Harleys and Pool-Whores

Let it be said that loud motorcycles bug the hell out of me. I don't know what happened. There was a time when I thought, "Oooh, cool Harley." But now that everyone has one and now that there isn't a two year waiting list to get a Harley and now that every city great or small has a Harley dealership (my word even the small Valley of Cache has one. I'm just teasing, mixing up the words to give you a hard time, it's really Cache Valley), I think they suck. What sucks about them isn't the motorcycle itself because some of them are still cool. It's the choppers. The ones that go "thwup thwup thwup thwup" all up and down the street. It's the ones that disturb my peaceful reverie at the side café as they roar by.

My question for the riders is, "Who do you think you are?" I guess you think you're the bomb because you can drive around a loud-ass bike. Do you consider yourself different? Do you think you're part of a counterculture? I'm just asking because you don't look cool to me. You're not interesting. You're loud and obnoxious. And just to enlighten you, you look creepy with all those tattoos, the shaved head, and the wife-beater. I don't have time to get to know you, so this will never be proven otherwise.

I guess what happened to me is that I got older. My tolerance for noise and crowds and traffic has gotten lower, probably because I've had to be around those things for so long now. When I was a kid everything was a new experience and I was really into feeling things and seeing things. But now I would like a bit of peace and quiet, a glass of lemonade by the pool with a few other quiet, unassuming types like myself, people who are also drinking ice cold lemonade—or, I'd even allow that they're drinking iced tea—and who are not smoking or wearing bikinis that barely cover their flesh; who are not tanned to a crisp, leathery complexion; who are not sporting a big butt-crack tattoo (you know the kind, the kind that span the cheeks like an arch—yeah, I like to call them butt-crack tattoos just for the hell of it, maybe because for the tattoo to be showing, a butt-crack is almost peeking out too). I realize that some might consider me crass, even as I pontificate against crassness. But let it be said I am not crass just because I say ass and hell. If I am crass, it's for other reasons.

When I think about the annoying people at my apartment pool (whose tiny bikinis barely cover their withered and sagging flesh—it's withered from the sun, not because they're old—and who bring a cooler full of beer and who chain smoke while laying out), I realize they bear the same mentality as the guys with the loud Harleys. They are rooted in materialism. And frankly, I am not a material girl*.


*To a degree. I have my weaknesses. I enjoy a few material pleasures, such as books. I love a new book and will buy one just for the sheer pleasure of finding the book, smelling the new ink and paper, and feeling the weight of it in my hands, and then I won't read it for years. Eventually I do. But the thrill is in the experience of buying it.