Something van Driver
Prior to rewatching another YouTube video at the kitchen table, I was hit by a white van outside the Lalit Hotel on the corner of Tooley and Queen Elisabeth Street. The seven-month-old CHANEL Métiers d’art 2026 Show in New York is, decidedly, my favourite fashion show. I watched it again. The clothes are disparate, the references abundant; I like the music. Everyone, the ‘Chanel woman’ (the models), are dressed as unreal laypeople. Descending the steps of a New York City subway station, the commuters walk to nowhere; onto a carriage, off again, lingering against columns and in chairs that will never take them anywhere. I like the costumed fantasy pretenders.
Cycling across the junction, opposite the five-star Lalit Hotel, a van driver pushed his vehicle into my bike which found itself slowly eaten up from under it. Tipping left, I freed a foot from under the maw, caught myself on one leg, and staggered up the road. And I turned, I turned and screamed into the windshield of the vehicle. My bike deserted, blinded in my curses. I said, ‘Are you trying to fucking kill me?’ He wasn’t. I said, ‘Are you fucking kidding?’ I couldn’t stop. I kept yelling as I picked up my bike. The driver was an old man with greying hair, he stepped out; he was profusely apologetic, he said he hadn’t seen me. I pointed to the double broken line. I was still shouting. And then I stopped, he stopped, and I left.
I had the support of two other cyclists; one, a young corporate commuter, told the driver what he did was dangerous; another, an older road bike spandexer, asked if I was okay. In an instant, I forgot the driver. There wasn’t anything else to say. I contemplated taking down his details but thought about how little good that would do. I was unharmed, my bike wasn’t broken. I had expended all my energy into anger and left. I cycled away overcome with shame for having raged in the face of a man’s mistake. He took my emotion as punishment for recklessness. I unloaded on a stranger and saw no cause for extending any empathy.
I was someone else, someone I would ordinarily see and not be. I was the person yelling in the street one passes and hopes has a better day in store, the person someone calls embarrassing or mad. I, for a moment, was someone else entirely. Transformed from one commuter to another. Sun soaked and sweating, I had stank of chlorine from the pool water I swallowed on Marshall Street. I was listening to an old Chairlift song. I created an image of the person I was, the experience I would have. I swerved between potholes and manhole covers. I ripped out my earphones and started screaming into the windshield of a stationary white van.
I exercise to feel more inside my body; I cycle to work, swim, stretch. If only I had known it easier to experience bodily consciousness if hit by a hauler. I moved aside myself and experienced all the discomfort of being an enraged body. I enjoy the city, the model New York, the model models in the Chanel show. I continue to train myself in cognitive abandonment. Less thinking, more action. And, still, there are easier catalysts, when things happen and thoughtlessness reigns; we become foreign to ourselves, weirded by our honesty.
—Andy x
