for drug-enhanced car sales.

“I was in that race,” Mulroney intervenes, turning heads. “Not really. But I did watch it on TV. And I was doping.”

Everybody gets it, but only one guy laughs—short. The others grumble over Lance, inappropriate sarcasm and irrelevance, perhaps pondering another potential problem for bicycling.

Scanning gadgetry, Mulroney lets the mumble fade and turns from the race that changed history, or some such. He listens to these riders apparently convened, ready to ride, their cleats clicking the cement floor. Franco approaches with the all-clear confirmation but will not say Olioglo or CX-61 or even Certitude 1111 out loud to spare Mulroney the blazing glare-down of his betters—or would that be the bitter envy of the peasantry. Instead Franco blithely murmurs his update, in deference to those gathered, whom he softly calls “The Big Boys.” The label is a joke, but it’s not. None of them are big, rendering bigness relative. After all, would not Big M qualify as one of the Big Boys? He would, but he doesn’t, and that’s okay with the M, himself. He has the cash, or same as, at any rate, and that’s enough in this rarefied crowd.

Some are thin, lumpy, and stooped as last week’s string beans. These are the climbers, at the top of the food chain. With aggressive good cheer they deny pain, except for understated claims of suffering. Like counting steep sprints since sunrise. One climber got in eighteen steep sprints before cramping up, but not so bad as yesterday. Another climber got in thirty steeps before rounding out his ride with a casual twenty-five at fifteen.

Two other climbers ponder the Triple Double Century next week with a yawn—the Triple Double C is a three-day race at two hundred miles per.

Mulroney steps up to demonstrate no cramping, straining, or striving for personal best. Chest out, stomach in, he shows what a man with discretionary millions looks like.

Another faction looks like refugees from a Thigh Master concentration camp. Massive quadriceps and IT bands flex on each step. The sprinters are the front line, sacrificial drones used up one by one to advance the leader—invariably a climber—in the spirit of team strategy.

One sprinter says he’s still off after cutting his Wednesday ride to a paltry fifty at nineteen five—fifty miles averaging nineteen and a half miles per hour. One of the skinny climbers with grapefruit calves and bowlegs, from scoliosis or rickets or too many miles at whatever the fuck, laughs aloud, advising the sprinter to ride with the climbers tomorrow if he can handle eighty at twenty-two, headed uphill at a four-percent grade on average.

“I’ll try to keep up with you bad boys,” the sprinter says humbly, winning the round for lower expectations, putting the burden on the climber to ride out front for a change. “Then we can relax with some more steep sprints down in the flats.” Mulroney will learn about steep sprints as ultimate currency in the spandex hierarchy. Steep sprints and the sunrise ritual call for pumping full bore up a short hill—less than a mile—then rolling back down to repeat as necessary. A three-quarter mile steep sprint is a few blocks from Casa Mulroney, a fifteen percent grade, though the macho elite agree that Mulroney’s hill really can’t be steeper than thirteen. The Big Boys jostle and brag and demonstrate endurance as second nature. They moreover show up to show they’re still in the game, keeping the old stats intact. Twenty to fifty steep sprints or lashes can prove a rider’s grit, except that the steeps take longer and look more painful than a beating.

The brute push of steep sprints makes a cruise over to Mount Madonna or Enterprise Hill or Hazel Dell seem like a more pastoral Hammerfest. That is not to say relaxing because even out in the countryside and foothills your ten-mile splits can accelerate a half-mile an hour for sixty miles. Acceleration over the long haul seems excessive, joyless, tortuous, sadistic and, worst of all, competitive in the macho extreme. But the chronic compulsion sorts the pain maestros into a pecking order, while making sense of the world around them, in a self-serving process fulfilling personal needs, to be sure.

Below the Big Boys on the two-wheel totem are the Vaginas, a group of young, urban professional men who self-deprecate to one-up the Big Boys, again lowering expectations to set the stage for victory, for coming up when nobody is looking. Deprecation notwithstanding, the Vaginas are way too fast for the likes of Michael Mulroney, which he senses straightaway as a Vagina invites him to ride—nothing too tough, maybe thirty at fifteen. Mulroney declines, at least till he gets the feel of the thing. “This bag of bones needs some shaping up first.” He imagines these guys going all out and calling it casual, just to show what a young man with discretionary energy can do.

