Heavy Instrument (Part VI)

Part VI of Fuck Me Twice

(scroll down the blog for parts 1-5)


In the middle of the block between 53rd and 54th, I could see The Skunk.  From about 50 feet out she looked ok, but as I got closer things took a turn to the gruesome.  The tail light was broken, as were both signal lights, rear fender crinkled, and the rear tire flat.  It got worse as I came around the left side of the machine, the gas tank was dented to hell and had deep gouges from what I guessed was being dragged on its side, because the seat cover was shredded, and the left exhaust pipe ground through.  Gauges smashed, the headlight, mirrors and front signal lights as well, the front tire also flat.  Hewn wires dangled like vinyl covered copper entrails.  Someone had wantonly smashed every inch of the motorcycle with a heavy instrument, slashed the tires and left her to die in this grotesque wasteland.

I wasn't sure how to feel.  Of course there was anger.  I wanted to kick some motherfucker's teeth in.  But I was also afraid.  The sheer violence with which my motorcycle appeared have been attacked was shocking, could the perpetrator be lurking in the darkness somewhere, full of more malice and savagery?  A stranger in a strange land I was clearly not equipped (or armed) enough to handle, my soul turned a sickly cold.  Had my roommate Kevin not been there I may have just run away, a white streak in the black night.

"Can you ride it with two flat tires?", he asked.

"Really slowly."

"Start it up and let's go."

I swung the kickstart out and nearly buckled my goddamn knee when the lever refused to move.  The motor was locked up solid.  My other foot slipped and I finally noticed the dark wetness all over the tarmac beneath the bike.  The heartless bastard had pulled the transmission drain plug and cut the oil line from the injection tank and let the very lifeblood of the machine drain into the gutter, then he must have started the motor and let it run until it was finally overcome by friction.  Who in the hell steals something only to utterly destroy what little value it has?  I could have wept, if not for my overwhelming disgust.

It was dead.  About as dead as a motorcycle can get, and it's lifeless corpse had been raped and desecrated by some lowlife piece of shit.  You know how on those cop dramas the tough yet sensitive detectives are always telling the family they don't want to see the body of their loved one after a horrific murder?  Well, I got a feeling they are probably right.  It wasn't a particularly fancy motorcycle, and prior to this it had its bumps and bruises, but it was mine.  My hands had sprayed the paint, covered the seat, replaced the clutch and a thousand other smaller, forgotten chores.  We had cruised the back roads of upstate NY, ridden the interstate 400 miles to Philadelphia and hundreds of other jaunts.  And this is where it was going to end, some godforsaken city street, nothing more than a pile of petroleum oozing scrap?

It was too much.  Even with two flat tires, I was going to push that 400 plus pound thing back home.  I would rather have had a heart attack doing so than leaving it there, a forgotten casualty in a fucked-up war.

  

Not a good place to die, even for a 1976 GT380.