Nature 3 ½--Pat 2 (Social Mores 1—Nature 0)--1/25/06

So I was out riding my bike today. Yes, I know, this introductory device for opening my little stories is getting predictably tired, but how can I be blamed if interesting things only seem to happen to me when I’m on my bike? I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that my life has reached such a non-interesting point that getting out on my bike is about the only time that life can broadside me, but I think it goes beyond that. I am in the process of formulating a new hypothesis (my earlier hypothesis that I am invisible has, in fact, become a Law now as I have been nearly run over far too many times—and only when I do not have a clearly visible partner with me—for it to be a coincidence. So deal with that, physics!). This hypothesis involves me being a foci for unusual events as soon as I start to pedal my bike—that, somehow, a nexus of weird follows me around, wherever I go. But I’ll better develop that once I’ve had some time to observe it more closely, now that I know what I’m looking for.

Doubtless some of you are realizing that it is the end of January, and there should be no way I’d be out on a bike when it should be below freezing every day of the week this time of year. However, I have been out a half dozen times already this month. We had our ten days of winter in the middle of December, and that is apparently all we are having this year. This is, of course, no evidence of a “global warming” trend. I know this because very important people have told me (not personally, of course, what self-respecting very important person would talk to me personally?) that this is true, and very important people wouldn’t tell me such things if they weren’t true.

Before I advance this story any further, I should warn everyone that this story receives an R rating. Usually my stories rate PG-13 (Mild Language, Wordy Adult Themes), so I don’t have to give warnings. But today’s story, I think, deserves an R (Wordy Adult Themes, Clearly Sexual Situations, Implied Partial But Lower Body Nudity) rating, so go ahead and delete this if you’re feeling easily offended today.

For a little over two years now, I have been making regular trips to Athletic Park here in Newton. It isn’t so much that I want to be boring and painfully routine, it’s just that repeated near death experiences have forced me off all but the most remote city streets, and the drive around the park offers me the best chance to avoid traffic because it is one-way (though, even then I had a car—driven by a very inattentive young Republican, I’m sure—that swerved into the parking stalls just last week to avoid hitting me). As such, I have some pretty set routines that I follow when I’m biking. I know how long it takes to make a round (4ish minutes if the wind isn’t blowing), where the best place to stand up on my pedals to stretch my legs is (the north side because there are trees on both sides and the least amount of wind), and where I’m most likely to be killed (where the one-way curves through the spot where the two-way street ends and all drivers always assume they have the right-of-way). As such, I tend to pedal through my bike time on auto-pilot, letting habit guide me while my mind wanders on clearly more important things.

It was while my mind was thus preoccupied that I very nearly failed to notice what was going on in the blue, mid 90s Chevy Lumina that was pulled into one of the adjacent parking stalls on the north side of the park’s drive. In fact, on my first pass, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was seeing, as I only caught it out of the corner of my eye before I had passed out of clear visibility range. It could have been someone sleeping face down on a reclined passenger seat. But it could have been something, er, other as well.

So I sped up to make my pass around the park a little quicker. There was, after all, a chance that the person in the passenger seat had suffered some terrible trauma and I might need to save a life. And how would I feel if my leisurely pace around the park got someone killed? Pretty miserable, I was sure.

On my second pass, I discovered that, in fact, there was a young man lying face down in the passenger seat, which was fully reclined. What I hadn’t caught on the first pass was the young lady who was supinely positioned under him. They were diligently exploring the inside of each other’s faces (how’s that for a mood killing image? But it is, basically, accurate).

“Huh,” I thought to myself. “Ain’t that a thing.”

I was a little disappointed that there would be no life saving opportunities, but somewhat intrigued by the brazen way these two were completely indifferent to what was going on in the world around them. After passing them by, and quite unrelated to what was going on in the car behind me, I decided to speed up my cycling pace again. In the name of better cardiovascular activity, of course.

As I swung around the north bend again, I slowed down somewhat as I stood up on my pedals to stretch my legs. I know what you all are thinking: “Pervert!” But not so! It is mere coincidence that this was also the side of the park that the couple were doing their business on. I am, as I said before, a creature of habit when I’m on my bike and the north side is where I do my stretching. I clearly stated that before, which, I think everyone will agree, makes it indisputable fact.

As I stretched my legs and slowly crept past the car in a not-at-all creepy way, I took the time to notice a few more things about the situation. The most notable of which was the very distinct, well, motion of the gentleman in the car. At this point it became clear that something altogether reproductive might be going on in the car and that it was not just a simple make out session.

As I finished my stretch and picked up speed again, I started to ponder the ramifications of this scene.

