Knives Up, Knives In The Air

Another knife fight today. This morning. Late last night, actually. Who cares when it happened, really, because while we’re splitting hairs over what time it all happened someone else is going to have a new blade up against someone else’s collarbone.

As for me, I was laying on a couch, almost knocking over my glass of water. It was on the carpet. It’s a thick carpet. So, it’s uneven. And my water was on the carpet because I was changing the dressing for the wound on my shoulder with my free hand.

The knife fight today, what I’m saying, it didn’t involve me. In fact no knife fight has ever involved me; it’s not a knife fight when you just get cut without warning.

Last week, it was, a guy cut me as I rode past his car, right in that spot where my shoulder hits my neck. I had heard about these people, it’s become more and more popular, cutting a bike rider as we ride by a car in traffic. Just stick out your knife and bam!, a bicyclist gets cut up in flesh and nerve. The bicyclist actually sort of does the work for you, creates the movement that runs up against your stable blade. I hadn’t really believed it could happen to me, or to someone like me, a fairly aware and street-smarts-ish rider. But that was obviously misguided.

I got up off the ground and looked down toward my chest and shoulder. My shoulder was stinging but it didn’t hurt as bad as you think being stabbed would hurt. There was blood soaking up my shirt already and running down to my elbow. I grabbed my pump and walked toward the car the man was in. The guy just laughed and tried to drive off. But right then, like a fucking miracle, another driver—who must have seen the whole thing happen—drove up and pinned this guy’s car against the curb. The man’s face changed quickly.

“What in the flying fuck did you just do?” I asked him.

“Hey, fuck off, leave me alone,” he said. He was rattling with his door handle, trying to get out of the car but not succeeding.

“Yeah, you know, I would leave you alone,” I said, “if you didn’t just fucking stab me.”

I got to his car and raised the pump up and smashed the life out of the windshield. Little bits of plastic bike pump flew off in every direction and the windshield cracked into twenty thousand little glass webs. Then I saw his little squirrelly arm reaching out of his car to try and open the door a different way. I raised the pump again and came down on his wrist with everything I had in me.

“Owwwww! Fuck fuck fuck,” he screamed. “You… you broke my wrist! You asshole!” He was holding his arm up and his hand was limp; his wrist was, most definitely, broken.

“Dude,” I said, kneeling next to his car window, suddenly feeling calm and in control. “Look at this,” I said, pointing at my shoulder. “You just stabbed me as I was riding my bike past you. We don’t know each other. Look at me. Do you know me? Hey, look at me.”

He looked up.

“Do you know me?” I said.

“No.”

“Okay, right, so you just stabbed me about two inches away from my neck. For no reason at all.”

“Well bike riders are all—”

“Bike riders are all nothing. You stabbed me. You can’t fucking do that.”

“Yeah but.”

We sat there in silence for a few seconds. He cradled his wrist in his lap and was in obvious pain.

“This is some senseless shit,” I said. “And you’re gonna have a felony. You’re going to prison. And for what? You’re a jackass.”

I looked over at the driver who had pinned the car. He was smoking a cigarette and nodding his head back and forth, as if to either lament the state of the world or lament the other man’s poor knife skills. He was one of those guys, you know, you just couldn’t tell. But he saved me a world of pain and frustration by trapping my attacker, so I took him for what he was.

Anyway, the knife fight today, that’s what we were talking about before I interrupted myself, it involved a couple guys I knew a few years back. They were riding along a shoulder—not a bike lane, but a plenty-wide shoulder—and a farmer, he had some grudge, I guess, he was standing on the shoulder and then he suddenly jumped his fists right up off his hips, and his fists, they were holding knives, holding them up and out toward my friends. Slashed them up pretty fiercely, 37 stitches between the two of them. My friends crashed on the road, one of them knocking himself out when he hit the ground. The farmer, I don’t know exactly what happened, he rode off on his tractor or something, the police have some leads but nothing sounds too promising.

I hate that bike riders in general have something to do with this, some fault or role in it, but they sort of do. Of course, no one deserves to get stabbed. That’s a given. But still, so many bicyclists are annoying and careless and reckless and cocky, it’s no wonder there’s some sort of weird counter-revolution by drivers. As for me, I’m not cocky, I just know what I know. And besides that, I’ve also starting packing rusty, serrated steel rods while I ride, in case I have to defend myself again. As a little added bonus, a little something special, I tend to dip the serrated rods in gutter water so as to be sure they carry some sort of live infection at all times.

Live infection

Let it be a lesson to you asshole riders out there: let it be you to prevent knife fights, let it be you to prevent random stabbings. Stop being so annoying. And hey, I don’t know, maybe remove your click-clackety shoes before you go into the bank or a restaurant; maybe take your helmet off at the dinner table; maybe leave the odometer at your house when you go on a date.

I wish I could reflect more on this today, because I have plenty to say, but I can’t. I’m stunned. A knife wound, as you know, carries with it an eerie silence, and it only makes sense for me to respect that silence.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Keep riding.