CRASH STORIES

Oh, man, have I got scars. The scar on my middle finger? From a crash I had when I was a bike messenger and I plowed into the curb at Michigan and Monroe. In my defense, plowing into the curb was the best-case scenario at that moment. The one on my forehead? This is from when this woman ran into me from behind. Also when I was a bike messenger. And the one on my elbow—that was when my brakes went out. While I was flying down a hill. Towards a red light. You know, sometimes you can see a crash coming at you big as life and sometimes you can’t.

I met Brent at Rossi’s. Rossi’s—home of the seriously alcoholic. And bike messengers, which we both were, at the time.

Being a bike messenger was like winding yourself up like a top and spending the next ten hours twirling. My days went like this: Hit the Loop at eight a.m., pick up these airline tickets from this office, a box from that office, files from another office. Drop the box first, the airline tickets next, get a signature on the files and round trip ‘em back. Pick up the slack in work created by coworkers who were too hung over to come in or who suspiciously disappeared from the radio; dodge that bus, this cab, those pedestrians, that van full of tourists. I was that person. I was the one who knocked on the cab that you were in when he straddled the lane line on Ontario, I was the one who met you at the door of your building with your airline tickets. I was the one who delivered your legal papers to the city before their three p.m. deadline. I rarely ate lunch, but I always hit Rossi’s.

Rossi’s had year-round Christmas lights and faux slot machines, free hot dogs at lunch, $1.50 pints of PBR, Bill Withers, Queen, and Megadeth on the jukebox. Most nights when you walked in, you would see messenger bags piled in corners and under tables, you’d see smoke hovering near the ceiling; you’d hear the loud ebbs and flows of conversations, the clickety clack of clipless shoes on the floor, the too-loud boasts about this crash or that crash; you’d see a lot of exposed knees and elbows while messengers compared scabs and bruises. And this one night, when all I wanted was a beer, or ten, I saw Brent.

Brent had big brown eyes and a soft way of speaking. I wanted him to ask me out so bad, I finally said to him, “You should ask me for my phone number.” And he did. Our first date, he asked me to go see “Brazil” with him at the Music Box. We rode our bikes there. It was bike messenger foreplay. Sometime during the movie, I leaned over to him and said, “Can I have a sip of your pop?” He picked up the cup, handed it to me, and said, “It’s our pop.”

Suddenly and surprisingly, I was in love. He said “our.” Our pop. It sounded so beautiful I couldn’t stop repeating it to myself. Our our our. I wanted everything to be ours. Our pop, our bikes, our life.

And then it was an “our” life. It was watching cheesy TV at three a.m. and laughing until we couldn’t breathe, it was working on Sunday morning crossword puzzles together, it was not finishing a thought because the other person already knew it.

Then we moved in together. We were living together about a year when I started crashing. It was unlike me, really. I was usually pretty sharp picking my lines through traffic.

The scar on my elbow? This is how I got it: This one fall day, it was fucking gorgeous outside, unseasonably warm with bright sunshine and I was flying down Michigan and I could see that every light all the way down the road was green and there were hardly any cars around and I was loving life. I came up on Monroe and the light turned yellow but I decided to go for it and guess what, so did the guy in the car that was on Michigan turning left onto Monroe, or, more importantly, turning left into me. I saw his face for a split second because I was that close and I saw him but he didn’t see me so I knew I had to make a quick decision: 1) Speed up, 2) stop, or 3) get the fuck outta the way. I went with get the fuck outta the way and turned toward the curb and BAM! I crashed into the curb and I was over the bars and flying through the air and flat on my back in no time. The tourists freaked out. There were four of them. Possibly a family. The dad-looking one had a camera around his neck, which he pulled up to his face, but stopped when the mom-looking one said, “Sta-ahn.”

I ended up with a fractured bone in my forearm. Apparently, these bones are easily fractured when you try to use them to stop forward momentum at twenty miles an hour. So, you know, I would suggest not using your forearms for this purpose.

