VII

Spandex Monkeys

Mikey’s first bike had a girl’s frame and came secondhand with training wheels, but who cared with mobility at last? The trainers got wrenched off halfway through day three. Mikey was six already and nobody’s fool. By seven he made his case for a Schwinn English Racer, the most desired bicycle in the world, which was known as the world back then and not the planet. It was a place where nature and adventure still waited. The Schwinn English Racer had a Sturmey-Archer three-speed shifter on the handlebar near the right handbrake. The shift linkage was chain-pull, inside the rear hub. Twenty-eight-inch wheels on a twenty-six inch frame were too big for Mikey to reach the pedals from the seat for four years, presenting a difficult choice: he could coast in style while sitting on the seat with his feet dangling, or he could stand on the pedals to gain propulsion, rolling his little huevos over the top bar.

Juvenile billy goat huevos?

Oh, baby. If they could only see me now. The descent accelerates to forty, pulling a G-force grimace in high-speed youth recalled. Tears stream—of joy—though Mulroney wonders who will cry at the used-car magnate’s funeral if he French kisses a eucalyptus doing holy screaming Jesus on his fricken’ fucking fly-weight bicycle. Creamed Mulroney has a certain feel to it, but who’d show up? I mean, besides Allison.

At age twenty Michael paid eighty bucks for a Peugeot UO8, a ten-speed in modern format that got him through two more decades till he sold it for three bills, a margin he couldn’t refuse, though he’d now pay triple to get that bike back. Quintuple would be better than what he ended up paying for this new rig, which was what? Fucking exponential is what, which is more than any kid’s toy should cost.

Five years later the next Peugeot got cranberry spray paint over the chalky white frame and boring decals. Then came a thirty-mile race that a young fellow with a new paint job couldn’t help pushing in high gears for twenty miles—into the wall. Fatigue made him look old, and he wondered why the older guys passing by kept staring. A veteran advised, “You can’t push high gears like that. You slide side to side over your saddle to keep the power over the pedal. Too much pressure. You got DDS.” That would be Dead Dick Syndrome; Mulroney stood by a tree, waiting for his pecker to do something. The veteran told him to tilt the seat down a notch forward to ease pressure on the anus/dingdong nerve. So he did and eased the numbness until grooved seats came along.

Ten years into the groove, the media interrupted this program for BREAKING NEWS! The tragic consequence of bicycling! DDS causes impotence!

Mother Mulroney called in a panic. “Do you have numbness in your shillelagh or trouble getting an erection?”

“Who needs to know?” She needed to know because she was his mother for chrissakes, and a bicycle will bring it on.

Several decades down the road but only a week into his new ride, Mulroney eases out of town. He is unafraid but aware that road familiarity goes out the window on a bicycle. In a car, two miles is three minutes. On two wheels with a square inch of rubber on the road, it’s different. He rides the brakes. His neck cramps, with his head tilted up to see ahead at high speed.

Did Lance Armstrong’s testicular cancer come from groin friction daily, just like Bob Marley’s brain tumor stemmed from nonstop ganja? You can’t abuse nature.

Bicycle machismo has no logic, no sense of self-preservation and is invisible to the untrained eye. What’s made to seem casual, nonchalant, and ho-hum is actually an uphill push so painful that joints grind like failed bearings. Bicycle macho is complex, not obvious. It has no props—no loud pipes or fag dangling from a teeth clench or driving one-handed in tedious self-consciousness with leather, fringe, conchos, and chrome. A bicyclist wears shiny shoes with cleats, spandex, and a plastic shirt with three back pockets stuffed with candy bars. Bicycle machismo has no body fat. It’s a lean and mean pain machine, pushing the heart into the throat as necessary for a move. Lance went wheel to wheel with the pack leaders on steep grades, veins popping on the collective brow. At red line, or maximum give, or the threshold of thrombosis—Lance broke out and pulled ahead decisively—make that crushingly. The Frogs claimed drug enhancement and less friction because Lance only has one nut. The frictional charge never stuck and no need; Lance was so drugged. Yet lost in the media melee was a truth, no matter what drugs or how many balls or what size: tougher than your average toothless tattooed wonder, Lance demonstrated the difference between a macho pose and laying it out.

