Monkey Ran
I survived the Monkey Run. (Had you any doubts?) Coming back to real life has been a bit of a brutal transition, and I still haven't figured out how to answer, "How was it?" I tend to alternate between talking for 45 straight minutes, or just saying, "So fun!" and settling into the uncomfortable silence as the person wonders if that's all I'm going to say about it.
In that spirit, instead of giving you an exhaustive/exhausting play-by-play of the entire trip, here's a short list of my favorite things to talk about from the adventure when people ask:
My bike! I never thought I'd be that guy but I actually fell in love with my bike out there. Isn't that ridiculous? Me, a gay Jew from the Midwest! Who had never even been on a moped before! In love with a tiny motorcycle! But I couldn't help it — by the end of the one-hour training session the day before the race started, I was unironically referring to my bike as "she." (I tried to call her "he" for the first couple days, out of a vague sense of gender equality, but it just did not feel right. I know, I'm disappointed in myself, too.) She was the slowest out of all 55 bikes in the race, so when her name came to me on day 3, it felt inevitable: Granny. Kevin and Chris could blaze ahead, as their bikes were able to reach semi-normal speeds, while I puttered behind them. I spent 7 straight days with my right hand cranking the throttle to full speed, leaving my hand as a fucked-up claw by the end of the race. It's still hard to use it: I go to hit the "O" key, and my finger just can't extend that far, and settles for the "L" instead. My body is ruined, but it was worth it.
MOROCCAN KIDS ARE AWFUL. Many of the towns we drove through were extremely small, particularly the mountain towns we passed through on the days where we decided to take dirt roads instead of the less-scenic and too-easy highways. And most of the towns looked like places where nothing out of the ordinary ever happened, which meant three white idiots arriving on hilariously tiny motorcycles would never fail to make every single kid in town lose their goddamned shit. As you'd approach a town, you'd see kids tearing towards the highway from every hill and field in sight, racing at a full-blown sprint as if their lives depended on it. Some would just scream and wave and reach for a high-five, while others — a not-insignificant amount! — would start to pick up weapons.
Since Kevin and Chris were faster, they would blaze through each town before the kids really had time to process what was happening, while also unintentionally signaling, "Hey, kids! A tiny, easily-knocked-over motorcyclist is about to come through town! Gather rocks to throw at his head!" Moments later, I'd come trundling through town, screaming and honking as I tried to dodge the stones being thrown at my face. One kid tried to throw his shoe into my tire to take me down. Another kid — I'm dead serious here — started to aim a BOW AND ARROW at us.
No exaggeration, the scariest part of the entire trip for me were these groups of kids. Particularly later in the race, when my bike was exhausted and even the slightest incline caused it to sputter into uselessness. After one brutal day of off-roading up a literal mountain, we passed through one final town full of particularly nasty kids, who would sprint next to me and try to rip the clothes off my back, shove me onto the ground, or just yank my bag off my motorcycle. As I tried to slowly make my way up a very slight incline, a girl who couldn't have been older than 6 got both hands on the leather jacket strapped to my bag, and tried to yank it away. While sprinting uphill with my bike because it could no longer power me up itself, I ripped the jacket out of the little girl's hands, leapt back on the bike at the top of the hill, and kicked it into third gear to race away. (I may or may not have screamed, "Fuck you, bitch!" at a 6-year-old girl. It had been a very long day.)
Any time we approached a new town, I'd get a pit of anxiety in my stomach, and I would brace for warfare. Moroccan adults are outrageously lovely and welcoming people, but damn their kids are terrifying.Being gay on these adventures is still weird. Like we talked about in my last letter, it's a very strange experience being a gay male on an adventure like this! It's a hyper-masculine environment, with a huge majority of type-A straight guys peacocking for the benefit of the handful of women. And once you add a bunch of alcohol, drugs, a sense of potentially imminent death, and zero privacy (so no chance for any of these guys to, uh, relieve any stress), everyone becomes insane. I was no exception. By the end, I felt like I had forgotten how to be a human. My brain had been rewired: I thought nothing of farting in public, I was no longer aware of how badly I smelled, and I would laugh along with horribly offensive jokes that, in the real world, would have led me to lecture the person on why that's not a thing you are allowed to say.
I'm pretty sure everyone just assumed I was straight from the get-go. That happens a lot, but usually it's easy to dispel that by simply referring to "my boyfriend" or whatever. In this environment, though, I found we rarely talked in detail about our lives back home: the focus was on our bikes and our adventure. So, by the time they waved the starting line flag and we set off across the desert, I realized, I think they all think I'm straight?
