I have no friends who don’t ride motorcycles. Strange, huh? You’d think that after what sometimes feels like a billion years of life (well, internally, at least), I would have acquired some mates who don’t ride. But, no. That simply has not happened.
Of course, I do know people who don’t ride bikes. They are merely acquaintances. They exist on the periphery of my world and I am polite to them because a) they are nice people; and b) I was taught manners by my parents.
These people are both male and female, and while it is possible for me to become friends with the blokes if they buy a bike, I will never be friends with the ladies because I cannot be friends with ladies, bike or no bike. It’s how I am wired. While ever even a hint of sexual tension exists – as it always does because we are humans and that is how we are programmed – there can be no friendship between me and ladies.
And we are both better off for that. Trust me when I tell you this. You don’t want to be friends with me, bitches. Because there are expectations that come with that. And there is a mutual price to be paid for an actual friendship. Well, mine anyway. But that is a topic for different piece.
Now where was I? Oh, yes. All of my mates ride bikes. Every single one of them. Sure, there are mates who have stopped riding for some reason – usually to do with money, or bitches, or children, or some other lame-dick excuse that ensures they are bikeless, and thus less of a man. But at heart, they are (or were) motorcyclists, and thus we have a common ground upon which our friendship is based.
I also have mates who ride, but not all that much. Now and then they go for a squirt, make shit-loads of mumbling noises about how they don’t do this often enough but they do love it so, but not much changes.
And they also have a bunch of reasons why that is the case. They work too much, they have other commitments, and motorcycles are just not the star they orbit and worship. And I am alright with that, because I understand that worshipping at my cruel and pitiless altar also comes with a cost some men are not prepared to pay.
You see, I do not have any other hobbies or interests. I just do bikes. I’m so very simple-minded that way. The only reason I go and hump weights at the gym is to facilitate the riding of motorcycles. The longer I remain strong, the longer I can ride bikes. And the older I get, the more important that becomes. That’s all there is to that gym stuff.
And then I have mates who are just as bewitched and fanatical as I am about riding bikes. These are the ones who are most enjoyable to be with, because a madness shared is a madness transcendent. We laugh at the same stuff. Our politics may be diametrically opposed, but we laugh at the same stuff – and I think that is one of the cornerstones of a true friendship.
If I think it’s funny that so-and-so fired his bike into orbit, watched it cartwheel through the air as he ploughed a table-drain with his face, and spent three weeks in hospital re-growing his lungs, then my true friends find it just as hilarious – especially when the human plough is one of them. And he finds it just as funny too. Like what else are you gonna cheer him up with when you go and visit him in the organ-growing ward? Yes, flicking the steel-rods holding his leg-bones in place always gets a laugh, but that is only adjunct-humour to the big comedy of his incident. Which has to be told and re-told, and embellished and enhanced. Because that is what men have done since the days we hunted mammoths.
These are the experiences, the near-death misses, the utterly deranged rides where the Reaper missed his due by a hair’s breadth, which cement the bonds of my friendships.
How can I possibly then be friends with people who just do not get it? I cannot make such people understand, nor do I wish to waste my time trying. You cannot explain motorcycling to people who do not ride – hell, it’s sometimes hard to explain motorcycling to some people who do ride.
This does not make people who do not ride bikes bad people. They may be the nicest folks you could ever meet. But I cannot be friends with them. Because they do not ride bikes.
Conversations with these people come only in three forms.
Form One: “Oh, you ride? That’s cool. Bit dangerous but, aye?”
Standard Response: “Yes I do, yes, it is, and I should certainly fucken hope so, because I would not do it otherwise.”
Result: No friendship is ever possible. But you have not yet become a dickhead, so I don’t have to bust a chair over your fool head. Let us all hope it stays that way.
Form Two: “You wouldn’t get me on a bike for love or money. No idea why anyone would do such a thing. It’s just too dangerous. They really shouldn’t be allowed on the roads.”
Standard response to a female: “Ssshh. Men are talking. Fetch me a drink. Look pretty while you’re doing it.”
Standard response to a male: “Pass me that chair there, champ. No, the heavy wooden one…”
Result: Not a hope of friendship. Could be in with a chance for a tearful gobbie, but friendship? Not a hope.
Form Three: “Cool bike, mate. It’s beautiful. I always wanted to ride. Must be awesome.”
Standard response: “Thanks. What’s stopping you? Because you’re missing out on the greatest thing ever invented.”
Result: Possible friendship somewhere in the future. But not right now.
Can you see what I am up against? I simply cannot be friends with people like that. I would not even make the effort. What would be the point? I will not justify my life choices to people like this. I do not ask them to justify theirs to me. Yes, I do sit in harsh judgement on them, and condemn them for being yellow-bellied worms scratching at a much richer world in quiet desperation. But I do it in well-mannered silence. I do not, as a conversation starter begin with: “Is that your KIA, mate? Fuck me, what’s wrong with you? Did your wife make you buy that when she took you shopping for clothes? Does she also make you sit down to pee?”
I may certainly think that, and it may well come up later, depending on how the evening/bbq/children’s party/wedding goes, but I do not ever open with that. It would be unseemly. My late, sainted mother would certainly condemn me from where she sits at the right hand of the God she believed in. And I am not having that.
So, there is no point and no hope of me ever having any friends who do not ride bikes.
And I am so very alright with that.
