I'm a slow poke driver in a beater car. An 88' Dark Gray Jetta to be exact.
I bought it for $2400 in Piedmont, CA eight years ago from a lawyer who'd put 100,000 miles on it and then bought a BMW.
I've put another hundred thousand miles on it and the car, god bless it, for all intents and purposes is on its last legs...
You see a lot from the right hand lane in California doing 60 mph. Expensive cars whiz by you. Rice rockets eat you for breakfast. Semis treat you like plastic crackers and cheez whiz from a gas station food mart.
But tonight I saw a girl who looked like my ex. She was in the left lane, tailgating, yelling at the guy in front of her. She taunted him. Switched lanes. Jammed in front of a double-rig so it had to put on its brakes...and then she sped off over the Richmond bridge.
She had dark hair in a ponytail. She had the same profile. She was latina. And she had "had it."
Some things in life are about love. I've been there. It's sweet. But some things in life are about all consuming obsession. About things that can't be coincidence...that give you the chills because they open up something that's normally shut. It's better not to talk about those things. To let them go. To turn away. Fuck it, dude, my friends said, move on.
I have. I did. I couldn't take it. Too much drama.
And that was true. Fucking cell phones. A grown man in tears on a hot afternoon pleading for a chance to make it right...is just not, uh, seemly. Something's wrong about that. Two moody people playing off each other. Nope. It doesn't work. It's a bottomless pit. Better to get out while you still can...you know...make a clean break.
I did.
I'm bald. We'd go running together in the hills. Kids drove by one day as we were stretching and yelled...."give it up, dude, she's too young for you!" We were the same age...give or take a couple months. And we laughed about that for months. Too funny.
Funny.
There's a latina way to say funny. As far as I'm concerned, it's the real way to say that word. Funny...there's something redeeming about it. You've gotta have humor. There's no way around that. There's no point to living if you can't have a little redemption. A sense of humor. Laughter.
She'd get angry. She'd accuse me of thinking she was just so sprung for me...that I could do whatever I wanted and she'd just accept it. Of course, in my view, it was the reverse. Or, truth be told, it was mutual, and real. So, I guess, sprung like a muthafucker on both sides.
I've been alive awhile. A couple years later I know that that was the last hurrah for both of us. Time to get practical. And that's true. If you're wise, you know it. Love, yeah, it's great. So is drama. But at some point you turn your attention to long-term well-being and stop throwing yourself at bright objects with all your might like a moth in heat.
It came down to this.
If I were in the passenger seat. And she were tailgating someone. I never found the words to chill her out. I didn't make her more peaceful and I knew it. That wasn't in my tool kit. We had scenes. We both fucked up. But for the most part, I was along for the ride...and enthralled with every second of it.
If I regret anything it's that I later used the "drama" thing as some kind of stupid excuse. Because I love drama. I'm addicted to it like the rest of the human race. Fuck, without drama, we'd just be so...fucking...boring.
So I write this tonight to put it on the public record. Not in any real or practical way. (Like she reads my blog? Like she'd be into my blogging?) I write this in that straight up 'guy at a bar spilling his guts' kinda, sorta spiritual way. It wasn't the drama, I confess, it was my inability to chill her out, to help her feel peaceful, and reassured, and protected. I couldn't do that however much I tried.
In the end she sped off at 90 mph...and left me puttering in this sweet, insightful, mess I call my life as kid oakland.
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{This essay, some rights reserved, orginally appeared on the blog, k/o.}