When I got home from the hospital, I was shaken up and trying to pretend I wasn’t, but I was doing a bad job of it, because I was alternately crying and then shrugging my shoulders. Brent spent a lot of time staring at me with his mouth open. He was pissing me off. Maybe I was having a delayed reaction and maybe I was really pissed at the driver or maybe I was thinking that, hello, boyfriend, now would be a good time to say something sweet and reassuring, even though the dried blood on my knees and the bruise on my shoulder didn’t look particularly healthy.

See, the thing is, six months ago, Brent wouldn’t have just stared at me like that. Six months ago, when I did something seemingly innocuous, like stub my toe, Brent would grab my hand and squeeze and make a scrunchy face like he was feeling what I was feeling. And then he would always do something that would melt my heart—kiss my fingertips or grab me around the waist and dance with me while he hummed Nina Simone in my ear. Dancing with Brent felt more natural than breathing.

But now, in our apartment, after this crash, Brent was staring at the floor. I launched into a glorious tirade about clueless drivers—those fuckers. Who doesn’t look before they turn? See, this is why the world is so fucked up, when people can’t make a left turn without clearing a biker first, well, obviously, we’re only a short step to complete anarchy and no, my running a yellow is not the same as a car running a yellow because I was on a bike so, yeah, I was on a bike. And then I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Brent really wasn’t looking at me. So I shut up.

Maybe now might be a good time to go through the anatomy of a crash with you. The first thing you need to know about crashing is—don’t do it. It’s only gonna slow you down and it’s usually gonna hurt. That being said, some crashes are unavoidable. So, do this: First, relax. You gotta let the momentum of the crash have its way. Second, tuck and roll. Try to hit the part of you that has the most padding—your hips for you hippy people, or your ass, which is always a safe bet for anyone. Third, after impact, check to make sure you can feel each limb, wiggle your fingers, same with your toes, tell yourself your name, tell yourself the date. All bets are off if you’re not wearing a helmet. If you’re not wearing a helmet, you’re a dumbass though you’re probably not paying attention right now anyway.

So this other crash—when I got this scar on my forehead—it happened outside the Freedom Center. You know the Freedom Center? It’s that monster Tribune building at Chicago and Halsted. I was waiting on the double yellow line for oncoming traffic to pass so I could turn left and I was watching the flag flip in the air and wondering if it was gonna rain soon and BAM! I was on my side, my left shoulder dragging through stones and gravel, moving along the street like I was being plowed, like snow. There was a car’s headlight over my right shoulder. I was deliriously happy that I was wearing a helmet.

When it all stopped, it was like the whole world took a deep breath. There was a guy with his mouth hanging open standing on the sidewalk. It seemed to me that every car along the entire distance of Chicago Avenue had disappeared. And then out of the fuzziness, I saw a woman waddling towards me with her arms outstretched as though if they had any say in it, they’d already be around me.

She was all, “Honey! Oh sweet Jesus. I didn’t even see you. I look down for one split second and then there you are!”

I got up as quickly as I could. I felt the slow motion fuzz of lightheadedness that made my head feel about 80 pounds. All I could focus on were her hands coming at me. I could tell she meant well, given the chorus of “sweet Jesus’s” and the panicked look that made her eyeballs pop out of her head, but I really, really didn’t want a stranger’s hands on me.

“I’m fine!” I said. I wasn’t, of course. I didn’t need to look down to know I was covered in blood. I could feel the creepy sting of the wind hitting my open wounds. It felt like the first layer of my skin was peeled off. As the woman got closer, I could see her starting to cry. I wanted to wipe the tear off her face, but I knew I’d end up smudging dirt or blood or both across her cheek. Over her shoulder I could see my bike, in one piece, on the ground. I was so happy to see it that I considered running to it and hugging it, but by that time there was a crowd of concerned citizens gathering and I didn’t want them to think I was suffering from head trauma. So I just walked over to it, as calmly as I could, picked it up, and walked down the street. I went back towards my office where I knew they’d make me go to the hospital even though all I really wanted to do was go home.

