This story is not going to be what you think based on that title. Just sayin’.
A very long time ago, when I was but a wee lad, and boredom threatened to swallow our lives whole, I hatched a plan with my partner in crime, Dave. We decided the only reasonable response to the humdrum nature of our lives was to drag race our motorcycles on the highway under the cloak of darkness.
Dave insisted on spandex unitards (because of course), and so we looked like the bastard love children of Evel Knievel and Hulk Hogan. My Honda, affectionately named “The Thunder Lizard,” sported neon lights that could have been seen from outer space and Yoshimura RS5 that made it sing like Pavarotti. Dave’s bike, which he lovingly called his “Speed Queen,” had an engine that he claimed was souped up with alien technology but I suspect he meant LSD.
In fact, I suspect that much of this memory has been influenced by a combination of nostalgia and the lingering effects of mind-altering chemicals. But no matter. As I was saying: we lined up on the desolate highway, the crickets chirped, the full moon moaned, my Yoshi crooned Italian sweet-nothings at me, Dave, wild-eyed and mostly nude but for the banana hammock onesie, with a nod and blood-curdling scream of “this is an excellent idea!!” we gunned our engines, and the night air filled with the roar of approaching mortality.
As we hit a straight stretch of road maybe a quarter mile up, I saw what looked like the road had turned liquid. I squinted and stretched to see through the next-to-no-light, not sure if it was a fata morgana or the aforementioned chemicals, and as I sped toward it and panic gripped me I saw it was dump first or swim.
Swim seemed safer than blacktop so I drove on.
I hit what I thought was water, and it splashed up and everywhere but I ddin’t go down. Whatever it was was liquid all right, no illusion necessary, and was covering me and Dave and the bikes and I could see nothing anymore. I slowed and stopped and pulled off my goggles and I could see enough in the dim that I knew it wasn’t water – it wasn’t clear it was all the colors. I dragged a finger across the sludge of it covering me and held it to my eyes and could not for the life of me figure out what it was and Dave was as clueless as I was. And then I heard it. The peeping. Of frogs.
I looked at the road beneath my bike and there were maybe millions of small frogs all bopping across the road in one direction, like a river of them just flowing across the blacktop. And I realized I could taste them.
That was the last time Dave and I raced in the dark.
Gargling Gas 