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TIM BARRUS, NEW YORK TIMES
I DID NOT SPEAK OF DESIRE
Village life, and trade it in for life on a dirt bike. Everything I own fits into one canvas camera bag. If it won’t fit in the bag, I don’t need it. The dirt bike takes me places I stand in awe of seeing. Places no one goes. Places no one ever sees. Places off the map. It’s the hard grit driving of bugs in your teeth. If I manage to make it 500 miles in a single run, I am apt to weep because it hurts everything. Bones. You are hollow, now. You want to crawl into a hole. I do have a home. It’s safe and comfortable. I rent it. If it rains on the bike, I just wrap up in the raincoat somewhere. The bike is my real home. And we are both of the earth. We have our corners, our songs, our dances. Anything could happen, and then it does. Some years, I am pulled to mountains. Other years, I am pulled to water. There is nothing bucolic about any of it. At three hundred miles, I start shaking. My helmet and face shield are my first layer of protection. The bike got me quickly to last summer’s riots. City by city. Who wants to spend time in a resort when you can help organize a riot. I sleep on picnic tables. I have written entire novels on picnic tables. Picnic tables are luxury. It’s probably my autism that makes me feel as if I want to scratch back at life that so boxes me into stereotypes I resist every minute of every day. I was the town’s high school failure, I did not attend much. I learned to fly Piper Cubs. Now, my leave. My lover, and the point is movement, not drowning. I learned to fly the little planes. I was a kid. But the other boys simply could not shake their straight ass at me. But no.