Birth: Screaming, crying.
Years One and Two: Screaming, crying.
Year Three: Screaming, crying, breaking TV.
Year Four: Screaming, crying, breaking new TV.
Years Five through Thirteen: Screaming, crying, breaking rules.
Year Fourteen: Rejected by pretty girl, crying.
Year Fifteen: Pretty girl dates senior who rides motorcycle, crying.
Year Sixteen: Gets driver’s license, crashes car, buys motorcycle, slicks hair, works out, wears leather jacket.
Year Seventeen: Rejected by pretty girl again, screaming, crying, breaking rules.
Year Eighteen: Ignored by pretty girl, sings in mirror, voice cracks during Battle of the Bands, swearing, screaming, crying, sleeping.
Year Nineteen: Pretty girl works at ice cream shop, calls himself “a big ice cream fan,” grows mustache, chews tobacco, shaves mustache.
Year Twenty: Plays darts at dive bar, washes windows at hardware store, throws pebbles at pretty girl’s window, no response, throws rocks in all of the windows, swearing, crying.
Year Twenty-One: Calls motorcycle La Hog, girl dates college boy, punches college boy, screaming, crying, holding cell.
Year Twenty-Two: Flirts with pretty girl, she says he’s a guy who’ll never leave his hometown, swearing, screaming, crying, removes muffler from motorcycle, drives around her block all night to keep her and the neighbors up, girl moves away, screaming, crying, crying, crying.
Years Twenty-Three through Twenty-Seven: Drives at all hours, loud, screaming, crying, trying to annoy the pretty girl wherever he goes.
Years Twenty-Eight through Thirty: Rests from years on the road, eats, drinks, sleeps, eats, drinks, looks at photo of pretty girl, eats, eats, sleeps, drinks, eats, sleeps.
Year Thirty-One: Pretty girl gets married, screaming, crying, drinking, sighing, trades for biggest motorcycle, removes muffler.
Years Thirty-One through Two-Thirty-Five: Screaming, crying, driving, balding.
Years Thirty-Six to Present: Driving, loud, tattoo of pretty girl, screaming, crying, trying to annoy pretty girl and her husband wherever he goes, crying, driving, annoying everyone else in the process.
Previously: Greek Gods Defending Their Roles in the Current Economic Crisis.
E.A. Weiss is a writer in New York. Follow him around.
so... motorcyclists wear those big helmets so nobody can see them cry?
I needs me one of those.
@redheaded&crazie I think it's to muffle the screaming.
@redheaded&crazie Motorcyclists have a lot of Feelings. They only look mean because if they smile they'll get bugs in their teeth.
@jen325 @all I just finished reading an article about bikers with feelings and it gave me all the feelings and now I am cryingggggg.
@PatatasBravas Wow, I love this story. Also crying.
This makes an astonishing amount of sense.
@wharrgarbl
It's true even without the motorcycle.
@wharrgarbl I know! Now loud motorcyclists fit into my worldview! Couldn't figure them out before, beyond "they are choosing to be assholes to everybody, right? They must know those noises read as obnoxious, not cool?"
but yo, this girl must be REALLY something if you get a tattoo of her AFTER she's married to another man.
DAYUMN. I would love to be able to exert that kind of influence on men (not really ... I guess)
Tangentially (or, perhaps, not), one of my greatest fears is being stalked.
Seriously. It sounds like it would be one of the absolute worst things that could happen.
@wee_ramekin There is a little bit (alotofa bit?) of a stalkerish element to this true.
I often think about the same scenario with genders reversed. A woman who drives around the block all night would be painted with such negative adjectives! not that you know, this guy will necessarily escape without that, but somehow there's a difference in attitude that I haven't quite managed to suss out entirely.
@wee_ramekin I had no idea how much I was scared of being stalked until I dreamt that I had a stalker 2 nights ago. I have been having a lot of trouble sleeping this week, so to finally fall asleep and have a very realistic dream of being stalked by a man obsessed with me was just horrible. Also, my dream stalker looked a lot like this guy on TLC's The Virgin Diaries, which I had watched earlier that evening.
Also, I was stalked when I was 18. I had forgotten about that till just now.
@wee_ramekin
You should have done a better job making your bed this morning. NOT VERY NEAT, was it?
@atipofthehat Mighty big words from somebody who hasn't even gotten out of bed
@wee_ramekin I got stalked in college - footprints up to my window and everything. It was terrifying. I had to ask a psych prof about what to do; luckily the stalker wasn't violent and responded to several direct, assertive conversation about how this isn't OK.
@I'm Right on Top of that, Rose
Grrl, I am so so sorry that happened to you, and I am really glad that your stalker responded well to being confronted. I'm angry on your behalf that you had to deal with that shit, and I hope that it never, ever, ever happens again.
"Years Thirty-One through Thirty-Five: Screaming, crying, driving, balding."
Someone needs to make this into a movie.
@maybe partying will help
It would be like Drive but one thousand percent better.
@maybe partying will help so, it would be the best ever? Because I liked Drive so much, already.
"Year Nineteen: Pretty girl works at ice cream shop, calls himself “a big ice cream fan,” grows mustache, chews tobacco, shaves mustache."
... She grows a mustache?
@ietapi she sounds so pretty!
@ietapi Yeah there were a lot of pronoun-noun problems in this piece.
@jen325: I started out OK, but when I got to nineteen I went BWAAAAH and had to reread a few times. Upon further review, it could almost be that the pretty girl cries every time she rejects him. Perhaps it is meta-commentary on how there are many ways to interpret life.
It's just like the intro to that Pixar film, A Bug's Life
Yesterday biking home I ALMOST said to the man on the loud motorcycle next to me at a stop light "you know, people are sleeping". But it was too loud.
