Memoir Outtake: Cycling through the Shitstorm

Here's the first of my memoir outtakes I am going to post on this blog. Like deleted film scenes, I thought it’d be fun to show what didn’t make the cut. Hope you enjoy this outtake from a chapter now titled "The Freak Show":


During our therapy sessions, I used a lot of analogies to explain myself to Akhila, the attractive woman with curly brown hair whom I had chosen as my therapist. For example, one day I tore out of my home on Dolores Street to make it to our evening session on time. I had less than fifteen minutes to cycle to their office in Hayes Valley, which was almost two miles away. A few minutes into my ride, it began to hail. Bicyclists were pulling off of Valencia Street, ducking beneath awnings, huddling in doorways with other pedestrians who stared out to the street. The pavement was doting with pebbles of hail. They thunked off my helmet. A few of them hurt as they panged off my knuckles even though I was wearing cycling gloves. Shit, I said, waiting at a red light as I got pelted from the icy mini-meteor shower. Once the signal turned green, I squinted and lowered my head to protect my eyes. I pedaled on.

Cold and sweaty with pieces of hail lodged into my sweater, I stepped into Akhila’s private study. I closed the door behind me. With a smirk, I wiped the sweat on my forehead with a hand towel.

“Sorry I’m late. I got caught in that hailstorm,” I said, nodding toward the window.

I dropped my shoulder bag and helmet beside my chair. I took a seat opposite Akhila, then stared out the window at the dark gray sky. The hailstorm had passed. I couldn’t stop grinning. Akhila watched me with a curious grin. Perhaps she sensed all the energy bouncing inside me like billiard balls after a thundering break. I felt like I could run for miles.

I chortled.

“That’s how the past year of my life has been,” I said, placing the hand towel on my lap as I tried to reign myself in. I explained that it was my first ride in the hail, that other cyclists pulled off the road. I brought up chemotherapy. “If I wanted to live, I had no choice but to just lower my head and keep going and going through that shitstorm, just like the bike ride I had now.”

I held my head high like a boy who just completed his first multiplication table. I was pleased with myself—how simple yet perfect the analogy was. Akhila nodded as though she was saying “Right on.”