I’ve found that the intersections between my body and moving vehicles are pretty productive.  Sometimes you have to learn things the hard way … 

        In my first blog post (since banished to the void) I talked about an unfortunate incident I experienced while biking home from work.  A milk crate attached to my bag swung into a car’s side view mirror, creating a hairline crack.  An off-duty police officer ( + drunk friends) then jumped from the car and [ violent stuff ].  The focus of the first post was the huge imprint I left in the passenger side door.

Funny to someone, I’m sure

I think I’m financially in the clear and I stopped reliving it so, whatever.

        About a week later I was biking home again when a car swerves over a few lanes of traffic, catching me against the curb and dragging me for about a block.  The side view mirror (and the structure holding it) was ripped off completely.

Was as shocked as this dude

        I went back to pick up the mirror and walked it over to the car, half expecting to get beaten up again.  They apologized!  I offered them some cash for the mirror and they turned it down, repeatedly saying ‘We’re a car, you’re a body’.  They were also shocked at how fast I was going, which felt pretty good.

        In the first incident my body wasn’t involved in the initial collision, which made the resulting somatic experience so much more jarring.  Being named a body in the second incident was extremely therapeutic, it allowed me to start functioning again.

        So armed with the bodily knowledge that collisions can be productive, I got hit while making a delivery last night.  I was t-boned in a pretty busy intersection, after which the car panicked and drove forward a bit.  A man crossing the street thought the driver was running, and proceeded to verbally berate her (‘you stupid bitch, that’s illegal, etc etc, really ugly stuff) and I started yelling at the guy (‘don’t use gendered insults you fucking asshole’) so needless to say the driver is terrified at this point and pulls over to the side of the road.  

        I run over and tell her that her car is fine, my bike is fine, I’m fine, it happens a lot, sorry to bother you, sorry that guy was terrible, etc.  She gets out of the car and she’s crying, she says “I’m sorry, my dad died, I have to go home and tell everyone” and that’s when I see it.

        A hospital visitor bracelet.  She was saying he had just died.  I hugged her and gave her a 10 minute pep talk (the sandwiches I deliver are all cold already, so, whatevs) and I think it helped her a lot.  

        Afterwords I was thinking about the the ways cars (and etc) erase bodies, statements like “that stupid taxi” (for which I am guilty).  In spastically pressing the gas so that the car moved forward, the jerk bystander read the movement as ‘the car is moving forward, they are trying to run’.  My first incident also stemmed from the cop thinking I was ‘fleeing the scene’.  It’s interesting to think about how these sites of somatic confusion or terror are situated in the ‘rules of the road’, the ways that disciplines of these ‘too much’ bodies can be overlooked or even celebrated.  

        If I hadn’t had my earlier collisions, my body might have reacted much differently in the most recent situation.  I could have yelled or ran away, who knows?  I’m glad that after the unbelievable horror she had just experienced I was able to show her some different things bodies can do.