Tricycle
by Brian G Ross
I knew this guy once, lost his heart down San Francisco way to this effeminate guy wearing yellow spandex and a handlebar moustache in a club called The Chocolate Tunnel. I’m pretty sure they wrote a song about him. That was a while back.
Anyway, I’ve still got the ticker, but I lost my arms and legs in that fair city a couple of years ago.
Suicide was very trendy a couple of seasons back. Everybody was doing it. It was like cocaine or jogging. I thought I would give it a bash before fashion moved on to something else. Cultural trends changed so quickly these days. Drugs and exercise had never done anything for me, but I had a good feeling about this one.
I was going for a pretty spectacular death-dive off the Golden Gate Bridge but kinda mixed up my inverse pike with my tuck halfway through my routine and ended up belly-flopping into the Pacific instead. It was pretty embarrassing.
I am Tuesday’s child, but there was very little grace that day. I picked up a 3 from the Russian judge, but everybody knows those guys are always a bit trigger happy with the score cards…
Now, stomach-slapping the big blue is sore, let me tell you. That’s serious hurt. It’s like being kicked in the nuts by a pneumatic drill. So, long story short, I couldn’t feel my limbs after that – none of them – so I told the doc to take a saw to them.
And he did.
For a while I was just a stump, and my best friend was the new shiny wheelbarrow I had to buy just to get around. Occasionally, when the sun was out, a neighbour would push me around in it. That was nice. Other times some of the local kids would kidnap me and use my torso as a goalpost, but I didn’t like that so much.
I guess that’s when I came up with the idea of having the wheels grafted directly onto my ass. Get rid of the middle man. It was certainly preferable to being a doorstop for the rest of my life.
My local hospital was not particularly excited about performing such an experimental operation – especially after my insistence that I be awake during the procedure – so instead of a malpractice suit they shipped me off to Japan . There, they were only too willing to wheel me up and film it for an additional fee. It’s true, those guys will do anything for TV.
Anyway, I wasn’t complaining. I was just glad the wheel was finally in motion, so to speak…
I won’t gore you with the details. You don’t need them and I don’t want them.
But it hurt. A lot.
Remember that drill?
Anaesthetic is there for a reason, folks.
At first I wanted those bad boys you see at monster truck rallies – you know the ones I mean – but I soon realised how impractical they would be in my small, one-bedroom flat. I would never get out of my house, let alone hold down a proper job, not to mention how silly I would look with BigFoot wheels. I am a small frame – thirty inch waist. I could never get away with those tyres.
Manoeuvrability was a major consideration for me, and one pretty exhaustive Google search later I discovered the answer – triangulation! Three wheels good; four wheels bad. That was the key. It was cheaper, used less space, and allowed for greater flexibility. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before.
Of course, there was also the added bonus that Bridgestone were offering buy-two-get-one-free, so I would have been crazy not to. Also, state benefits for the un-limbed are notoriously poor these days, so I take whatever I can get.
I got myself a decent trio of racing treads, endorsed by one of the Schumacher brothers. I’m not sure which one. The tyres are not very good in the rain, but on a dry day I can give almost anybody on the footpath a run for their money.
Next week I’m racing for pinks against this kid in a souped-up Subaru.
Now, if I decide to give this suicide lark a second chance, I can get up a head of steam and really launch myself off the bridge this time.
But, I’ll give the rubber a chance first.