MOTORCYCLE SEX: 25 YEARS LATER

By Dr. Gregory W. Frazier, Professor of Motorcycle Adventure

The book, MOTORCYCLE SEX, is celebrating 25 years of being on the market or also being described as WTFOT. Originally selling for $19.95, some collectors and investors have offered original print publications for as much as $400.00.

The publication was a test to see if I could meet the demands of authoring a book and dealing with publishers, a first step in making a living as a motorcycle writer versus simply a struggling motorcycle journalist. When I first took the idea of writing a book about motorcycles to the publisher I was told, "We don't know anything about motorcycles, but we do know that in the publishing world sex sells."

Thus how the title of the book was born: MOTORCYCLE SEX. It was then up to me to flow some words from my cranial hard drive through an IBM Selectric II typewriter to the printer along with photographs that were half toned and published in black and white.

I mentally twisted and turned for weeks while trying to decide what the content would be, other than about motorcycles. The printer kept reminding me of a rapidly advancing due date and suggested I should be seeing a psychologist about his perceived writers block. And thus was born the sub-titled of the book: Freud Would Never Understand The Relationship Between Me And My Motorcycle.

Not taking myself too seriously, I decided to spoof or out Sigmund Freud, a coke-head physician from Austria who was in 1895 lecturing in Vienna, specializing in cases of neurosis and trying to promote his theories on sexuality. In 1885, not far up the road in southern Germany, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach had been conjuring and building a two-wheeled vehicle with a wooden frame and belt drive - the first motorcycle.

The book morphed from my idea that most of my personal psychological wonderings would disappear if I simply drove my motorcycle for a few miles, and the saying that one never saw a motorcycle parked outside a psychologists or psychiatrists office with the motorcyclist inside seeking counseling.

While writing and researching the content of the book I had a chance meeting with David Robb, the Chief Designer at BMW Motorrad, BMW's motorcycle division. I told him the topic I was writing about and politely asked if he saw any relationship between motorcycle design and sex? He laughed and answered, "It's all about sex."

MOTORCYCLE SEX sold extremely well and I started down my personal road as an author. Now, 14 books later, I have two more in the works, hoping one or both will do as well as did MOTORCYCLE SEX.

MOTORCYCLE SEX was panned by some American reviewers in the motorcycle press. Some moto-journalists seemed simply to be jealous of my success, while others, more conservative and trying to be seen as motorcycle politically correct, abhorred the thought of mixing motorcycles with the three letter word sex. Deeper thinkers, like Robert Hellman, Editor Emeritus of the BMW motorcycle magazine On The Level, printed a reviewer's comment in May, 1994:

"Maybe our friend Dr. Frazier is onto something about motorcycles being closely linked to sex. The sense of loyalty and betrayal, like and dislike, conquest and failure, is present much more than can be explained by affinity for any hobby machine."

The well respected British magazine Motorcycle News in their February 22, 1995 titled an article, with an image of the book, SEXUAL WINTER COURSE! saying in the lead "Gregory Frazier explains what links bikes, sex….and sub-zero rallying."

A copy editor for an advertisement wrote "MOTORCYCLE SEX is debatably the 'Psychology book of the decade.' The moral transgressor could hear from the superego, 'Buying this book will allow the reader to understand motorcycles and sex.'"

A British fan, and member of the Professional Motorcycling Sisters, wrote a personal letter to me which said, "Love the book. Love it a lot. Makes so much sense to me."

And then there were the critics and naysayers. I borrowed something Hemingway once used to describe critics and wrote on page vii of MOTORCYCLE SEX, while dedicating the book to the critics: "All critics are contemptible. They are like eunuchs in a harem. They see the trick turned every night, but they will never be able to do it."

As for the naysayers, whom would today be called internet trolls, I laugh and shrug them off as experienced authors and journalists learn to do. In my opinion they do not have the mental bandwidth to deal with the concept of motorcycles and sex having a relationship, can't wrap their pin heads around the spoof and humor in the book.

Over the past 25 years I have seen the book, and autographed them in faraway places like New Zealand and Namibia. Having never been to Antarctica I've not seen a copy there, but did see one in Nome, Alaska, about as close to the end of the earth as one can explore and adventure on a motorcycle.

Long out of print after several editions in the 1990's, the book has not been digitalized and flogged over the internet as an eBook. Maybe there is the potential of some royalties or net sales going that route in this digital age, but as the copyright holder I've no plans to do so.

I did purchase from the publisher the last two boxes of the books before they were to be pulped (what publishers and printers used to do with unsold books). Occasionally when I make a public appearance to promote one of my newer books I'll take along a couple of the older MOTORCYCLE SEX and sell and autograph them.

Once I sold out the few copies I had at a new book signing and slide show presentation I had just finished. An internet surfer got on his smart phone and found a copy on eBay and yelled out from the audience, "Dr. G, you're selling them too cheap. I just found one for $100.00."

I've toyed with doing a follow-up book, another tongue-in-cheek tome, even have a working title for it: MOTORCYCLE SEXPEDITION: ABSOLUTE RIDING. Somewhere on the planet after six global circumnavigations and over 1,000,000 miles, are an estimated 10,000 stickers I had made with that title and using the same man/woman image I created for the cover of MOTORCYCLE SEX. It's all been in fun and I've made a great many acquaintances giving away the stickers. Some motorcyclists paste the sticker somewhere significant and send me photographs, once on the rear end of a bear and once on the shoulder of a madam wearing a leather motorcycle vest in a bar with many working ladies around her.

MOTORCYCLE SEX, still great fun after 25 years.

In celebration of the 25th anniversary of this fine book, we have obtained a limited number of autographed copies. Limit is two per customer, one for you and one for a friend. When they are gone, they're gone. To order yours visit the Sound RIDER! store, https://store.soundrider.com/collections/books-dvds.