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The Nude Cyclist

Steve Carr

    His large feet were covered with the gray mud of the river bank. He stood looking at the rapids flowing over the eroded sheets of umber shale rock, seeming mesmerized by the sight of rainbow trout fighting their way upstream. A warm breeze suddenly came from the pine forest, as if exhaled by the trees, carrying their strong scent. It tousled his shoulder length light brown hair, sending strands across the serene features of his face, catching them in a spiderweb of hair.
    “I don’t remember my mother,” he said. “She left when I was just a baby.”
    He shook his head, clearing his hair from his vision, and then tilted his head back and watched as a flock of sparrows formed into the shape of a football, and then into a frying pan, and then a missile. He lowered his head and turned and looked at me.
    “Do you think I missed out by not having a mother?” he asked.
    “There was never a woman around when you were growing up?” I asked, avoiding his question.
    He squatted, dipped his hand in the water, and splashed it around. He scooped water into the palm of his hand, put it to his mouth, and drank. He then put on his shoes and walked to his bike. “When I was really young there was a woman who my father dated for a while who used to crawl into my bed in the middle of the night, take me in her arms, and rock me while she sobbed. I kind of thought of her as a mother.”
    #
    There was a totem pole made of carved cedar that was about twelve feet high and stood off to the side at the entrance of a small bridge. The figure loomed over us as we sat on our bikes and guzzled river water from our water bottles.
    “When I was a kid I went to see old movies every Saturday afternoon, he said. “I used to imagine that I had a best friend who went with me.” He turned his head and listened to the call of a whippoorwill. “I even bought him popcorn,” he added with a chortle.
    I then noticed the three cyclists were stopped within eyesight farther down the the road.
    “Hedy Lamar did the first nude scene in cinema in Ecstasy,” he said. “She was skinny dipping. Watching her was the first time I ever spontaneously ejaculated.”
    I looked up at the sun that was directly overhead. “We should be on our way,” I said.
    #
     It was a very small store with only two aisles with shelves that were sparsely filled with canned foods and snacks. It smelled of stale cigar smoke. The store owner, an elderly man with white hair and a handlebar mustache, came out of a back room a moment after the bell above the front door tinkled as we entered. An unlit cigar hung from his lower lip as if glued there. He looked us up and down before taking a seat behind the cash register.
    “You boys part of that bicycle race?” he asked raspily.
    My riding companion picked up a can of pineapple slices from a shelf and stared at the label. “It’s not a race. It’s about distance, not speed. We’re raising money to help clean up the ocean from all the plastic and trash dumped in it.” he said.
    The old man snorted. “The ocean ain’t near here.”
    #
    “When I was in high school I was taken in front of the entire student body and expelled for walking nude down the hall of the Arts and Theater Building,” he said, his voice quivering. “Where else is the human body more glorified and respected than in the arts and theater for God’s sake!” As tears began to stream down his cheeks he squirted water into his mouth from his water bottle.
    #
    At the top of a steep incline he sat on his bike, leaning forward on the handlebars as rivulets of sweat ran down his chest and back. His cheeks were bright red, as if they had been painted with rouge.
    “I expose my life in the same way I sometimes expose my body,” he said.
    On the road just a short distance beyond the other side of the incline, the three cyclists sat on their bikes looking our direction.
    “They’ve not been far away from us from the moment we started,” I said. “Maybe we should wait until they get far ahead of us.”
    He sat up straight on the bike seat. His lips formed into a mischievous grin. “I almost outran four guys who chased me nine blocks after a parade I was marching in and had taken off my clothes,” he said.
    “Almost outran?”
    “They caught me and beat the shit out of me. My nudity threatens some people.” In that instant her removed his clothes, put his feet on the bike pedals and sped down the incline. He was singing a song I remembered from an old movie I had once seen on late night television. I regretted not telling him that I watched old movies also when I was a kid. I raced down the road after him. He reached them only a few moments before I did.
    “Is there a problem gentlemen?” he said, stopping a few yards from them.
    They promptly got off their bikes and beat the hell out of him.

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