The left grip cracked along the top, which is where my palm sits. Not the right. The right grip is fine, a little glossy, still soft enough to give under a thumb. The left one wore because that is the hand that carries me, the one that signals, the one that holds while the other lets go to point or wave or shift.
The rubber did not tear. It hardened first, over years, going from a thing that gave to a thing that only pretended to. Then a cold morning found the seam and it split, a dry crack running the length of the bar. The two edges stand up now, a little proud, sharp enough to feel. Where they gape, the aluminum shows through, and the aluminum is bright, polished by nothing but the underside of one hand doing the same thing ten thousand times.
So now the grip presses back. A thin hard line across the meat below the fingers, exactly where I am softest. I have started holding a half-inch inboard to miss it, which throws my wrist off, which I feel in the elbow by the time I am home. The body routes around the fault and pays a toll somewhere else.
Electrical tape would fix it. I have electrical tape. It is in the drawer with the pedal I am also not fixing.
I ran my thumb down the crack in the garage and a fleck of the old rubber came away, hard as a fingernail paring, and I rolled it between two fingers and it did not soften, and I put it in my shirt pocket without deciding to keep it.