The Inscrutable Enigma

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma.” Sir Winston Churchill

Golden Isles Speedway. Recently.

The red and yellow racing machine gleamed in the light’s reflection like a monarch adorned for battle. Its battle-cry mantra shouted from the bumper, “Never Satisfied.”

Wearing a micro-mini skirt and high boots, both black, The Enigma leaned casually against the racing machine, drawn to its inherent possibilities. Confident and in control of the moment, she stood Hollywoodesque, inscrutably shielded by the $800 Marni shades. The only hint of congruity was the “Ride Hard” Harley cap that fused her presence.

Some men might have agreed with Raymond Chandler that this lady “had a smile a man could feel in his hip pocket.” In the background the car’s driver and mechanic crew were frozen in place. “What’s she up to?” they must have wondered, as she gently stroked the sleek machine in a nurturing caress. Except for the slight movement of her hand and body against the car, the scene appeared to have been suspended in time. The camera was an outsider, simply a voyeur intruding into the drama, preserving the event for future contemplation.

Suddenly the scene changed. The men thawed. Movement resumed with the business at hand. She disappeared as mysteriously as she had appeared, blending seamlessly into the cheering crowd. As if in a dream, she seemed to have come from nowhere, yet existed everywhere. It had been one of those rare moments when reality was out of sync with even itself. A riddle.

Never Satisfied. Was that the evening’s message? What a strange conflict of emotions the episode evoked. Yet what a glimpse into the psyche of the human species.

A race car is a man’s dream. It’s steel and rubber, a 112-Octane testosterone-filled child, conceived in the hope and promise of glory that speed, muscle and nerve produce. The race is everything. Do it again. Competition invigorates the male species. Its motives are easily discernable. Nurture the child, win the race. Win, win, win…..Never satisfied!

The Micro-Mini Enigma had briefly disrupted the pace and continuity of the scene. What motive was there for the intrusion? What possible “dreams” could she have had? Some clues are there. Her nurturing tenderness to “the dream child” is the best, though incomplete.

Women seem out of place at racing spectacles. It’s a man’s thing. Perhaps they see through the spectacle to the core. Racing machines, like men, need constant attention, tweaking, and nurturing. Drivers risk everything, including life, for a cheap Saturday night’s purse. Perhaps The Enigma had recognized the frailty and risks of the dream-baby and did what was natural to her species: she affirmed it with her nurturing touch. Perhaps, but a grasping at straws.

Pure conjecture. But speculation into a woman’s motives usually proves specious. Men have never been able to unwrap a woman’s enigmatic package. It’s secured by a gilded Gordian knot that even the sword of Alexander the Great could not sever.

The Enigma in the Micro-Mini is elsewhere now. Other cameras, which are also never satisfied, stop time for her. Meanwhile, the races, like the mystery of women, continue.

Churchill was unable to unravel the enigma of Russia, and the male species has been unsuccessful at unraveling the inscrutable enigma of women. Men, some things in life just can’t be figured out…let’s leave it at that and move on.

Better to entertain oneself at the races where at least the bet can be quantified…and the risk contained!


Bud Hearn
April 30, 2009