There is no use getting sentimental over a motorcycle. Especially a motorcycle. Even if it is the motorcycle I and ten million other American men have coveted all our lives, the last big-bore, honest-to-God motorcycle motorcycle made in America, and the epitome of what the motorcycle dream means. Harley-Davidson.

I am not certain if it is in my very soul to have wanted such a bike. Some people come to their adulthoods already equipped with nice understandings of just what it is they’re not. And maybe I just lack that certainty–my ‘location in the world’ seeming always more iffy–so I am willing to give more things a try. That is as close to my soul as a motorcycle needs to get–something admired, then tried.

I don’t love it. There is no use loving a thing not fully alive– animals or landscapes or particular vistas or things to eat or drink. I wouldn’t, for instance, want HARLEY-DAVIDSON tattooed on my biceps. (In fact, I’m not quite sure what would be worth a tattoo anymore. If my wife left me, maybe: LOSER). I may have passed now that young man’s reckless season for tattoos.