After I got home, after I cleaned up, I was standing in front of the fridge with the door open, thinking that I should eat but also thinking that I didn’t want to make anything and I was wondering how many bowls of cereal I would have to eat to not be hungry and was pouring that many bowls of cereal more work than just making something big in the first place and then I check the milk and see there’s not enough for a bowl of cereal and then Brent walked in. His Henry Rollins t-shirt was inside out.

He looked me over—at the band aids on my elbows and the gauze strips around my knees and the purple circle around my left eye. He raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. I walked over to him and leaned in. He closed his eyes as his lips came near mine, but I didn’t close mine. I took a good look at his face instead. If I was gonna draw a little boy whose mom just yelled at him to go kiss his wrinkly grandmother, a grandmother he didn’t know and thought smelled funny like moldy socks and a hint of lemon, I would draw the expression on that boy’s face exactly like the expression on Brent’s face as he kissed me that night.

That sucks, right? Anyway. So. Back to the scars. This scar on my middle finger? No offense. If you took Franklin north and came around the west side of the Merchandise Mart, you’d hit a slight downhill. It’s not much, but it’s something in the otherwise very flat Loop, and I used to take that descent with as much speed as I could get. It was kinda like a Superman fantasy thing—you know, take flight, grab some air because delivering the package that saves the world is The Most Important Thing Ever. The only thing is, you have to be ready because there’s a light at the bottom of the hill so if it’s red, like it was this one day, and you go to grab your brakes, like I did this one day, and you find yourself grabbing at brakes that aren’t working, like mine weren’t this one day, then you’re pretty much fucked. You’re one fucked Superman with a bunch of airline tickets in your bag and a bike that needed work on it yesterday.

This crash—I ended up seeing it in slow motion—the white station wagon moving slowly through the intersection, the inconsequential brake pads as my wheel ran right through them, the passenger side door of the car as it got bigger and bigger until it completely filled my field of vision. My front wheel touched the door, as if it was politely knocking in order to be let in, and then the world was suddenly upside down, the street was where the sky should’ve been, the sky was where the street should’ve been and then there was a hard whack on my back and I was staring at the sky with the wind knocked out of me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the stop sign. On one side of me was my bike, on the other, my front wheel. The two people in the station wagon were staring out the window at me like they were on a safari and I was the exotic animal. Then it was the same routine—walk my bike back to the office, hospital, home.

When I got home, I sat down on my couch and stared at the wall. I was trying to somehow figure out how to blame this crash on Brent. Then I started looking around the apartment and all I saw was me. Those were my books in the bookshelves, my shoes just inside the door, my journals lying on the coffee table. There was nothing there that said Brent. That’s a bad sign. I mean, Brent was a bass player, but his bass was at a friend’s. He was a painter, but I hadn’t seen him paint since we moved in together. He wrote music, fixed bikes, made killer mixed CDs. But I didn’t see any of that when I looked around me. I couldn’t remember the last time he smiled at me. I couldn’t remember the last time I talked to him without telling him what to do. In fact, I couldn’t remember ever seeing Brent’s stuff scattered around the apartment. Most of his stuff was still in boxes, which I had covered in tablecloths and used as end tables.

When Brent came home that night, I was still on the couch. It was dark. I hadn’t turned on the lights. He sat down next to me and I could smell outside on him. I could hear him breathe. He was looking straight ahead. “I think you should move out,” I said to him. Brent was quiet. I didn’t know what that quiet meant. I used to know what his quiet meant.

I asked him, “Do you feel us falling apart?”
He said, “We’ve already fallen apart.”


The next day, he was gone. He packed up his stuff in less than an hour. He had another place to stay. It was almost as though he had it planned out to the slightest detail and he just needed to do it. When he was gone, it was like the last two years never happened. It was like Brent was never there at all. This scar? Right here? This is the one I should’ve seen coming. But, I didn’t.


Read at 2nd Story Monthly, February 18, 2007. 2nd Story. Awesome.