I don't know, but it is a truly awesome take! Inspiring in fact--I hope you don't mind---
I had waited long for my Rider, but (as is usually the case for my kind!) the negotiations were concluded quickly, and after a quick but loving inspection of my parts and a trial run (I ran as sweetly for him as I could manage) the parts were signed and I at last was his. As long as we should live, or at least as long as I pleased him.
And I am proud to say that I did please him. He rode me regularly, and even in extremity (and such extremity! The very depths of my machinery quivered and nearly fell to pieces, as I carried him from through a life hardly less dangerous than the tales I'd heard of my uncle's life with him in the war) I never let me down.
He treated me well, too. I was never lacking in oil or fuel, and he kept me as clean and well-protected as he could manage with his lifestyle. The poor man wasn't always able to protect himself, even, and I almost wished I was like my larger cousins, the automobiles, and so as to protect him better from the elements.
But when I saw how he looked upon me, when he was caring for or modifying my parts, examining and caressing my interior, touching up the paint that was proud to display my colors: I could be wish to be no other than who and what I was, and to be with no other than him.
I carried others with him, sometimes, early on, sweeping them out of danger or (more occasionally) merely through the streets of New York. But it was a few years before I discovered what the older and more experienced motorcycles *truly* meant when they joked and whispered of what it was like to carry two riders at a time.
It was devastatingly, deliciously, improper.
The more younger and fragile among you, gentle readers, would do well to avert their eyes--the experience I will attempt to recount is not one that can be properly appreciated when by those yet fresh off the assembly line. But for those more intrepid souls--who can understand, or will soon experience, that of which I speak--I will continue on.
There had been some dispute between my Rider and his Passenger, just before they came to mount me; some matter of priority, I gathered, for my usual Rider offered the Passenger his usual at the front, and thus, control of my functions.
I am sure you can understand that this made me nervous. Too many of my peers, and even my relations, had been handed from hand to hand cavalierly and led in such a manner to an untimely ruin. But no--it was not, could not be, my dear Rider's intention to abandon me to such a fate. If he entrusted me to a friend, well, then, it was a gesture of affection and trust that it would be unworthy of me to suspect.
And yet you can no doubt imagine my relief my Rider straddled me behind his friend--the familiar pressure of his body on an unfamiliar part of my seat. Combined with the unfamiliar hands on my controls, it was a new, thrilling, and subtly dangerous sensation.
And then the three of us started moving. Even the youngest of you must know how it is to move with a rider--but it was different this time. Different even than two riders had been before, different than the times others had had to drive me in emergencies.
I could feel them vibrating--not just with me, in the usual vibration of movement, but with each other--vibrations and counter-vibrations that built upon each other until I was intoxicated with movement, unsure how the three of us were staying on the road.
Perhaps it was something to do with the metal plate my Rider wore on his back--a metal plate no which no longer separated my Riders, no longer blocked the vibrations, but (it seemed) even amplified them. Perhaps this was only as it always was, in which case it is easy to believe what they say--that Riders are not made, like we are, but formed in a vortex of vibrations between Rider and Rider, which we are sometimes privileged to join.
Whatever it was, I knew then and there that I was lucky not only to have my first Rider, but to have a second.
no subject
I had waited long for my Rider, but (as is usually the case for my kind!) the negotiations were concluded quickly, and after a quick but loving inspection of my parts and a trial run (I ran as sweetly for him as I could manage) the parts were signed and I at last was his. As long as we should live, or at least as long as I pleased him.
And I am proud to say that I did please him. He rode me regularly, and even in extremity (and such extremity! The very depths of my machinery quivered and nearly fell to pieces, as I carried him from through a life hardly less dangerous than the tales I'd heard of my uncle's life with him in the war) I never let me down.
He treated me well, too. I was never lacking in oil or fuel, and he kept me as clean and well-protected as he could manage with his lifestyle. The poor man wasn't always able to protect himself, even, and I almost wished I was like my larger cousins, the automobiles, and so as to protect him better from the elements.
But when I saw how he looked upon me, when he was caring for or modifying my parts, examining and caressing my interior, touching up the paint that was proud to display my colors: I could be wish to be no other than who and what I was, and to be with no other than him.
I carried others with him, sometimes, early on, sweeping them out of danger or (more occasionally) merely through the streets of New York. But it was a few years before I discovered what the older and more experienced motorcycles *truly* meant when they joked and whispered of what it was like to carry two riders at a time.
It was devastatingly, deliciously, improper.
The more younger and fragile among you, gentle readers, would do well to avert their eyes--the experience I will attempt to recount is not one that can be properly appreciated when by those yet fresh off the assembly line. But for those more intrepid souls--who can understand, or will soon experience, that of which I speak--I will continue on.
There had been some dispute between my Rider and his Passenger, just before they came to mount me; some matter of priority, I gathered, for my usual Rider offered the Passenger his usual at the front, and thus, control of my functions.
I am sure you can understand that this made me nervous. Too many of my peers, and even my relations, had been handed from hand to hand cavalierly and led in such a manner to an untimely ruin. But no--it was not, could not be, my dear Rider's intention to abandon me to such a fate. If he entrusted me to a friend, well, then, it was a gesture of affection and trust that it would be unworthy of me to suspect.
And yet you can no doubt imagine my relief my Rider straddled me behind his friend--the familiar pressure of his body on an unfamiliar part of my seat. Combined with the unfamiliar hands on my controls, it was a new, thrilling, and subtly dangerous sensation.
And then the three of us started moving. Even the youngest of you must know how it is to move with a rider--but it was different this time. Different even than two riders had been before, different than the times others had had to drive me in emergencies.
I could feel them vibrating--not just with me, in the usual vibration of movement, but with each other--vibrations and counter-vibrations that built upon each other until I was intoxicated with movement, unsure how the three of us were staying on the road.
Perhaps it was something to do with the metal plate my Rider wore on his back--a metal plate no which no longer separated my Riders, no longer blocked the vibrations, but (it seemed) even amplified them. Perhaps this was only as it always was, in which case it is easy to believe what they say--that Riders are not made, like we are, but formed in a vortex of vibrations between Rider and Rider, which we are sometimes privileged to join.
Whatever it was, I knew then and there that I was lucky not only to have my first Rider, but to have a second.