Like most awkward teenagers, I had braces and made sport of popping off the ones glued to my molars by eating candies that were harder and unhealthier than gravel and I had to get them replaced by the dentist who, to lure kids into his drill bin, had a barrel of toys so I was excited to visit while putting ceramic and metals inside the holes in my teeth from drinking too much Kool Aid for lunch. When we moved from Indiana, he said they could come off as I had them because I had the rare lack of overbite; that was the excuse to metallicize my chompers which today would probably get me on the TSA terrorist watch list for setting off detectors in airports.
After he took them off and we moved it took me a while to realize it; I’d look at kids with no braces and still get jealous until I ran my tongue across the front of my teeth and realized hey, I can be jealous of me. It took a while for me to sink into organic looking teeth. And for the jealousy to fade.
Friday I picked up my new bike! I fulfilled the prophecies set down in the Book of Longing, Ch 19, vers 1-6, and rode over the Brooklyn Bridge and headed to Long Beach and listened to waves of the Atlantic in the dark. When you do something you haven’t done in ten years that you’ve wanted to do, there’s fifty five different feelings that swell with it; for me, the first time I heard the whistle in my helmet almost made me cry as it was a sound I took comfort in while distracting me from my burgeoning sink hole of a life scenario in San Francisco. I didn’t think I’d hear it so soon here. So beautiful.
Yesterday I left her idle as it was like half of America shoved up Satan’s unshaved armpit with the weather and I dislike hot hot weather. Go to Venus for this kind of climate. But i looked around and seeing people on their bikes I got a pang of jealousy and realized hey, wait, my braces are off my teeth, baby. It’s funny how long emotional habits have to scrub themselves out before they finally dissipate.
The other portion of this is that I don’t have to get on the subway nearly as often. That’s like being released from prison and put on parole. Like Morgan Freeman’s emotional prep for his speech to the Parole Board in Shawshank Redemption was him pretending it was the MTA executive board he was talking to and he just bought a Hummer or Nissan Stanza or whatever he drives. But like Tim Robbins character, the moment I escaped it’s head for the beach, sand down boats and hire my ex inmate friends, escaped or paroled, as helpers for my projects. I guess that’s life.
The last other portion of this is the last time I rode a motorcycle was in 2002 when I left San Francisco in moderate to heavy disarray, selling my Honda. So a little scar tissue floats around but like athletes when they get some of their knee fluid drained or cleaning out bone fragments and that sort of jazz it will all clear out.
One thing for sure is that I own the finest bike every assembled by man for me.
Now, onto the business of striking down the next in the hit line of jealousies. Getting back on stage. Now I’m going to do that. Let’s do that. Some parts of life have dragged on too damn long. This lack of performance is one of them. When that happens, other than mass mood swerves comes practicing material on whatever animate or inanimate object can not escape.
By the way, donate to my Frenemies campaign if you have the money and you want to see distinct filmmaking get quickly into the 3rd dimension and you were going to donate it to cancer research. This film will do more to cure cancer than the American Cancer Society. If you don’t believe me, ask cancer. One goal is to have it dubbed in dramatically heightened fake German. All the more reason to give….
You had to bring up braces didn’t ya? lol I wore them for far too long and still need them! Lovely on the bike…
Sorry! Braces can look attractive on a woman, though, moreso than men I believe. Take comfort in that….