Bury Me at the Divvy Bike Graveyard

Nonfiction, K Tyler

I’m twenty-seven and Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys is dead. I get the news when scrolling through my Twitter feed—I’ll never learn to refer to it as “X.” The first thing that comes into my head is how I made a big stink about how I planned to see The Beach Boys at Riot Fest in September. God Only Knows is humming in my chest, and I’m remembering being a kid in my grandmother’s silver BMW convertible. I think about how maybe it’s good that Brian Wilson is dead; he lived a long life, and I’m not certain the leaking hollers from a Jawbreaker fan would do well with his elderly heart. For some reason, I’m still picturing him young, only maybe with a hip replacement, sitting on a stage as the Beach Boy who has lived a life. My champion of incorporating a theremin under the gentle waves of California-fied music, the only person I ever would want to talk to about Charles Manson in earnest. 

I think I’m writing a love letter to a dead Beach Boy. 

Back in the 60s, Brian Wilson was living a life that didn’t seem all that different from mine. Although I may think too highly of myself, and the way I spend my time. Things were not going so well for the Wilson brothers and co.– notoriously bad Beach Boys albums Smiley Smile and Wild Honey weren’t selling. Brian Wilson had a brush with The Manson Family, who would go on to commit excessive violent acts in the alleged hopes of starting a race war. The main thing I gleaned from this: don’t do acid and listen to The Beatles' White Album. I think about what it might feel like to be washed up when you’ve had real success. The most successful thing I’ve ever done is keep my dog and cat alive. What it must feel like to have people tell you that you’re not doing well when well is all you’ve done. I was an academically gifted kid; I wonder if it’s like failing a test for the first time. 

Does the pulse quicken? Do you begin to sweat? When it makes you money, do you stare at your bank account? What is the horror level and when does it end?

I think about what it might feel like to be beloved the older you get. 

There’s a weird puberty I feel like I’m going through. Everything I grew up loving is dying, and my body is changing, maturing, widening. Cartoon Network is doing shitty reboots still, and Club Penguin is a distant memory. I’m getting conscious of my metabolism and walking on treadmills to songs off The Smile Sessions, pretending I’m a Wes Anderson creature in Fantastic Mr. Fox. I find myself saying shit like “kids these days will never understand, etc, etc, etc,...” Oh God, am I getting old? 

But I’m not yet, and that’s what scares me. In the grand scheme of things, I’ve only lived like two seconds out of utero. Meanwhile, here I am, sitting on a donated stool, leaning over my new-ish phone, and feeling the tightness in my throat about the death of Brian Wilson and wondering who and how many people will remember me when they announce my death. Dear Brian Wilson, did you ever think the news would break for some of us on Twitter? Did you have an algorithm in secret? Did you know hipsters my age would still be lamenting about Pet Sounds? Someone said you made music that felt like a prayer, and I think I like that. 

I think about how, when you get older, as in really old, you can say more bullshit and nobody minds. Like how Brian Wilson said Norbit was his favorite movie once, and everyone just went with it. Never seen it– don’t think I will. I wonder what my nonsensical answers will be when I’m north of my middle age, and if any of them will include Eddie Murphy flicks. 

Maybe this isn’t a love letter to a dead Beach Boy—maybe this is me asking about aging. 

I’ve discovered I have almost-crows-feet, and I’ve never been more excited about anything in my life. There is an almost-cluster of wrinkles when I smile in pictures, and I feel they’re about to come in like wisdom teeth, only beautiful and painlessly. I’ve started forcing myself to block influencers my age on the internet who are constantly talking about Botox. I don’t understand the fear of never being young again. I was stupid then and I’m stupid now, so I’ll live in my textured skin like a toddler lives in pillow forts. It is scary that one day I will be so old that I’ll piss myself in an old folks home and exciting that one day I will be so old that you can trace the evidence of my laughter like ridges in a spinning record. It terrifies me that I may not be cremated with the same hips I was born with, but thrilling that I could be part cyborg at the time of my death. When I’m old, I’ll dream of electric sheep. 

I live in Chicago and in the summer, there are scores of street festivals. Traffic is evil, and rideshare prices are disgustingly capitalistic, but people like to gather, and so they do. I went to Wicker Park Fest the year Citizen headlined, and it was like going to church in platform shoes. I took it upon myself to bitch and moan about the fact that we’d have to rent Divvy bikes to get there because there was also an unofficial caravan of cars celebrating a South American country’s pride (I forgot which country), which prevented an Uber from reaching my location. My boyfriend and his friend were thrilled about the concept of biking through the west side of the city, but I knew the humidity and the exertion would make my knees hurt. A recent development for my body, not one I wanted to share at the time. How embarrassing to begin to notate the ways my joints swell when the air is sticky. I thought I had more time before the arthritic spirit took hold of me. 

It was easy to forget my body learning to betray me once I was peddling. Hot thickened air becomes a gentle breeze when you make it yourself. We stuck to the side streets as two-thirds of us were not experienced city bikers, and a third of us did not wear the appropriate footwear. The bike ride made me think about the lyrics to All I Wanna Do. Brian Wilson, if you’re listening, you and your band made a really good song to bike to. 

A short ride later, we arrived at the intersection of the street festival and needed to dock our rented modes of transportation, but there wasn’t any room. On a patch of grass surrounded by hot pavement was a rat king of Divvy bikes. All interlinked to confirm the rider was ready to pay cents on the dollar and go about their day like a collections agency. Eventually, the bikes not re-rented would be hauled into a white van bearing the same logo as the downtube. I don’t think when I was growing up, I ever thought about bikes worth paying for per mile, worth saving from their grassy grave on the side of a street next to a bar I’ve never seen open in the almost ten years I’ve been a Chicagoan. None of these things existed to m,e and I suddenly remember this man who was at my elementary school for some reason telling us toothless wonders about college. He said that by the time we finished college, there would be jobs in the future that didn’t exist when we were aged in the single digits. I wonder if he meant internet celebrities or Divvy bike collection men or the people who have to haul Lime scooters out of Lake Michigan.

When I finish aging, I want to be buried at the Divvy bike graveyard and I hope someone on Twitter tells their corner of the world about it while they think about what I’ve done and the jobs I’ve worked that won’t exist anymore. When I finish aging, I hope my body is made half out of metal rods fused together from playing God, and my smile lines are deeper than a canyon in the way of natural magic. When I finish aging, I hope I’ve made peace with it.

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K Tyler is a Chicago-based writer who uses fiction and personal essays to make sense of the strange world around her. She is most often found journaling on her couch, writing where she shouldn't be, or watching horror movies with her dog. You can find her online @theelichking or via her blog Under New Management on Substack when she remembers to update it. She is a contributing author to the Dream.FM anthology published by Raging Opossum Press, and her work is featured online in Mulberry Literary, Allium, a Journal of Poetry & Prose, and The Wilderness House Literary Review.