I hate the fall almost as much as I hate the winter. It’s the season where my high functioning alcoholism begins to lose its masking agent of 400km weeks and the fattening process commences. I do not have body image issues, I am just acutely aware of when and if I am a fat fuck and I know everyone else who has ever raced a bicycle knows this as well. Supercharged skinnies hell-bent on their own destruction are, for me, an aesthetic ideal, be it manifested by Thomas Dekker, Sid Vicious or Kate Moss. I’m equal opportunity when it comes to what physically impresses me, but it’s got nothing to do with sex.
The relationships between immediately post-pubescent men in largely female-free environments can easily be dismissed as homoerotic. Add to this leotards, money, drugs, shaved legs and massages and I begin to understand why the guy in the F150 called me a fagot as he urged me to use the non-existent sidewalk on route 117 last night. If he only knew about the time I shared a bed with a 17 year old guy named Dirk from Sint Niklaas at Hotel Ibis in Majorca. I weighed 155 pounds then; big, strong and perfectly dialed chemically and mentally for dragging more competent, talented and important people along on shitty windy roads for hours on end. But to everyone else in the entire world, I was a skinny, gangly, weird looking kid. When you’re going good you’re pretty in love with yourself; and the physical appearance of other men merely serves as a gauge of who could take you and who you could take out on the road. In a sense, regardless of the sexual orientation of the bike racer, they are thoroughly and completely immersed in a hetero erotic social structure in spite of the lack of woman or potential mates of any gender. Staring at a guy in a skin suit, you’re eying him up to determine whether he’s physically capable of kicking your ass and stealing your prize. The relationship between bike racers is more bighorn sheep than high school shower room. It’s a primeval vestigial relationship that owes more to evolution than anything else. The hierarchy is based upon how good you go- and the physical and mental gifts bestowed upon you is what determines your place in that order.
So dude, when you catch me staring at your ass, it’s all about me checking you over as a rival all right? I mean I suppose I’m not too threatening presently, but wait ‘til I start Nautilus.
