Mike Bennett. Old Blog 2006 -2008

Mick's Chopper: An Extract From Episode 6

Chapter 4

Mick bent down and began to move the small wheels of the number-coded lock that secured the rear wheel of his bicycle to its frame. The underground car park was manned throughout the working day by an attendant, Charlie, but the lock provided Mick with an extra sense of security.
The numbers clicked into place and the lock came apart in his hands. Mick wrapped the chain around the bike-frame beneath the saddle. Of course; if someone were determined to steal the bike, then no chain, nor any number of chains, would make much difference. But then, unlike so many mountain bikes, if someone were to steal Mick’s bike, they’d have a job concealing it beneath anything so transparent as a new coat of paint. For no one else in this town - nor anywhere else he’d seen for miles around - rode a Raleigh Chopper.
The Harley Davidson of the bicycle world, the Chopper was Mick’s single greatest joy in life. Throughout his childhood, he’d pestered his parents to buy him one, but they were pragmatic people. They saw no practical advantages to the strange, hulking contraption that for some curious reason was so adored by their - and indeed most of the nation’s - sons in the 1970s. They felt the racer they’d invested in for young Michael was a splendid machine, and saw no point in buying him another bike. Mick shook his head; how could they have understood the allure of the Chopper? How could they have known that to the young Mick, it was the embodiment of sex, power and freedom.
How he had sullenly sat perched upon his fine, skeletal racer, watching while Chopper owning boys like Malcolm Barnes seduced girls with the prospect of ‘backies’ on those big, padded seats. He recalled now the plastic, beak-like saddle of his racer: how it had felt like the head of an axe between his arse cheeks. No girl would ever want to ride with him on a racer – it wasn’t designed for two.
For one thing, his racer would have been unmanoeuvrable with two people on it, and for another, just supposing he had managed to convince some girl to risk her childbearing future and get on his saddle – where then would he have sat? He couldn’t have done – his skinny arse would just have gone up and down in her face as he pedalled away, and she would’ve had nothing to hang onto – except his skinny arse, and she wasn’t going to do that - not at the tender age of twelve.
How he’d envied boys like Malcolm Barnes, riding around the streets with his black leather gloved hands. One hand on the handle bars, the other dangling casually at his side. His expression said it all: ‘Check me out – I can steer one-handed.’ And he did just that; he used to steer that Chopper leisurely past pubescent young girls who were drawn, moth-like to the colourful iron horse between his legs. They took it in turns to sit on the saddle; their feet dangling on either side of it and their hands on or around his waist as Malcolm took them up and down the street. And then Vicky Rhodes, the hottest girl in the second year, had started going out with Malcolm – not for his looks, but for his Chopper.
Oh, the cruelty. Oh the agonies of burgeoning sexual frustration. He recalled Malcolm, jumping over ramps constructed of planks with one end propped-up on a couple of bricks. How he used to fly for whole inches through the air before the weight of the Chopper brought him back down onto the tarmac. But the distance travelled was irrelevant. It was the spectacle. ‘Put another brick under it,’ cried Malcolm. ‘Prop it up even higher.’ How the girls would gasp. This was Brighton’s very own Evel Kenievel; a daredevil for whom brick quantity was merely an adrenaline barometer.
How Mick had waited, had scrimped and saved the money from his paper round until, at the age of fourteen, he had enough money to buy… a decent cheap stereo; for the times had changed, and now music mattered far more than bicycles. At seventeen, the young worker, he bought a moped. But that had ended in a minor road accident and Mick had gone back to biking it. He’d bought a mountain bike. In some ways, it had reminded him of a Chopper; it had a chunky frame in places; solid wheels, fattish tyres. It was like dating a girl who reminded you of the one you had loved, and lost. Sad really, but then one day, the sadness ended. It was on a drab, commonplace Saturday in May three years ago. He’d been thumbing through old 7” singles in a second hand store when he’d noticed a big red reflector, glowing like the eye of Hal in 2001 – A Space Odyssey, from the shadows at the back of the shop. The singles were suddenly forgotten beneath his fingers as he realised what he was looking at.
Slowly, almost nervously, he’d moved towards it; the classical shape revealing itself to him with every tentative step he’d taken. It was a mauve one, the logo in orange along the crossbar, one word, ‘Chopper’. He reached out and touched the black plastic grips on the handlebars and felt the past wash over him. He’d had innumerable goes on Malcolm’s Chopper, and he knew the touch achingly well. His eyes drank in the details of the bike with the slow appreciation of one who has loved from afar, finally beholding the naked and yielding contours of the adored. The gear shift replete with red grip, the big, chunky tyres with their fine red trim, the kick stand, and of course, the big soft seat with its short, vertical backrest, the silver frame of which continued skyward for another foot or so with no apparent purpose other than simply, looking cool.
He had searched for a price tag and found one dangling from the suspension springs beneath the seat: fifty quid. Bargain. He’d hurried to the shopkeeper and placed a £20 deposit down before rushing off to the nearest cash machine and drawing out the rest of the money. That afternoon, he’d ridden home with one hand on the handlebars and the other dangling casually at his side. ‘Check me out’, he’d thought, smiling like an idiot, ‘I can steer one-handed too’.
‘Check us out,’ Mick whispered now in the gloom of the car park. He ran his hand affectionately over the saddle, giving it a little pat before kicking up the stand. Now in the gloom of the car park, Mick ran his hand affectionately over the saddle, ‘Check us out.’
He mounted the bike and pushed off, heading towards the glow of daylight at the car park’s street entrance. He pedalled lazily past Charlie, exchanging a wave before riding out into the afternoon sun. He reached down between his thighs and shifted up into second gear before turning the Chopper out into traffic.
He had long grown accustomed to the staring of passers-by. Some sniggered, but most, he knew, looked with envy and admiration at his magnificent bicycle. As he had done in childhood, they now pined for the opportunity to cruise the streets on two of the grooviest wheels ever made.