The sun shone that early summer afternoon as the masses streamed off the platform and a voice from the speakers above declared for the Nth to the Nth power time that “DUE TO THE WORLD CUP VIEWING PARTY IN DOWNTOWN CHICAGO, ALCOHOL AND GLASS BOTTLES WILL NOT BE PERMITTED ON METRA TRAINS ALL DAY.”
A handsome man stood in disbelief, a backpack at his feet, a dinged-up WBEZ pledge drive water bottle in his hand. Shocked. Stunned. Very good-looking in a comfortable sort of frumped-up sexy way.
He held the water bottle in his hand as the masses strode past the bike rack not for the sheer love of holding dinged-up WBEZ pledge drive merchandise but because of all the bikes locked, chained and otherwise clipped and secured to the rack, his apparently had the most desirable water bottle holder and back bike light. Because someone had stolen his bike light. And his water bottle holder.
Who does that?
“I once saw someone steal the tube that connects the fork to the handlebars,” the bearded fellow showing this survivor-hero new water bottle holders at the bike shop said. “He had to detach it from the handlebars. It took him longer than if he had taken the handlebars too.”
OK, so who does that?
There is a felon in our midst, Chicago. A sniveling little puerile punk who apparently had a great need to attach a beverage to a bike frame but not the $6 to do it in means complying with the rule of law.
Instead, a good-looking even though Katie from high school said it was more about his personality man was left standing alone at a train station. Fear in his heart. Unattached water bottle in his hand.
This next part might be shocking: I was that victim. That sexy, sexy victim.
I have moved on in those hours since I rode to the bike shop, water bottle in my backpack like some sort of beast. The bike light I can see taking. And I actually would have understood more if they had stolen the whole bike; Kipper’s a very nice bike.
But to take the time to unbolt and swipe the little coil of metal that straps down a water bottle, that’s not need. That’s just shitty.
Little rat took the bolts, too.
So a message to the shitty and probably not handsome at all little gonif who took my water bottle holder:
You suck.
I hope you step in cannibal dung.
I hope your favorite stuffed animal from childhood magically comes to life just to tell you it never thought much of you as a person.
I hope an intelligent spider weaves a message over the trough where you sleep saying, “SOME ASSHOLE.”
I hope your mother testifies before the United States House of Representatives that never, ever, not once, no matter how many times you tried, going day and night, pumping away in 12-second bursts like the Little Engine That Thought It Could But Now Swears This Has Never Happened to Him Before, Baby, that you have never, ever, not even if she smoked a doob beforehand and primed herself with YouTube videos of Tom Selleck riding a horse, have you ever made her cum.
I say that last part because you fuck your mother.
You motherfucker.
Now although you are, and I truly believe this, a jerk, you are also a human being.
A stupid, meager and worthless human being who, as mentioned, has never sexually sated your mother, but a human being nonetheless. And as such, I forgive.
Yes, you colossal turd sandwich with extra turd and a side of turd because you decided not to substitute onion rings for $1.50 more, I forgive you. Bask in my magnanimity.
I mean, it’s a silly, simple thing. And I’m sure it happens all the time.
“Someone stole your water bottle cage?” the bike shop guy ringing me up at the register said. “I’ve never seen that before. That’s a new one on me.”
You know why I bike? It relaxes me.
- A bike story using the phrase “a cross between a Jackson Pollock and the pig blood scene in ‘Carrie’”
- A bike story that talks about a manatee’s testicles
- And one that calls a motorist “a big fat moose who has to be let out of the car four feet from the restaurant”
And here’s why I really ride my bike:
And here’s a YouTube video of Tom Selleck on a horse