First, it was obvious that I would have to write a story about this. This was due to the an interesting aspect of this situation—that this couple, despite generations of social breeding to the contrary, was doing something distinctly private in a distinctly not private environment. This, of course, piqued my scientific curiosity. How could thousands of years of social structuring be so easily disregarded by some people? How would the other people in the park respond? What kind of car were they in so that I could be accurate when I wrote this all out? All of these questions and more raced through my mind as I instinctively sped up well past my normal pace to get back around sooner for further now-scientific study. I needed to find out more about this couple. I wanted to find out what made them tick. What was motivating them? What was their story?

Of course, these questions were going to be impossible to answer without actually talking to the couple, and there was absolutely no chance of that happening. So I would have to learn everything I could through simple, and wholly impartial and scientific, observation.

And, so, I made several more laps around the park. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to decipher a logical reason for the couple’s blatantly exhibitionist behavior—at least I wasn’t able to come up with any publishable findings. But here is what else I noted of interest during my trips around the track. On my fourth round, the couple switched positions so they were both lying on their sides. On my sixth round they switched positions again and the woman was on top. This seemed noteworthy to me because, obviously, the depth of their depravity was such that simple public acts were not enough to do the trick, extra positions were also necessary. I also noticed that, quite against all reason, this couple never looked up from their business. And the park was actually quite busy. It was about noon and many people, especially older people, like to go to the park over the lunch hour. Most of them sit in their cars and do crossword puzzles or doze.

At this point it seems worth mentioning that Newton has an infestation of old people. No, that’s not the right word. Infestation suggests that, with enough chemicals and elbow grease, the problem could be exterminated. Newton has an epidemic, no, a plague of old people. They are simply everywhere—driving fifteen miles an hour under the speed limit, in the wrong lane, and being just generally old all the time. And the park is one of their favorite places to be old in when the weather is nice and their rheumatism or gyp or hemorrhoids or whatever isn’t acting up. And old people are, of course, notoriously unsupportive of naughtiness. So I was fully expecting to see some sort of scene involving irate old people and coitus interuptus-ed young people on one of my trips around.

(Now, of course, I’m expecting to hear from many people who are offended by my crude joke at the expense of old people in the last paragraph. I also expect someone to point out that, now that I’m over thirty, I am officially old myself. To this I simply say, “Get over yourselves, I’m just joking.”)

But by this point I had been riding, mostly at twice my normal speed, for about forty minutes. My legs were beginning to burn and I was afraid that, if I made more than another round or two, I would be forced to get off my bike and use it like a walker to get my sad, old self back to my house.

Those of you who exercise are doubtless laughing at my patheticness—forty minutes isn’t that long, after all. And those of you who are out of shape like me and have tried exercising again after being inactive for awhile are likely feeling my pain. And, then, the rest of you are either not interested in exercising (and, thus, couldn’t care less and are only reading this now because you don’t have the guts to skip ahead to the next paragraph) or not interested in anything that I’ve written so far (and I can say what I like about you because you’ve never been paying attention in the first place, loser jerk that you are). And, thus, I have become all things to all people at this point! Well, at least as far as my options go for how people might respond to my exercising capacities. Still, it’s quite a feeling of accomplishment for me.

Anyway, I hated to leave the story without closure, but I was finding myself with few other options. If they kept at it like the marathon love-makers that they must have been (and, of course, I still couldn’t prove there was anything, er, penetrative going on at this point, I could never actually see anything but suggestive movement), then I was going to collapse into a heap and, quite possibly, die before he, she or they finished.

I decided to push on for one more round, and boy am I glad I did. As I predicted earlier, someone must have been offended because, when I came around for my last round, I saw something that made me laugh inside (though I kept my composure as I passed by). Parked alongside the Lumina was a police cruiser. An officer had interrupted the couple. The gentleman was already dressed—he was wearing a pair of jeans so it didn’t take much. The girl was straightening her easy access skirt. And that was all the proof I needed that something entirely natural was going on in that car. They both looked awfully embarrassed and the cop seemed visibly uncomfortable as well. Which I suppose was also appropriate.

And, thus my scoring adjustment for this little encounter. I gave both Nature and myself ½ point. I figure I get the half point for getting to witness something that I shouldn’t have witnessed. I deserve some credit for sticking to my exercise routine until something worthwhile finally happened. Nature I gave the half point because, as is well known, the procreative drive is second only to human nature’s desire to create order from chaos so that institutions of order can create their own special brand of chaos. So Nature got a half point for drawing those two out of their home or homes in the first place.

Then I decided that it was time to track another competition entirely, since I saw the results myself. Social Mores got the point this time since some cantankerous old person had called up the cops to put a stop to what was basically harmless fun (sure it might be a bit inappropriate, but nobody could actually see anything but smooching).

Of course, I’m just hoping that my earlier hypothesis holds true and strange things like this keep happening to me when I take my bike out. If it does, maybe I won’t mind nearly killing myself for forty minutes a few times every week.