Bicycle Girls
A short story in two parts & a loving acknowledgement of all the other gay girls speeding around the city on their bikes.
I
Susie’s riding down Rathdowne street with the wind at her back. It’s Sunday morning and the cafes are busy. People never check properly when they’re driving through median strips or opening their car doors but it makes it all the more exciting. She pedals harder and harder until all she can do is free-wheel. The wind behind her makes her feel weightless and glorious, her scarf flapping past the ends of her hair like some cinematic French girl in a Godard film. She often feels alone, but taking her bike out helps her forget, or even makes her feel less alone. She loves her bike, it’s her best friend, the most loyal in her life. It waits patiently for her when she locks it up overnight, it moves at her pace and helps her find new parts of the city. She wonders if a person will ever make her feel like that, not like a loyal servant, but moving at the same pace through the world.
II
Lucy nearly just got doored by some idiot. Drivers are so bad in the city, especially on a Sunday night when you’ve forgotten your bike lights. It’s kind of her fault but she’s still mad. But then she tries to imagine spotting an invisible cyclist in the rear view mirror of a car, yeah fair enough. She just finished work and wants to get home as quickly as possible, gulping in the freezing cold night air which makes her cough her lungs up violently. She always rides really fast, always overtaking other cyclists, especially on long roads. Even with a headwind going up Rathdowne St she’s overtaking people. It’s fun at peak hour when she can overtake 10 cyclists at once. She wonders if anyone else rides as fast as her, maybe she’s the fastest cyclist in Melbourne. It’d be nice to ride with someone one day, someone who rides at the same pace as her.