Motorcycle Lust

Motorcycle Lust

Quentin Smeltzer, SmeltzerNation, 8/10/2010

As I wrote in “Self Help, Your Complete Book of Bad Advice for Every Situation in Life,” Europe still generally accepts the concept of the mistress.  I know this largely from watching movies. 

The mistress is the twenty-to-thirty-something-year-old girl who sleeps with the married, forty-to-sixty-year-old man.  This keeps the man happy—I’m just guessing here—and it frees the married woman from the expectation that, at least once or twice a year, she pretend to enjoy sex.  The older man is gratified, the younger woman gains valuable experience, and the wife gets to spend her time on the important things in life:  cooking and chatting with friends.  The marriage thrives and everyone is happy.  In Europe. 

Here in the U.S. we don’t have the “mistress.”  We have “adultery.”  We have “grounds for divorce.”  If sex is the reason man invented alcohol, then likewise, I believe married sex is the reason man invented the motorcycle.  The motorcycle is the closest thing to the girlfriend that the married, American man will get. 

The parallels are many:  The motorcycle is hot.  The motorcycle is sexy.  You get on top of the motorcycle and ride it.  You may feel inspired to wear leather.  In any case, you know you should wear protection.  The motorcycle encourages you to go faster and harder.  If not treated with proper respect, the motorcycle may injure or kill you.  One can give you road rash, the other can result in rug burn.  When the motorcycle gets a few miles on it, it is expected that you will trade it in for a sexy, new model.  The motorcycle can be expensive, but nothing, a wise acquaintance of mine once said, is more expensive than the girlfriend. 

I was flipping through the channels the other night and stopped on Headline News or one of those channels where they spend most of their time yammering about the latest, sensational rapist, pedophile, wife killer or the like.   News flash:   they are pretty uniformly “opposed.”  Anyway, I caught a few seconds of a discussion about a new, feminist movement.  These new feminists, apparently, believe in letting their married men have the girlfriend.  By understanding that the man’s sex drive far outweighs their own, and by consenting to that reality, these women feel empowered, not victimized. 

I didn’t get to hear as much of the discussion as I would have liked.  Before I could even think about inviting my wife into the den to watch the show with me, the woman espousing the new view was shouted down by a trio of enraged harpies.  Diving for the remote, I quickly changed the channel to Sports Center and reviewed scores and highlights until the shuddering subsided.

This experience and others lead me to believe that it is highly unlikely that the Continental view of the mistress will prevail here any time soon.  While this may be a bad thing for married people, it is decidedly good news for your local, motorcycle dealership. 

Finally, let me say to my own wife, if she’s reading this—and, believe me, she scrutinizes every word—that the above comments should in no way, shape or form be construed as meaning that I myself would like a girlfriend.  Be advised, however, that I may soon be asking for permission to buy yet another sexy new bike.