I kill things with my face.

It's true. Every day, I kill things with my face. And when I say kill, I mean massacre. (My brothers* would here insert a cheap quip about this having gone on for years. Grow up you two). It’s not just a friendly shot in the foot that results in a random, tragic death from loss of blood or a shock-induced heart attack. No, these bodies, once I’m done with them, are mutilated beyond any scope of recognition. It’s gruesome. It’s gory. It happens by the dozens, sometimes the hundreds. But it’s my reality.

I kill bugs. With my face.

If you’ve ever driven or ridden on a motorcycle, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, you cannot possibly imagine. Just as we humans take for granted our existence as the only life-force in the universe, so do we take for granted our existence as the only life-force on the open road. I’m here to proclaim, We are not alone. Bugs are everywhere. (Except where I’ve been. There they’re all dead because I kill them with my face).

These bugs… You can’t avoid them. Can’t swerve out of their way. Can’t negotiate with them. There are days when I can actually see them coming at me, and I’m certain that they’re some sort of arthropod freedom fighters who aren’t just randomly colliding with a high-speed vehicle but are putting themselves in the line of fire for the sake of martyrdom. Stop it bugs! You’ll never win. And you’re interfering with my driving.

First, there’s the pain factor. If the killing is of anything over the size of a common housefly and it takes place on the surface of your skin and not your helmet**, it is PAINful. You’d be surprised. It’s like someone’s hurling tiny stones at you at 60+ mph. Most of the time I scream on impact because, well, a) it hurts and b) I can. (No one is going to tell me to be quiet. Other times I just scream without having killed anything. See b.)

If there isn’t a pain indicator, it’s usually worse. Several different times I’ve pulled up to a small-town gas station, peeled off my helmet and strode inside, only to find that no one will make direct eye contact with me except the bewildered child who strains his neck in amazing ways to holds his stare on me regardless of where in the store his mother drags him. This is when I know two things have happened: 1) I have tiny gnats stuck all around my mouth and lips, and occasionally plastered in between my teeth. (They don’t stick to my cheeks or forehead – only my mouth which makes it look like I’ve just been mowing -- pronounced maow-ing, as in “to mow”, to chow down – on a colony of dead bugs). And 2) My helmet has deposited a line of dirt between my eyebrows, which perfectly imitates a uni-brow. By this point, it’s no use trying to wipe any of it off – the dirt on my hands will be just as bad all over my face as the bugs. So, much of my time is spent in costume as some sort of demented, bug-eating Frida Kahlo. (It’s glamorous, the biking life).

If they’re not collecting on your face, they’re collecting on your helmet, which is bad news just the same. Drive along the St. Lawrence Seaway mid-summer and you’ve got yourself a date with about 300 billion sand flies (not fleas, flies). I made this very trek at night, which is like their Mardi Gras, and was wiping them off of my faceshield every other minute. Except I couldn’t wipe them off, they just smeared, and then the lights from oncoming cars would smear over the smear, and I was blinded from the dead bug remains all over my helmet. When, by some act of god I made it to Montreal, I threw my helmet in the shower like a dirty prisoner and watched enough sand flies swirl down the drain to cause concern about a clog in the pipes. Even my jacket had to be scraped of its mashed carcasses.

(The Lanark County Genealogical Society writes on their website, “Where houses are near swamps or rivers, [sand flies] enter by thousands and attack the inmates, driving away sleep, and producing the most uneasy sensations.” “Uneasy sensation” perhaps being… that you’re covered with thousands of flies? Gross).

Sometimes I’ll attempt an autopsy to try and link the remains on my lethal face to the original species. But it’s usually impossible. The most I can ever decipher is that something very green or neon yellow was taken as a last meal. Only if they’re really big can you tell what they might have been, like when I got my first Dragonfly. Happened in the White Mountains and he was fat, the size of a walnut. (Maybe even a kiwi. Probably even a whole grapefruit). He hit me with an audible Smack! (Scream!) and a very unfortunate positioning – he tangled himself in my chin strap. I could feel his wings flitting and flapping against my neck, fighting a champ’s fight to break free as I grit my teeth and downshifted to 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st like the fires of hell were burning underneath me (you have to use both hands when shifting – no limbs available for freeing bugs) … Once I reached my sanctuary on the side of the road, I tore the helmet off , flung it into the weeds, then jumped off my bike and started pawing at my neck and doing the dance of a madwoman. Alas, we were by then separated, but his death lingered on my skin for days.

(One time in California I hit something that was definitely not a bug. I think it was a bat. It was big enough to knock my head back. People have told me I’m out of my mind, that you can’t hit bats because of their faultless sonar. But then how do people catch bats? If their sonar is that good, wouldn’t they always avoid capture? I'm sticking to my story. It was a bat. Unless you're from PETA, in which case it was probably a coconut).

I can say I’d like to do something about this face killing business. But I know there’s nothing to be done. Someone more heroic might turn this into a good cause, like “Killing things with my face to fight XXX rare disease”. But I’m no hero, so I’ll just go back out and continue with my causeless killings. Because that’s what I do, and I like what I do.

*Danny Motz: Age 21, a member the U.S. Air Force in Anchorage, Alaska where he snarks free continental breakfast off hotels after having passed out in their lobbies. Served in Kuwait in 2005/early 2006 (Iraq = War; Kuwait = Peace) and when recently questioned as to why he unfairly received a laptop from traditionally non-laptop-giving parents, he credited it to his being a “war hero” and all.

Andy Motz: Age 19, a member of the Albion College football team in Albion, MI. Spends his time carving fraternal logos into chest hair and strategizing how he can abandon his career at a college, where he has to “pretend to be sympathetic to the liberals”, for a life of professional poker playing. To date, Andy has earned an aggregate Absolutely Nothing on the poker tables.

**My helmet is a Nolan flip helmet (probably called something more professional than this, but work with me). The front can be worn either up or down -- i.e. with the face totally exposed or totally covered.