Here it is, Lance: change your blood with this space-age blood so you can go faster. Okay?

Sure. Why not?

Because it’s cheating! That’s why not! Cheating the whole wide world is not the same as winning! Yet Mulroney demonstrates as he imagines it might have been, for the feeling. Amped up, gearing down, he accelerates, not to be confused with pulling away crushingly. Mulroney’s move may also be invisible to the untrained eye, especially in traffic, except from the Big M point of view. Women might see it too, women down to forty, or forty-eight. Like that one there, in the Volkswagen. She checked him out. There she goes again, with the smile.

Mulroney rides with a rearview mirror too—came out and asked for it, drawing glances from the bike shop elite like a pedophile at day care. Rearview mirror? What’s the old fucker up to? What’s next, training wheels? Or one of those cute electric motors? The rearview clamps low on the handlebar. Hardly an ounce—make that twenty-eight grams—it shows the big picture at a glance: who’s veering close or fast. Otherwise a look back pulls the bike into harm’s way, or overcompensation takes it to the ditch. Mulroney knew these things years before these twerps were born. They see this rocket rig as an old-guy supplement. When they hone in on the Certitudes, they groan—on a surge of more envy. Fuck ’um. The old guy is out here doing it, is he not? The Certitudes were Frankie’s idea because they keep an old guy going longer. So? No big deal. Old goes well with poise. Mulroney’s been around the block on two wheels. He knows the drill, just as he checks the rearview to see two riders out of their saddles pushing top gears, coming uphill from behind casually as a jog in the park, gaining with embarrassing ease. He sets with aplomb—and indifference, as the younger set passes easily.

He flips the mirror up to see what she saw, the one in the VW. But an old guy with a puffy face looks back, Poppin’ Fresh nearing apoplexy. He doesn’t feel puffy or old. He feels like the same guy. So what?

The chinstrap bunches his chin to make his cheeks puff with acorns for starters. The crop-top helmet makes him look like Friar Tuck. But he needs the helmet. Doesn’t he? Fucking helmets.

The puffy face amused her. That’s all it was. Merely mordantly curious, she smirked, which is not a smile. What a rude kid.

He coasts to the light. What’s the rush? A fat kid on a so-so mountain bike worth less than half of Mulroney’s front wheel passes casually, breathing more from fat than effort. So what? Factor the potholes, pitfalls, knockdowns, drag outs, upper cuts, hooks, jabs, and body checks of the four decades Michael Mulroney has on the kid, the pace reckons about even. Or five decades—some of the kids won’t even make his age, much less on a bicycle.

Past the last light in town, traffic thins. So do thoughts and clutter, as the busy thoroughfare becomes a country road, lushly green. Mottled light hides the bumps. Sunbeams jumble in the leafy tint; blinding brilliance breaks the shadows, so he squints to get it right because a steep shoulder spills forty feet to a rocky bottom. Mulroney eases in to speed.

With speed comes a mental process devoid of recollection. Fuck it; you got your memories, and then you got your modern technology. This is a carbon fiber speed machine for chrissakes. What’s that worth? To be perfectly honest, it’s hard to tell. You still got to pedal the sumbitch. It’ll roll backward if you don’t. Mulroney is breathing hard and sweating. His chest is pounding—but it doesn’t hurt. That would be a kick in the head. So what’s the diff between humping this high-ticket whore to the top of the hill and a department store model? He’ll need to sort that later, at a lower heart rate. At the crest he coasts into the descent and gains speed to the bottom, where he stops to look back up at what he couldn’t see coming down. He flips the mirror again. Still puffed and ruddy, he looks more alive, if not younger. Two boys in a passing pickup yell out the window, “Spandex monkeys!” Mulroney looks back again as another two riders descend in tight pants and gaudy accessories.

One yells back, “Inbreeds!” Mulroney laughs along, involved and invigorated, mounting up again for Watsonville, a California dream of Mexico with better weather and irrigation. And why not? It’s only another twelve miles out.