they say– and by “they” I mean a guy with the username Geezer-60 on ninjette.org– there are two kinds of people that ride for fun. The
ones that want to be cowboys or cowgirls, and the ones that want to be
knights.
I guess I fall into the “knight” category, though what I really wanted to be was a Knight Saber, or something adjacent.
I’m pulled in two directions, a lot of the time: the wild feral subhuman life and the glimmering futuristic superhuman life. I crave the extremes: the neon vaporwave heart of the city, the isolated icy wilderness. I’m fascinated by robots and mythical monsters. I wonder if the odd way I bonded with cars as a child, as sort of “proxy reptiles”– because of their face shapes, the way that even a car looked more “right” to me than a human– has something to do with it, the way I feel for these beasts both prehistoric and modern. The way I feel reptilian and love mechanical. Sometimes I want no part of this technological life, this cramped crippled world overflowing with smog and opinions. But I was born into it, and some part of me wants it anyway.
That part of me is the part that Hurricane wakes. The part that loves 80s laser grid aesthetics and cityscapes with all their glittering lights and electro chillwave ambience. The part that, if it can’t be a lizard, is happy at least to be a sentai hero, with a helmet for a face and a fluorescent colour palette.
I can be satisfied with that, being faceless and inorganic and
unidentifiable as any gender (I wouldn’t wear Priss’, uh, rather endowed bodysuit). It’s better than the alternative, which is human, mammal, hair and skin; if I can’t be scales and bright lizard hues then let me be metal instead, let me be some other kind of monster. If I can’t be a beast of the icy wastes, then let me roam the urban jungle at night, watchful and wary, dodging and evading imaginary predators.
I have less dysphoria when I’m riding a motorcycle. A lot less. I like my body and face a lot more than I used to (and let me here insert a hearty fuck you to everyone who tried to make me love them when they were anything but right for me, because I was not that and I am this and I know the difference now; I know you were wrong), but I feel even better when I disappear beneath my tinted visor, clothe myself in a Power Ranger-worthy display of matching green gear. The matching is intentional, because I want to merge into my bike. I want people to see, not a “rider” on a “motorcycle”, but an entity, a larger-than-life creature who always comes as a set. A cartoon figure, a comic book creation, with a single designated outfit and probably a theme song.
Not because it makes me feel “special” to be seen that way. I’m no hero, and I don’t imagine myself as a Knight Saber because I want to be a vigilante crimefighter. That’s not the part that appeals. The part I like is how it makes me seem removed from reality, inhuman.
And I know it does. People, particularly children, gawp at us like they’ve never seen a motorcycle before. There are a lot of riders around, but I’m the only one wearing loud, cartoonish gear in the exact shade of green as my bike. In my gear, I am blank and armoured and a little absurd, and I feel so at home in it.
Finally, it feels like there’s a way to be seen as something like what I am.
***
If I am a beast who is sometimes a machine, then Hurricane is a machine who’s sometimes a beast. Monster, devil, horse, mantis: these are all images she likes to take on. She’s quick to remind that she’s not just one of them, or wholly any of them. She’s anything she wants to be, an untamed spirit who demands ultimate freedom in how she chooses to avatar herself.
It’s inspiring, actually; she’s so much more confident about it than I am, even. Most people I know, including myself, are afraid of changing their self-avatar “too often” or having “too many”, in case it looks poser-ish. Hurricane doesn’t go for that self-deprecating bullshit. She’ll be a rainbow unicorn phoenix monster cyborg with flames coming out her exhaust if she wants to. She gleefully eats up any cool image I throw at her because ‘sonas are fun, and she refuses to tie herself to just one for the sake of being “reasonable”.
She is, at heart, happy with her form: a mantis-eyed green machine of plastic and chrome. But she also likes being a black horse leaping through the night, glowing eyes illuminating her path; a war machine of spikes and draconic shape and gouts of blasting flame. A kelpie, tempting you to ride then dragging you under (and how she has dragged me under, and how she has drowned me, and how I have crossed over to the Faerie lands on her back and seen with eyes made new; she is truly that beast of legend, if she is anything). A gleaming black panther-demon with velvet fur and saucer eyes and claws wrapped around a tire. A punk rebel girl rocking out like Joan Jett. This, or this.
Whatever she is, she tells me, she’s faster than my nightmares. And I believe her.
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