How to affix a bike rack so it acts as a barrier between road dirt and your butt:
First, barter with a guy at a garage sale and buy a Specialized mountain bike for thirty dollars cash. From his roommate, buy a bike rack and a bungee cord for a buck. Roommate explains that the bike rack needs different hardware to attach to the bike.
Ride home. Chain bike to post and push bike rack up into carport rafters until rainy season starts.
Rainy season starts earlier than expected. Notice a dark, wet stripe up your butt from biking down a merely damp road.
Fish bike rack down from rafters. Set it over bike’s rear wheel — rack legs extend down either side of the wheel. See screw holes at the bottom of each rack leg. Fit them over the screws protruding from the wheel well. Perfect. Use current hardware to affix bike rack to seat-post, despite earlier warning.
Set out for the Co-op. Bike rack falls off three blocks from your house. Pedal back. Push bike rack back into rafters. Buy bright yellow rain pants.
Notice dark wet stripe extends up your back to your shoulder blades, above the pants. Remember bungee cord.
Fish bike rack down again. Attempt to remove non-feasible hardware. Cuss.
Track down toolbox in laundry room. Drag everything inside where it’s warm. Get mud on newly installed (but ugly) carpet. Make tea known for its calming qualities. Drink it.
Outside, spray rusted hardware with WD-40. Inside, remove useless hardware and place on no-longer-clean counter. Go back outside with naked rack and bungee cord.
As before, fit rack leg screw holes over screws protruding from bike’s rear wheel well. Perfect. Hook one end of the bungee cord to the flat horizontal part of the bike rack, wrap the cord around the seat-post, then hook the other end on the other side of the rack.
Test it: grab the back of the rack and pull it away from the seat-post. Watch it snap back into place, secure.
Smile. Enjoy the rainy season, stripe-free.
essays by shé 
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