Johnny America

 

Au­tos Erotic

by

“So, did you dri­ve here?”

Dean, hop­ing for a ride af­ter a few drinks, asks in­no­cent­ly. But I’m stung by the mem­o­ries brought to the surface.

“No. I don’t have a car any­more — I had to give it away.”

Dean had heard noth­ing about this. “Christ, man. I know that there were some prob­lems but, why?”

“It just was­n’t work­ing. I want­ed to go out and it want­ed to stall in the driveway.”

“Yeah, well any­way, you nev­er did look right in it — too much ve­hi­cle for you to han­dle. You need some­thing that is eco­nom­i­cal and will last for more than a few weeks.”

“Is it my fault that these cars keep break­ing down on me?”

Dean sens­es my vic­tim state of mind.” Of course not.Shit, how were you sup­posed to know these cars were all fucked up? I mean, you could have nev­er known what’s go­ing on un­der the hood. All I’m say­ing is there might be a pat­tern some­where in there. Maybe you don’t re­al­ly want a car that’s go­ing to last. Maybe you should give rentals a try.”

“You think that deep down this is what I re­al­ly want? That’s pure shit. I’m not look­ing for a car that gives me more headaches than mileage. And there’s no way I’m pay­ing for each ride.”

“Okay. Fine. Why don’t you just ac­cept that you and cars just don’t mix?”

“And go back to walk­ing? I walked for the first six­teen years of my life. I tell you… walk­ing is a lone­ly thing. Have you ever been spot­ted walk­ing by friends who were dri­ving by? It’s em­bar­rass­ing. Be­sides, I’m spoiled now. Once you take the first spin be­hind the wheel, the on­ly time you want to walk is when you’re bored and there’s noth­ing bet­ter to do.”

“Al­right then — how about, start­ing to­mor­row, we go find you a new car? I know some places where we can find some nice pieces of machinery.”

“Well, I do need to move on. Hey, why don’t I call deal­er with all the com­mer­cials on late night TV?”

Dean shakes his head. This is your prob­lem. You’re go­ing to seedy dives hop­ing to find a rare gem buried un­der­neath the trash but you’re on­ly get­ting cars that are meant to be there — cars that look good on the lot but un­der the lights of a city street show signs of use and abuse. These aren’t the types of ve­hi­cles that will be there for you. You’re com­mit­ting to cars that can’t of­fer any­thing sol­id or long term back.”

I say noth­ing. Dean nods in ap­proval, hav­ing con­clud­ed that I un­der­stand what he is say­ing. “It’s set­tled. To­mor­row, we’ll go take a look at some of the places I have in mind and see if we can break this cy­cle. So just try to put it out of your head for now — it’s tak­en care of.”

An­oth­er pitch­er is de­liv­ered to our ta­ble. Here we are, two guys hav­ing a few drinks. Typ­i­cal that the con­ver­sa­tion cen­ters on trans­porta­tion. Noth­ing is def­i­nite­ly re­solved but I feel a lit­tle bet­ter. The pain of the loss of my car is, if not gone, less­ened for now. I won’t even mind walk­ing home tonight.

Filed under Fiction on October 24th, 2004

Care to Share?

Reader Comments

charlie wrote:

Down with au­tos!! Get your ass out and walk, any­way. I burnt up my last car (dropped a match on the floor) and don’t miss t’all.

Consider posting a note of comment on this item:

—§—

Previous Post

«

Next Post

»

Join our Irregular Mailing List

For very occasional ramblings, word about new print ephemera, and of course exciting investment opportunities.