“Who knew why they waited, I thought, understanding that I, too, had it in me to wait. To expect change to come from outside, to concentrate on the task of meeting it, waiting to meet it, rather than going out and finding it.”
–Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers

i like being towed. i suppose it’s not for everyone. It’s a leap of faith, like sex and drugs and other initially unearned decisions weirdly rooted in some degree of trust. Of course it’s also the lazy position, but in the most engaged of ways. On a motorcycle it would be a ride, but on a bicycle it is very much a tow. The first time i tried it i was in the second grade, on the back of my neighbor’s ten speed. i wound up on crutches for a month. i was trying to rest my foot on a tiny ridge coming out of the center of the tire when my right foot slipped between the spokes. The boy towing me didn’t notice. He kept peddling, and as the tire moved forward my leg went down and around and i hit the dirt road hard. In Japan i spent some very romantic autumn afternoons sat on the back rack of a cruiser, safely winding around downtown Osaka. In perhaps a not too peculiar turn, i was finally taught how to be towed properly during grad school. The possibility of agency was taking such a beating in my readings that the collaborative effort of a good tow was an easy alternative to solipsism. Once you consent to a tow, you can’t get nervous and you need to be somewhat concentrated on what’s happening: roll with the turns and be ready for the stops. The sensation of being ‘in tow’ or, even better, the subversion of a powerful ‘undertow’ is not out of line here, either. The ride–are you really on it? It doesn’t matter if you’re pushing or pulling but, if your thoughts begin to stray, you aren’t the only one who’s going to get hurt. Most people don’t have the confident skill or even the desire to properly pull off a good tow, but there is something older sibling cool and after school and gregarious about the skill that is a total plus.

Presuming that you have one, what would i know about you if i ever had a peek at your room? Is it yours or do you share it? Are the walls bare? Covered in anonymous art? Collaged with precious memorabilia? Is your bed incidental or cozy? Books? Is it possible to listen to music with another human? Pet(s)? Piles? This sort of boudoir as terroir game is fun, because none of us ends at our skin. Thinking about place is one way of trying to be honest about our relationship to what we could call community, knowing it is not the correct word, but meaning something pretty close to what that word is generally taken to suggest. Plain prose cheats, so i am cheating with the wrong thing as a way of trying to invoke the right one. It’s my way, but not cheating is simply another kind of cheating, and if you’re still reading you are probably the kind of person who knows exactly what i’m talking about. Maybe transmission is a better word. A bicycle doesn’t have one; a tow demands one. Transmission, reception. Even if you’re flying down Wythe on the back of a fixed gear, the mechanism is somehow still taking place.