Cucumber Cure

July 10, 2006

During the winter, I was fantasizing about a summer trip somewhere, but now that summer is here, I've mostly just been working. My freelance schedule is always erratic, so when the work is here, I grab it. The majority of my free time has been spent riding around on my motorcycle. And when I'm not doing that, I'm tinkering with it, or reading about it, or just generally being obsessed with it. When I read about adjusting the timing using the eccentric adjuster screw, I had to laugh. Eccentric adjuster screw? The whole fucking bike is eccentric!

I rode the bike from the garage to my apartment on Sunday to pick up Deborah so we could ride around town, maybe head to Prospect Park, but we never got there. The erratic adjuster screw was exerting its personality over the entire machine, and I spent the afternoon fiddling with a screwdriver, just like I had last Sunday.

As I knelt on the sidewalk, an older man approached from down the street carrying three large blue plastic bags filled with bottles and cans. You could hear them clanking from half a block away.

When he arrived at my work area, he put his bags down and stood silently for a moment. I squinted up at him and said hello.

"Is dis a Honda?" he said.

"No, a Triumph."

"Triumph! Uh my god," he said, and slapped both knees with his hands. "I haven't seen one of deese in a lung lung time. They British, right?"

"Right."

"They used to have a lot of deese in my cuntry. Everywhere in my cuntry. My cuntry used to be under British rule."

"What country was that?" I asked.

"Guyana. British Guyana. But I left a long time ago. Twenty years. How fast is dis bike?"

"How fast?"

"Uh, how big, how big? Uh...how many c.c.?"

"Oh. 500."

"Fife hundrit. Uh my gud, dats big. My brodder, in my old cuntry, he had a 50 c.c.. But dat wuz a Honda. Fife hundrit. Uh my gud."

"Yeah, I guess it's big compared to a 50 c.c., but 500 is actually on the small side."

"Dis bike looks modern compared to da ones we used to haf in my cuntry. Dey good bikes, yeah?"

"Sure, yeah."

"Say," he said. "Do you tink you could spare a little money? I'm betty hungry. Betty, betty hungry. And I haf da diabetes..."

"Diabetes? No kidding. so do I."

"You diabetic? Uh my gut. You hafto be careful. Take care of yourself. I lost all my teeth."

I'd already noticed he had lost all his teeth before he told me. I also saw his bandaged ankles and his large, white protruding eyeballs that he seemed to be able to push out of their sockets for emphasis every time he said, "Uh my god."

"You know day haf a cure for diabetes, but dey dunt want you to know. They want you to pay and pay and pay. You know who are berry healthy? Da Chinese. You ever see a sick Chinese man? Dey live berry berry long time. You know why? Because of da tea. Dey drink lots and lots of green tea. The India, dey make lots of tea, too, but not like da Chinese. Lots of tea."

"Huh. No kidding."

When someone mentions random diabetes cures, they are usually referring to type 2. The average person doesn’t know much about type 1 diabetes, and even those with type 2 aren’t very knowledgeable. It’s too complicated to bother explaining to a random guy on the street, so I let the comment about a cure slide.

I finished working outside and started packing up my tools, wiping the grease off my hands, and wiping my forehead. Gave the guy whatever change I had in my pocket, which admittedly was not much.

"You know what's good for da diabetes?" the man said, as if offering a tip in exchange for my loose change..

"No. What?"

"Cucumbers."

When I got home from taking the bike back to the garage, Deborah suggested we go for a bicycle ride. There was a nice cool breeze blowing. "Let's ride to the river," she said.

On the way, we had to dodge impromptu parades — people hanging out of car windows, yelling and waving Italian flags as they cruised up and down the streets of East Williamsburg's Italian neighborhood, celebrating Italy's World Cup victory. The streets were quieter as we headed north, and then east to McCarren Park, but the park itself was bustling — throbbing with boomboxes blasting Spanish tunes over-driven and distorted. A Hasidic softball team was practicing on one of the fields, and I stopped to take a picture. However, the sun was getting too low, and the chain link fence made it impossible to get a good shot, so we continued on our way. When we reached North 14th Street, home of Indian Larry Motorcycles, Deborah declared it her favorite street in Williamsburg. At that moment, away from the cars and the crowds, with the sun getting low and the wind blowing from the river, I had to agree.