For years, I’ve commuted to work by public transport. A little less than a year ago, I stumbled on the possibility of commuting using an e-bike via a bike share program. Very quickly, my life changed for the better. My commute went from a 35-to-55-minute, somewhat unpredictable affair to a 25-to-30-minute clockwork-like production.
An e-bike feels a little like cheating, but not completely so. To begin with, the convenience of not being saddled with the responsibility for a bicycle throughout my day is a huge plus. Add to that, while it’s not as hard or as good a workout as a regular bike, my heart rate nonetheless does get elevated on my morning or evening commute. It’s not up to 140 or 145 where I take it on my daily elliptical jaunt, but to 100 or 110.
It used to be that I would spend my commute doing some combination of reading and writing. All too often, that reading was more like doom-scrolling than anything else. But even when I was doom-scrolling, I was accomplishing a much-needed dissociative break.
Now that I bike, I’ve lost my morning and evening reading and writing time. And this is genuinely a loss. Not a huge loss, but a loss. It’s one I feel daily. Add to that, I love the subway. I love surfing on the ocean of people underneath my city. Maybe that metaphor demands that I swim rather than surf. But regardless, I like all the chance encounters, all the people watching. The constant reminder of how small I am, of how unlike so many people other than in my humanity, I am. I miss that.
On the plus side, as I fly across the Brooklyn Bridge, alongside the much more atomized private universes of all the cars, I have my little voice memo recorder rolling, capturing my thoughts as I go. I don’t imagine my thoughts are all that important or interesting. But I like the exercise of thinking to myself, of talking to myself, of exploring ideas using and doing it in a way that gets memorialized.
This here’s an example of one such thought:
Vulnerability
As I approached the Brooklyn Bridge today, there was an e-bike to my left. Not a bikeshare e-bike like the one I rode, but a high-power affair capable of going 30 or 35 miles an hour. Seated on it was a man from Latin America. I would guess in his mid to late 20s. That guess is based primarily on his companion. The man wore a Darth Vader-like motorcycle helmet: his face was not visible. His clothes were high-tech motorcycle gear.
In front of him, though, between his torso and the handlebars of the e-bike, crouched a young Latin American woman. I’m more confident of her age and provenance than of his. Late 20s, early 30s, from Latin America. She wore jeans and a t-shirt. No protective gear, no special clothes, just jeans and a t-shirt.
Scrunched between him and the handlebars, she looked so vulnerable, particularly in contrast to his armored presence. And it got me thinking about women’s vulnerability, men’s power.
Power and Presence
I remember learning twenty or thirty years ago the offensive concept of “riding pussy,” what I believe some motorcycle enthusiasts (at least one that I knew) call the practice of riding behind the person driving the motorcycle. This gets at the thought I had this morning. Somehow, being a companion on a bike—whether it’s electric or otherwise, motorized or otherwise—is extremely vulnerable. It necessitates trusting the driver completely, putting your life entirely in their hands.
I suppose this is true of being a passenger in a car, too. But it feels somehow more palpable, more raw on a bike or a motorcycle.
As I looked at this young woman, paused at a red light, waiting for the light to change so her driver could rocket her off across the bridge, I imagined both the fearfulness and the thrill of allowing oneself to be so completely vulnerable to, exposed to the power of another.
And I thought about how this could translate into the sexual realm, particularly in ways with which I struggle. When I exercise my masculine power in a sexual context, I always, always do so after first reassuring myself that doing so will be welcome, that I will not wound my partner, that I won’t scare her off. I suspect this lies somewhere near the base of my difficulties with the act of fucking. It requires me, once and for all, to dominate, to exert power.
I also briefly found myself imagining, as I looked at this young woman, the thrill of submitting so comprehensively, of relaxing into the knowledge that one’s well-being, one’s very life, is completely and utterly out of one’s control, and instead depends entirely on another person.
As I said, I do this when I’m a passenger in a car or a plane or a boat. But apart from that, it’s an unfamiliar experience. So as I looked at her, as I imagined her ease, her comfort, her relaxation, I felt just a twinge of envy.