Someone took my bike. My $100, bought off of craigslist, vanilla coloured California beach bike. Bought right around the time I said yes to this place (after many gin and tonics at Rocky Sullivan's, the bar below and to the left - then called Liberty Heights Tap Room and owned by my current landlord. Rocky's, where I had first cavorted over whiskey and Guinness with the minstrel boy from Birr nearly a decade earlier, was on Lexington Avenue in the 20's, then. He and I certainly took a lot of cabs together). Now, the Irish bar of my earlier memories had found its way to this neighborhood in Brooklyn, where I finally would descend to the waterfront, and ascend in every other manner. I felt it fate and knew it was right. I had been working my way here for awhile. The three gins helped a great deal.
Whether I said yes to the place or bought the bike first I can't remember. I rode the train with my friend Lala, down to the Orthodox Jewish avenues, South. Early Saturday morning - Hot, dusty bare streets. No one out. I met the girl who sold me the bike in front of her family's house and then, she sold me me the bike. I love the Cali beach bikes, but suspected even then that the hills around here might pose a problem. There were similarly vanilla coloured fenders, sold separately and to be put on later.
We filled up the tires to the max and rode all the way from Avenue U back to Red Hook. Prospect Park's hills proved my first challenge. This would not be easy. I wore summer dresses to the angry, shouting chagrin of Latino ladies who caught their husbands looking at the tops of my thighs as I passed. I would yell back to them "Mind your business!" (internally: "Dumb Cunt. It's not my fault your thighs are the size of a whale's. Try eating fewer empanadas".) This would distract my biking, so I would cut out those angry retorts quick as I could.
My stuff was in the local storage (where the bike was going when I was done with it that day), as I waited for the dual apartment(s) to be renovated - always taking longer than they said. I had been staying with Jack, and just past the last golden arc of dramatics that would burst that impossible bubble. Was well over a year and a half after, before I finally walked away, and still credit any and all of my love/relationship fucked uppedness to he and I (not just him, of course. Who could blame like that with a straight face?) Lala and I were going to share these two apartments, joined by a pocket door and taking up the entire 3rd / top floor of the building. Like living alone, but that I would use the only kitchen on her "side" -- Fine by me, as she wanted to be able to sit there and "look at it" and I much preferred the street side (I liked to see people coming), the warm, southwest sunset light and the roundabout view of the waterfront.
We headed, sweaty and unkempt, to the local bar, which I never had the courage to head into, when I had lived previously in the adjoining neighbourhood ( I know I could now probably fall asleep there and feel safe as an unwanted orphan in a basket, drink in hand). No one was there, but for the short, boyish blond bartender who clearly, like others we found out (and us too), had escaped to the waterfront away from something. We sat there in the cool of the bar, drinking beer and watching T-Rex videos on the TV screen. Then, he walked in- whirlwind, vulnerability, young dark haired man with the sweetest white pit bull puppy ever. We talked for a good long while, and Lala could talk anyone's ear off, so I listened mostly, commenting when I felt I wanted to, and caught him looking at me rather intensely more than a few times. When we finally left, he told Lala it was nice to meet her, and then put his hand on my bare shoulder and said with much solid and isolated intention "it was Really great to meet you, M_ _ _ _ _ _" (this was before my childhood nickname of Mimi was resurrected and sticks to this day in the neighbourhood); eyes alight, warmth of his smile, little did I know all that would transpire from this man-child. Somehow, in my fateful way, I sensed that there was plenty more to come. I was already in love with his dog.
Point is, I rode that bike a lot that first summer, mostly to that bar, to his house on the back streets I now drive home from the bar along; in the cold, slightly drunk, and even managed to make it up the steep hill to the train station for a good deal of that Autumn. But the logistics of that half commute bike ride were too much for me - the bags, the dresses, the boots, the makeup and the sweat. It was rough, and after one too many haughty Smith Street women commented on my dripping face, I decided to hold off for a bike with gears, or just ride it when it cooled down some. Between that time and last weekend, I probably kept the bike chained up outside my front door for over two and a half solid years without use.
It was embarrassing, really. Recently I thought about getting it fixed up, and received many a promise to help do so, but they never came to pass. The tires, flat beyond recognition, the spokes and kickstand all rusted to the hilt. Not sure I could even grease them free. Not too long ago, someone from Rocky's (or patron) draped a blue motorcycle cloth cover over it; a cheap something to cast veil over this eye sore - this reminder of my laziness, my complacency, my inaction - I found it funny, and even showed him that last late night I stayed up and out to hear his woes, even when he wasn't speaking them out loud very much. He had his trusty flashlight out and checked it out. Said it could be fixed, but I knew he had a lot on his mind and didn't want to make it a point. I would do it. I would.
Then, Halloween night. Well, the night before, technically, as it was a Saturday night. I had my trademark bruises on, my operatic makeup, my torn clothes, my strength shining out happily from my victimized costume and fur coat. Happily drunken on white russians, I posed on my dad's old car (now mine), still alive and kicking due to myself and some others. Splayed on the hood, I raised my purposefully torn black stockings up into the night sky and stared off into the distance, beyond the frame, to a light somewhere which reflected the industrial waves of the nearby water and the deep boom of a boat in the distance. All for the camera, as the inner egomaniac in me always wanted to be an actress. I was giddy, and shallow. I think I got punished for it. My mother visited the next day, on actual Halloween, and remarked "your bike is gone...do you know that?" I was shocked, but at the same moment, relieved. I looked outside and even looked a second time, when we went downstairs later, as if it would re-appear all souped up and ready to go, shiny and vanilla as that first day I rode her to my home before it was my home. She was gone, blue cover and all.
I thought I was being reprimanded for not taking care of her, not helping her, or minding her or getting her back on the streets I loved. I'm sorry I forgot about her, but I knew some kids must have just up and awayed with her, for parts, or maybe they could get her going again. Why anyone would choose this bike, after all that neglect and time, I know not. I still can't figure out how they broke the massive, heavy chain and lock I had around it. Then I think it was him (who studied lock picking for one of his many past times), who looked with so much intent at the bike that night a week prior, just as he once looked at me, the first times we spent in each other's company. Maybe he had stole it and has it back at his house and is working on reviving the bike, as we speak. Maybe. I'll find out at some point. Wherever she is, I hope she knows I loved her always, even though I didn't show it much after the start, nor keep up with her as I should have. That empty space in front of my home looks completely new to me --- in all the time I've lived here, over three and a half years nearly -- the bike was always there. Feels strange to come home in the cold, in the dark, to that empty space. It's a new chance, though, to put something else there. Pity- I still have the fenders, which I never did get around to putting onto the bike. What the hell am I going to do with no bike, and ultra smooth, never-before-used, vanilla coloured fenders?
~ M. Lucia
