MONDAY SEPTEMBER 18th, 2017
The Globe and Mail
Read it online at:
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/im-the-lone-member-of-the-jane-austen-motocross-club-and-proud-of-it/article36261919/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&
Or read it here:
THE JANE AUSTEN MOTOCROSS CLUB
Full disclosure: the Club is not large. At this point, it has but one member that I
know of.
Me.
But since this year is the 200th
anniversary of Jane Austen’s death, now seemed like the time to come out of the
Georgian wardrobe, so to speak. Time to ‘fess up.
I made a Faustian deal with the diabolical powers of
Georgian literature and motorcycle racing in my romantic youth: If I’d not deny
my affection for Miss Austen’s stories, in return I’d live a long life filled
with a lot of good dirt bike riding.
So far I’ve had the long life and the (sometimes painful)
good motocross riding, but I’m having a devil of a time dovetailing it with the
world of 18th century English romance.
Its as if I’m afflicted with a strange sort of schizophrenia,
a double life. I’m all Mr.Darcy one day, planting out roses with my daughter,
chuckling at Mr.Collins, watching a re-run of Emma with biscuits and tea.
And then the buttons pop off my silk waistcoat and another
me bursts out, a motocross dark side to the genteel side of light-filled
parlours and country dancing. Motocross, to the uneducated, has nothing at all
to do with Austen’s world of provincial Georgian towns and comedies of manners.
Hers is a world of trivial incidents finely written, quiet conversations in
libraries, heart-to-hearts in dappled orchards.
The motocross world, in apparent
contrast, is a high-revving universe of endurance, fueled by adrenalin,
testosterone and speed. Its a sport on the edge of the extreme sports column,
peopled largely by males preoccupied with flying higher, farther, and faster on the knife edge of control, one bad move
away from an ambulance trip.
Inside my steaming helmet, there is no
internal dialogue on gooseberries, local vicars or matters of the heart. On the
racetrack, things tend to be dog-eat-dog, and as I gain on a Yamaha rider
heading for that double-jump, I find myself paraphrasing Jane as I reel in my opponent:
“In vain I have struggled. It will not
do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how
ardently I want to pass you in a hail of rocks and mud.”
Jane’s world is a gentle one of polite
ladies and rich young suitors. But its also a study in sexual politics, class
and the human heart. Not unlike motocross. (Okay, maybe not the sexual politics
part.) Riding torturous terrain in an adrenalin-fueled rush is to look into your
soul and ask: “What on earth am I doing, at my age, with a family to support?”
Motocross can hurt. It can lead to
intimate acquaintance with unsympathetic chiropractors. It can place one in a social
category far-removed from the finer class of vicars and local gentry-folk. Emma
Woodhouse’s anxious father would never have approved. And yet, after a good day
of near misses, long jumps and bruising laps, I again hear an echo of Pride and
Prejudice as I stand back and admire my mud-caked Honda 450. “You have bewitched me, body and soul and I
love you. And wish from this day forth never to be parted from you or ever play
golf again.”
My wife rolls her eyes at this sort of
thing. But she understands. She has come to realize that it should be a truth
universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a Honda CRF450 must be in
want of a good BBC period drama.
Bruce Fierstein’s 1982 book “Real Men
Don’t Eat Quiche” was published to great acclaim, selling over 1.6 million
copies. It poked fun at the sensitive new-age man, living an insipid life
marked by an interest in things perceived to be anti-masculine. But Fierstein
missed the mark. Real men eat anything they want (quiche included.) They also
read what they want: books about motocross racing, books about Elizabeth Bennett’s
love life.
I’m sure there are other men out there,
settling down to a night of Sense and Sensibility and eating quiche while they
Instagram photos of the muddy crash they had last Saturday. Masculine and
feminine don’t have to be slotted so
quickly into time worn pigeon-holes. At the local track last week, a young
woman laid waste to the field of wannabe male racers who could only admire her
skill and speed. She crushed it. I only hope that she pulled off the track and
picked up her copy of Northanger Abbey between motos.
Such men and women can send in their
applications for club membership. The world needs more extreme sports types who
wear waistcoats (or petticoats) and read gentle books about sensitive people.
The broader implications are heartening indeed, especially in this world where
bluster and conflict runs rampant. Imagine a world, for a moment, where riot
police contemplate Fordyce’s sermons on their breaks, where rodeo riders take
harpsichord lessons, where jet fighter pilots practice needlepoint between sorties.
Where’s the downside, dear reader?
As Jane herself once said (and I
paraphrase): “The person, be it
gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good lap on the motocross track,
or a good Jane Austen novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
###
David Gillett
September 2017
