marknotmarc

New victim muse!!!

saw a picture on Pinterest really wanted to draw somebody and poor guy pecco catched a stray

The power dynamic between premier-class motorcycle and rider is inherently imbalanced. Although the moto literally pulls all the weight and skirts so much risk, the rider remains the face. The star. No matter how pretty the machine, the rider will always hog the spotlight. Sometimes pictures of the motors show up and only further cement this point. Photographs that feel too intimate, shot too low and framed just a little too well to be innocent. Fogged-up plastic windshields freckled with specks of condensation. A trail of rainwater-slick left on a freshly-used tyre. The rider orchestrates a celebration whilst dressed in unsanitary scrubs and listens for a so-called proof of life housed in an entirely inhospitable place. The celebration feels more like a mockery than worship. He checks the machine for any sign of a heartbeat stuck thrumming away somewhere inside, and all the stethoscope can pick up is the unceasing hum of a purring engine. The exhaust pipe huffs out hot, toxic vapour from the exertion Rossi puts his darling through. She's beautiful, and so frightening.

It’s a self-congratulatory exercise — or, perhaps, a ritual of ownership — when soft lips press against the cold, unfeeling signature number plastered across the bike's crest. Forty-six. It feels like just a symbol now. Or a leashing. Something passed down from the rider’s father. And the rider, he now bends close and whispers something quiet, only the bike can hear.

But it's not a one-way affair, no. The machine leers right back. Drools over the loyal rider. Draws him in. Bucks him clean off when he gets too cocky. Leaves him stranded in the gravel. Daring him to venture and mount again and again and again. And he will. God-willing.