@RobotsNeedLove At least when they are loud I can hear them coming up behind me while they ride mile after mile in the bike lane. So that's a bonus, I suppose.
Alternatively, the shades are so no one can see you cry...
@for realsy oh my god I love that. .... I would need to keep my shades on.
@for realsy Oh my. Wow. Amazing.
@for realsy I love this. If I were an abused kid I would feel so much better having all those tough-looking guys on my side. (Though I've known a lot of bikers and most of them were big softies.)
@for realsy putting my shades on right now thaaaaanks
You mean Fountains of Wayne lied to me?
Defends annoying attention-seeking behavior with "Loud pipes save lives, Man."
@noReally Wait, is that a thing people say?
@noReally that's really only a portion of motorcyclists(Harley riders)...and most of us look down on them too. (My personal motto is, loud pipes attract cops)
@noReally I know it's just one anecdote, but I actually have seen someone change lanes right into a guy on a japanese bike?? He rolled along the shoulder and everything. I hated loud motorcycles as a child, and plugged my ears, and made faces, the whole shebang. If I got on one now, though? You'd better believe I'd want it to be audible on the freeway.
@Michaela D@twitter wouldn't do you much good. light travels faster than sound, and all the visibility in the world won't stop a car driver from saying "I never saw him". Some lady blew a stop sign and plowed into my ex, and said that exact thing. I got the loudest horn I could find on my bike, and it's still not loud enough! (rest assured though, I have stock EPA compliant mufflers) You just have to watch out for yourself, expect the unexpected and be ready to get away from dangerous drivers.
In Portland, this happens with bicycles. And instead of making the bikes louder they just get bigger gauges for their ears.
All of the years: truly believe that "Loud pipes save lives." My parents and most of their friends are bikers (the Harley kind) and they all believe this to be true. Personally, I don't know, but it doesn't seem completely off-base to think that a driver than can hear you won't change lanes on top of you and cause you to have a horrible motorcycle accident. I'm not saying that there aren't plenty of annoying and attention-seeking bikers. Also, I know lots of pretty girls who like guys with Harleys.
@ba-na-nas As a motorcyclist I dislike the Loud Pipes thing...But have heard from people riding electric motorcycles that they had more cars not notice them, there is also the thing about hybrid cars running into pedestrians because the pedestrians don't hear them coming (though how they can run into people is beyond me!)
@ba-na-nas The phrase sounds like a lame excuse, but if it keeps someone from getting squished, awesome. What bums me out is when the biker who claims loud pipes are a safety feature goes out riding with no helmet, no gloves, and a dingy black leather jacket. If you're worried about riding safely, why not go all out?
@Roxanne Rholes This stuff gets very contentious among bikers. Some people, including my mother who is a nurse and a very smart lady for the most part, don't believe that helmets help because they don't prevent spinal cord injuries. And leather jackets, no matter how ugly and old, will help prevent you from getting road rash. Also important are boots and jeans, to prevent road rash and burns from exhaust pipes. And, the same could be said for me when I ride my bicycle. I wear a helmet, but wear shorts and tank tops, and sometimes sandals, which definitely increases my likelihood of getting all scratched up if i get in a wreck.
@ba-na-nas So much truth! But my full-face helmet has prevented me from looking like the Phantom of the Opera, so I always wear it when I ride.
Having recently made the acquaintance of a Loud Motorcycle Man, I found this especially hilarious. He is definitely loud just to be obnoxious, saving lives and attracting cops be damned. Although now I am very curious about the pretty girl in his past, and where in his tattoos her initials are hidden.
I hate loud motorcycle men so much!
You fucking asshole, driving down my residential street at one in the morning, ARE YOU SERIOUS? It is the most antisocial behavior on the earth!
YOU DON'T LOOK OR SOUND COOL! THIS ISN'T MAD MAX WORLD!
Nobody cares about noise pollution but it is so real. I want to start one of those sad Noise Patrol Brigades that everybody thinks is crazy. Why don't people realize how draining and stressful noise pollution is? LEAF BLOWERS? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, AMERICA
thank you for this post
@dracula's ghost yeah, let's shout about noise pollution!
@dracula's ghost IT IS TOO A MAD MAX WORLD
@theharpoon it's a MAD MAD MAD MAD MAX WORLD.
Holy shit, I live near a car wash and EVERY SINGLE MORNING those assholes break out the leaf blower and go to town for an hour. And the place isn't even that big! They could just use a rake! It's kind of an industrial/business area so I don't have much room to complain but it's ridiculously loud. And if the windows are open? Fuggedaaboutit.
I used to live in an apartment complex where they'd clear snow off the sidewalks with leaf blowers. Not even proper snowblowers, goddamn handheld LEAF BLOWERS. Just so the process would be as loud and as slow as possible, I guess. And it was a big property made up of smallish buildings scattered all over, so there was a ridiculous amount of sidewalk to cover. I was in grad school at the time and while they didn't start early in the morning or anything, trying to do homework during hours of leaf blowing noise was so awful. FUCK LEAF BLOWERS FOREVER.
Obviously they used the leaf blowers for leaves in the fall too, but the snow always took sooo much longer.
For those guys who can't afford a Harley with modified exhaust, you can achieve the same effect by strolling around with a megaphone and screaming, "I'M A GIANT DOUCHEBAG! AND MY PENIS IS VERY SMALL!" over and over and over.
@ejcsanfran all this time I've been thinking that unnecessary revving of the engine signaled "I'M A WONDERFUL HUMAN BEING. MY PENIS IS LONG AND GIRTHY!" ...
@redheaded&crazie GIRTHY!
i wish my feelings about motorcycles were less strong. But between the noise and the number of people I know who have died or almost died as a result of riding motorcycles and the riders who split lanes in 75 mph traffic so that i almost kill them...oof, i just can't stop hating them.