SGN Page 47

by Beau Burriola

The Best Date Ever
It started out normal enough. Tim showed up at my Racine apartment just after six in the evening with his bike - a well-used off-roadie- and I joined him with my speed racer, both of us heading off toward California Avenue through the busy Chicago traffic. Then it evolved. When we arrived at the address we had gotten off the internet, a man standing near a policeman stood handing out flyers announcing this ride has been cancelled, but then he whispered that we should look for a man in a Yankees ball cap in roller blades two blocks down. All the cloak-and-dagger treatment just added to the excitement of the whole shady affair. We rode down two blocks and found Yankee Cap Man handing out another piece of paper with a second address. Following the directions, we came upon the meeting place, where we crept behind a tree, shed our clothes, and waited with about a hundred other daring people for the start of Naked Bicycle Day 2005. The name was misleading; it wasnt a day ride at all. When we all pushed off, it was about nine oclock in the evening, just in time for our naked parade to head straight for the busiest nightlife, hotel, shopping, and festival streets in Chicago. First we rounded the yuppie bar streets, where drunken frat boys and cookie-cutter girls all choked on beer in amazement and snapped pictures of us, all from the same model of cell phone. Then we headed down every busy street we could find that connected, freezing traffic completely and swarming seas of unsuspecting cars whose drivers were laughing hysterically or just staring. Lock your doors, I heard a mom say to her shocked kids as she rolled up the windows. NAKED? Were NAKED? our hostess mono-toned into her bullhorn as she rode along, breasts bouncing with each pedal rotation. Oh no! Run inside! Were NAKED! Hurry! Get away! It didnt take long for our naked bicycle party to turn into a full-fledged crazy parade. A kilted man in our party rode around telling drivers of SUVs to go die for your own oil! Random people watching us ride by dropped their own pants in a show of camaraderie. At each intersection, naked bikers stopped in front of cars began dancing with their bikes over their heads, allowing our parade to pass through red lights. Cars honked their approval, people shouted and pointed, and Illinois cornfield locals turned away in complete disbelief. You wont see nothin like THIS back home, a man said into his cell phone as four policemen stopped their car and began chasing some of the naked cyclists - a scene which in itself was comical enough, and which they quickly abandoned. For nearly four hours we rode on, passing the huge Bluesfest crowd gathered downtown and then right through the center of the Book Fair festival, where our hostess announced as proudly as her stoned voice could manage, that we are here because we are educated and intelligent. There was a time, even very recently, in my life when doing something like this was far beyond me, when the invite to join a muscly boy for Naked Bicycle Day would crumble under the programmed self-discipline to be upstanding, responsible, and grown-up. How boring. Part of my reason for coming to Chicago was to change all that, to shake up the sediment of responsibility and BE something else. Im glad to say now the stuffiness is melting away easily with the help of kickass people like Tim. Every time I glanced over to see where he was and I saw his muscly body or his goofy grin half-lit by streetlights or headlights, or every time I saw a jaw-dropped look of amazement on someone standing nearby, I stepped that much more into becoming the type of person who would do a naked bike ride. A lot of Gay men complain that dating doesnt have that spark, that somehow we are a community of tired, sex-crazed lunatics throwing in our every ounce of energy into the pursuit of aimless sex; but maybe sparks are not something that happens when two people meet. Maybe good dates are not decided by happenstance or the alignment of the stars. Maybe instead, you make your own sparks, and if the person youre sittin around making em with is the right type of person, you cant but help have the best date of your life. It just takes a little creativity. Look at aaaall the naked people, our hostess sang badly into her bullhorn. Where DID they all come froooom?