They size him up, briefly. He returns the assessment—better to get this over with than drag it out. Michael Mulroney could buy and sell these pussies, but he can’t keep up with the Vaginas. So? So what? What else you got? Little fuckers. At least they put out the invitation. That was friendly. But fuck a bunch of splits and steeps and whozits at whatsits. I want to ride my twenty-grand bike in the sun. Is that okay with you? Oh, don’t you worry; it’ll go twenty.

The difference between two approaches to bicycling—joyful on the one hand and painful on the other—is more than meets the eye. Accepting the pain challenge on pace, ascent grade, distance or any combination thereof is a standard to live by, for which to strive and grow. The level of difficulty is a matter of choice, self-inflicted, because no matter how low the body fat, how sculpted the thighs or lumpy the calves, the miles will be too few and too slow for some guys. Personal best can always be better yet but can never be best enough. Denial of pain is a measure of machismo, unspoken and also denied. Farther faster is the Holy Grail here, with sparse dialogue among compatriots who know the self-internal, whose inner-connectedness is best expressed in performance stats on distance and pace, with special emphasis on searing potential in a sprint or a climb.

A few riders stare at the old guy in tights and cleats. The stretch material grabs Mulroney like someone else’s hands. Riding shorts feel like support hose, with foam padding thick as the yellow pages between his nuts and his butthole. Among those who stare and wait is Franco, who senses discomfort but stays mum, till Mulroney shrugs. “A guy hung like a billy goat won’t get far in this rig. You want to wedge a bicycle seat up there too and then get the legs to move?” He lifts a leg to demonstrate the difficulty.

Obviously, Franco went too far, standing by with chamois cream, as if Mulroney would grease his thighs up around the arch of the taint like one of the Big Boys. Setting the cream on the nearest shelf, Franco says, “Don’t worry. Cyclists have worn stretch shorts for decades. We’ll fit you up.” And he goes to the non-performance rack for a pair of stretch shorts in XL with no yellow pages. Mulroney nods and puts them on. Fuck it. This is all he needs. A pair of fucking shorts. Fucking yellow pages. Fuck. He hefts his nuts in one hand like a heavy hitter, seeking a more nuanced adjustment, and nods again, with room enough for a bicycle seat now. He looks around to see who’s still interested and if they’re getting the picture: he’s not so different, not as fast or durable or physically fit or young as he used to be. But he’s still hung and still game—till he passes a mirror and sees the old guy in tight shorts, till he moves along. Nothing improves with staring.

The shoes are clip-ons. That is, first come the shoes, then the type of clips, then clip quality as a sub-set of type, though in this case the quality quotient is foregone: supreme excellence and nothing but. Waiting for the installation of clips onto shoes, Mulroney recalls installing a water pump on a ’59 Dodge or a ’65 Chevy with fair certainty he did it quicker and with fewer wrenches. He tries the shoes on and takes them off and waits in his socks, then changes his socks, saving the hula girls for special. Maybe he’ll save them for Hawaii, once he offloads the motherfucking barn at the top of the hill. He slips into more sedate blue sox with sharks circling the ankles but decides to save those in the tropical trousseau too. He slips into a pair in chartreuse with black bands on top showing Godzilla whacking a skyscraper. As he stares, a Big Boy eases over and says his five-year-old son would like those. Mulroney doesn’t look up as he stipulates, “These are my sox.”

And these are some nice sox. He can decide later which to wear and which to save, but fuck it; he can get more. So he checks out for now, grateful that Frankie glanced at the ticket without wincing or murmuring the first peep over so many thousands of dollars, passing it over the counter top for review, acceptance, and payment in full. That would be cash or, of course, credit. Mulroney reviews briefly and slides it back across with his plastic on top. “Let’s see if we can fit that little devil right on here.” Mulroney knows it will fit right on there. Then he hopes it will fit right on there. Then he fears it won’t, and he’ll be rendered lower than old and fat and in denial of a greater pain. But somehow, some way, the little devil fits, and the little machine hums its emotionless mantra, capturing another electronic draft for the betterment of all. Franco goes to the half smile, which is half on each side, reflecting neutrality in a trade of many thousands of dollars for equal value shaped as a bicycle. He is a consummate closer and more, a poker player protecting the best interests of the entire table. Not a single ripple on his entire countenance divulges the magnitude of the sale, which must surely be his biggest of the morning. That’s tasteful, even if the Big Boys see and know.