Losing your
motorway virginity at 70
mh-1 to a
horse made from
steel is an
unforgettable thing. You are the
captain of your fate.
White-knuckle on the reins. The air currents whipping past, roaring out the noise from the
mechanical heart beating fire beneath you. The vibrations threatening to
shake you apart and throw you from the saddle.
Of course, how did you get to this point? It might have been fate. It might have been the logical progression from your tired old mule.
Irregardless, you met and tamed your Black Beauty. It doesn't matter where you got her, but the excitement of it. It doesn't matter how you tamed her, but the clumsy, strobe-light movements of it.
Feeling the weight and the animal power of her between your thighs. You pulled on the reins and felt her heart roar. You took her for a gentle canter, feeling her idiosyncrasies. Bonding.
Then you learned how to shoe her, to feed and water her, to wash and brush her, to recognise the wounded machine spirit, as no-one else can, and heal her.
But she is yours now. Love her. Unconditionally. She will never let you down. She is incapable of such action, unlike the females of other species. Any failure on her part is actually the reflection of your own.
Kissing the twisties of the tar-cracked mountains, snarling into the soul-crushing Winter tempests, breathing the warm Plutonian breezes and losing oneself, one-eyed in the inky, diamond nights. This is why you do it: you are the scene. Living and breathing every anguished second of it.
I could never give up my horse of steel and chrome because I'm thinking of clouds the colour of fire, the scent of a tangerine and the way the mountains explode into visor view.
It would break my heart.