textfiles/fun/CAA/gecaa-34

From slcpi!govt.shearson.com!mjohnsto@uunet.UU.NET Mon Jan  7 17:25:11 1991
To: wordy@Corp
Subject: chapter-34

THE OTHER WOMAN

#34 in the second online CAA series

by

Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)

Ithaca, NY; 13,231 miles.

August 21, 1987

copyright 1987, Steven K. Roberts





     The road, once begun, never stops.  Tonight in Ithaca, over a fine dinner

of linguini and wine, coffee and sorbet, we spoke of travel.  Hitchiking

marathons of 17 years ago were revived in candlelight; freight-hopping

adventures came to life with all the gritty romance of swaying cars and rusty

steel.  Bright-eyed and wine-lubed, we recounted nights alone in Nebraska,

Jersey cops, long-haul truckers, perverts, road romances, the delicious filth

of coal cars across the great prairies, the strange improbable madness of

travel... those moments that linger rich in the memory like first loves and

last goodbyes.



     I'm not sure what started my addiction -- how I graduated from small doses

of bush-league adventure to the hard stuff.  I do know that the type of

movement doesn't matter very much.  The megabike is appropriate and endlessly

entertaining, but it's not the heart of my wanderings.  The heart is a wild

throbbing thing of thermos coffee, road maps, strange eyes, and exploratory

kisses -- of faded packs and mountains, harbor smells and camp stoves.



     No, I have no idea how it all started, but I do know I'm a victim -- a

happy victim, more willing to pedal over hills on a 95-degree summer afternoon

than endure an air-conditioned office at $50,000 a year.  The road, the Other

Woman, is the love of my life... and I'll vow to kiss her sweet asphalt forever

if she'll keep me free from the torpor of stability.



     She's a tough one, though.  This is never an easy relationship. The Other

Woman seduces the unwary and has thousands of lovers... yet is jealous of every

one.  She'll kill you with your own passion or ignore you in some backwater

until you scream in frustration.  She'll fill you with delicious fantasies then

spill your blood without remorse.  But still you can never leave her -- only

withdraw for a while to lick your wounds and sample someone stable, secretly

browsing your Rand-McNally in the bathroom like a worn copy of Penthouse while

dreaming of your next escape.  The Other Woman lures you back, time after time,

lures you back into her long winding arms like the helplessly lovestruck suitor

you are.  For once you taste her charms, you are forever spoiled, forever

ruined -- doomed to fidget through your static spells and gaze misty-eyed at

old boots, stir at the sound of pre-dawn freights, pick up hitchikers in

tight-chested jealousy and try not to show your pain.



     Yeah... if you don't go running back, you suffer forever.



     We're a sort of family, spread across the planet like a scattered clan

with a rare genetic disorder, drawn together in common need, recognizing each

other in crowds.  We are the victims of the Other Woman.  We gather around

campfires, trade food, grin across the highway with weathered faces crinkled

and arms upraised.  In hostels, our strange accents tickle each other's ears;

we trot out our memories and photos to share insights into what makes the Road

the irresistable Siren she is.  We can spot each other at a distance, and even

sense the stirrings of puppy love that doom the occasional child to a life of

wandering -- the child who stands on an invisible leash at town- edge, holding

his bicycle, biting his lip as we roll past him toward the mysteries of the

open road.  We wink, knowing the moment has been branded onto the surface of

that young brain, searing the delicate cortical tissues into a permanent

overlay that will subtly alter everything he sees, forever.  A future

brother...



     It's not all men, of course -- don't start waving red flags of feminist

outrage at those personal pronouns.  Women are struck too: just as addicted,

just as seriously ruined by the Road for anything even approaching long-term

stability.  The Other Woman is quite happily bi, luring beauty into her lair,

terrifying parents, turning career women into healthy backpack-toting hostelers

who push past their road-fear into a life of adventure.  They're rare, radiant

females, glowing with the flush of urges fulfilled and moving with the free

grace of animals... not the stylized grace of fashion.



     But as infinite as the Other Woman is, there are certain things she can't

do very well -- things that leave one fleeing her arms for those of flesh...

then returning again and again, running to and fro in confusion like a child

caught in a divorce.  For years I traveled like that, pedaling from romance to

romance against a backdrop of the road.  It became a sort of rhythm, a soft

succession of new loves, a Russian roulette of pathogens.  I would pedal into

town and meet her. You know, HER.  Eyes would lock.  Hands would tremble.  She

would be drawn into my writing, my bike, the adventure of my life.  I would be

drawn into her beauty, her warmth, her modular phone jack.  Needing a place to

stay and sensing the stirrings of passion, I would move in.



     By unspoken agreement, the bike would become a piece of abstract sculpture

standing in her livingroom instead of an ominous poised symbol of my

transience.  The love would grow, fragile, accelerated by circumstance, a whole

relationship compressed into days.  But then the Other Woman would begin

whispering from the dark, and I'd start gathering the Zip-locs, tweaking the

bike, scanning my list of contacts.  I'd break the news, and try in vain to

soften the pain... my chest aching at the tears of sorrow and reproach

glistening like jewels on the cheeks of a new friend.  Promises... to write, to

rendezvous, to remember.  And then the last kiss, so terribly different from

the first.



     Alone, I'd slap on the headphones and crank up the jazz, reset the Cat-Eye

and flee back to the Other Woman, that bitch, the rhythm of my pedals salting

the open wound of young love shattered again.  It got old after a while, the

novelty obscured by the pain.



     And so we come to the present.  I'm rolling around in a menage a trois

now:  Maggie, the Road, and I.  This might be it -- a blend of comfort and

adventure, flesh and asphalt, love and addiction, freedom and security.  The

endless changes of travel keep the moss off our toes, yet we suffer not from

road-ache, that affliction that renders the lone traveler somehow tragic and

driven, a free electron looking for a covalent bond.  We've become a molecule,

Maggie and I, drifting together from family to family, more a part of the

solution than of the precipitate.  It's a good life, and I'm even learning to

handle the once-terrifying stability of a long-term love.



     We share road food, conjured from her bicycle trailer by magic. We zip our

down bags together to chase the evening chill -- our porta- condo a cocoon of

healthy smells as the familiar fabric walls billow gently in the breezes of a

new place.  The rhythms of movement beat like an undercurrent of congas in the

night:  heart thumping, pedal pumping, file dumping.  New towns roll into view,

effortlessly, each a haven of new friends and warm beds... each a different

view of the same essential home.  I write, add bike systems, and expand the

family.  And it's so easy, this nomadic life, now that the desperation is gone

and the tools are familiar.



     The Other Woman wasn't expecting this domestication, but she doesn't seem

to mind.  She still throws us curves, owns our hearts, and leaves us panting...

hungry for more.



     That's the way she likes it.