bicycle fascist

I was overtaken on the bike path today by a puzzlingly hostile man. He seemed to have a store of labels and insults saved up and was eager to put them to use. The sun had finally come out. I had ridden clear across town to collect my Ghanaian visa. I was thinking as I rode: honestly there’s nothing like crossing the first bridge to open between East and West Germany in 1989 in a sudden sharp hailstorm to make you want to leave the country for a while.

Later on all the errands and grocery shopping were finally done and as I was cycling home – the clouds broke apart and a glorious sunshine lit the local world. I slowed down and looked about me, enjoying the pretty sky. Indescribable light at this time of year, sometimes. A pinging from behind warned of another, faster cyclist. I veered wobbling to the left, defaulting by accident to my Australian road rules, and the other rider pinged his bell furiously, with small intermissions, four or five times over. He called out to me. “Can you pull over to the right to let a person pass?”

“I have pulled over to the left,” I said, “to let you past.”

He pinged his bell again though he already had my attention. “Are you deaf?”

I said, “What? Are you German?”

“No,” he said, primly, as he passed me. “I am a Swiss. Keep your German fascism to yourself!”

Fuck you, I said, reverting to English, and then the tail of my skirt jammed in the spokes and I shuddered to a stop. As I disentangled myself and set off home I was thinking how quickly we had skipped through the steps to the full apparatus: accusations of physical handicap, warning sirens, curt instructions, national identity and then – within a mere moment, it seemed – we were already arrived at the most unimaginative form of terrorism there is: Fascism.