After two days without seeing any other teams, we bumped into the large group of mostly Aussies who called themselves the Desert Rats. We had been friendly-ish with the group at the starting line, so we ended up traveling with them for a couple days in the middle of the race. Which turned out to be the best decision, as they were a hilariously intense bunch who welcomed us with open arms (probably because we were carrying two bottles of whiskey and they had already finished all of their emergency alcohol supplies). We climbed mountains with them, struggled through some brutal off-roading, and generally terrorized every town we stopped in for the night with our drunken antics. In those circumstances, it doesn't take long to start feeling like you've made friends for life.
But on the second night we were all staying together, after a massive amount of drinks, one of the Desert Rats — a particularly large British man, all Cockney-accented, with a deep knowledge of motorcycles and other masculine things, the kind of guy I'm fascinated by but would never cross paths with or be able to become friends with in real life — hooked his arm around my neck, bellowing, "Which one of you is gay?"
"You haven't figured it out yet?" I joked, pretending like I wasn't intimidated by this large, masculine dude putting me in a headlock and asking if I was gay like some sort of high school locker room nightmare. "All three of you?" he asked, genuinely wondering. "No, obviously just me," I replied, and my head was freed from his elbow. To everyone's credit, they didn't seem to give a shit — they had just been sure at least one of us was gay, and had clearly been discussing it amongst themselves until blunt old Louie decided to cut through the shit and figure it out in the most straight bro way possible.
But then everything was great! We talked about Justin, about being gay on an adventure like this, and it suddenly felt like we were all actually friends in the real world, not just momentary adventure buddies. And, because I will not tolerate anyone thinking a bad thought about dear, sweet Louie, he apologized immediately upon seeing me in the morning, and would continue to apologize for the group whenever someone made a gay joke in my presence. Straight people can surprise you sometimes!
4. It's really nice to have a clearly defined purpose in life. For ONCE. My friend Meghan once described being freelance as, "I feel like I'm skipping school and just waiting for someone to tell my parents." Nothing has ever felt more true. Your days are aimless, even when you're supposed to have a goal (for example: I have a rather large project due a week from today, and I have yet to start; I'll get to it later, I'm sure).
On the Monkey Run, we had one purpose: to get to the finish line with our bikes. Everything else dropped away. My first thought upon waking would be about my bike: will it start? If it doesn't, what's the plan? During the days, the majority of my thoughts were focused on getting from A to B. I would consult the compass dangling from my keychain, I'd pull over so we could consult the map and figure out our next move, I'd crane my neck as we rolled past mechanics, hoping to see a tiny tire I could buy as a spare (there were never any). At night, all of my dreams took place on or around my bike. My world narrowed to the three of us and our bikes, and that was it.
The days after the finish line were weird. My sense of purpose was gone. Chris and I moseyed around Spain for a couple days, drinking alcohol and eating pork, enjoying being free of Morocco's nothing-but-tagine menu options. Back in New York I felt even more lost, particularly since I wasn't returning to an office. I got drinks with friends, got caught up on TV, sent about 500 emails to recruiters and creative directors, tried and failed to write this letter a bunch of times. Every once in a while, I looked up how much it would cost to buy a bike like Granny and have it shipped to Brooklyn. Too much for right now, but maybe not too much in the future. I felt like my brain had been rearranged, and I think I've finally stopped wondering when it will go back to normal. Isn't that the point of an adventure, after all? To come back rewired?Lastly, my GoPro tragically died about 15 seconds before the starting flag was waved, but Chris managed to capture a lot of great footage, and has edited together a lovely little trailer for what will hopefully one day become a longer film. You can watch it by clicking the image below. The bad news is that I didn't get to film any of my favorite moments, but the good news is that since Chris was filming it all, I'm the star of the video! Sorry, Chris.
DANNY RECOMMENDS!
Look, I'm not going to recommend the goop podcast to you, because in all honesty I don't really know what it's like. Every week, Gwyneth or one of the goop editors interview a "specialist" about things like health and wellness, and every week I skip over the entire conversation to get to the good stuff: the final minute, in which Gwyneth answers a single question from the audience. These segments usually provide a fascinating, tiny glimpse into Gwyneth Paltrow's surreal life, and I hope the podcast continues long enough for her to do a full episode of Q&As, because every answer leaves me with hundreds more questions.
Here are some things I've learned about GP from her podcast:
She's building a house that's "completely off the grid."
She's "basically never cleansing" but tries to do "one good cleanse a year."
She is "not patient" but wishes she could change that about herself.
She believes the "bones of religion" are what cause most problems in society, but "very much believes in the teachings of Jesus, Moses, and Buddha."
She has "fake blonde hair."
In related news, my dear friend Nora set me up with a potential freelancing gig through her publishing contacts (it feels important to tell you that the gig was proofreading manga — really serious shit). I sent the woman my resume and assumed I'd start next week. Instead, I awoke to this email, which is now tattooed on my arm so I can read it always:
I have truly arrived.
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As always, feel free to reply with love letters, libel lawsuits, dick pics, etc. Bye!