I drive too fast; I always have. My favorite toy as a child, after my Thumbelina doll, was the dashboard of a car, of which we had several iterations over the years during which my sibs and I grew up. I loved that thing, the clicking of the turn signal, the swish and clack of the windshield wipers, the tooting horn, and the delicious grinding sound as you started the car with an actual, almost like real, silver key; it was wonderful. I could not wait to learn how to drive, and when I did, initially in our huge green and boat-like Pontiac station wagon, I took to it like a duck to water. My mom refused to instruct me after one whole half-mile session on our driveway; big shocker. Next up was my older sister; at nineteen, she had passed the test once she’d wept through a handful of tries two years prior. She drove us (poorly, in my teenaged opinion) to the new local cemetery, where, as I took over, any and every time I went over seven miles per hour she screamed like the world was hurtling toward a swift end. She is not a good driver to this day, although she owns a red Beemer; I doubt it ever gets to go over sixty-five, the poor thing, but I sure do.
Thankfully, my big brother took over my driving lessons, as did on rare occasions, my dad, which worked much better. Big bro began teaching me on ‘his’ car, a red Volkswagen Rabbit with a stick shift; it was lots of fun to drive and had a bunch of clacking and clicking sounds that stimulated my dashboard queen teenaged noggin. Fab. That car. I still have fond memories of flying down country roads at high speeds, and being the designated drunk driver for my group of friends. So. Much. Fun. And, I am grateful to have grown up in a rural area where the chances of an accident were significantly reduced. I was also very, very lucky. I did back into a friend’s brother’s truck twice in the same five-minute period, drunk off my ass, after returning her home in one sodden drunk AF piece. And I did (that same night) drive twice into a four-foot snowdrift along our driveway, backing out to do it again, but as they say ‘third times the charm’, and voila I too was home safe and – well. I was home.
Driving meant independence. Driving meant I had another way to get out of the house I lived in with my mother; that made driving a gift, just like drinking until I was blind and unconscious seemed like a gift, a get out of jail free card. It is any wonder I did both with such frequency as a teen? For me they were a glorious release; they were also a common one and, for me, the boozing at least was temporary (I have never liked the taste of alcohol, and hate beer). Others were not as lucky as I, however, and that girl I dropped off while banging into her brother Chuck’s Ford developed into a raging alcoholic; so did Chuck. Still, I developed a further split sense of myself and of the world: straight-A student athlete and cheerleader, band and honor society member meets and mirrors the every weekend drunk teenager and drunk driver. I had already developed a twinned self in that house at the end of the long dirt road, and in the other houses I shared with my mother and my sisters, her partners in exclusion. One part of me sought obliteration and even death, and had for years, the other was enraged and determined AF to survive and show those bitches who was boss, which including driving as fast as I could whenever I was behind the wheel, going places, leaving their slow, sorry, conventional asses behind.
Still, they (my mother) let me out because she wanted me out, and, rationalizing, surely those other girls would keep me under wraps, would influence me for the better. What a laugh. The future alcoholic, Chuck’s sister, was expert at getting booze – cases of beer – out of older men, as was I, given the chance, in one of our many local bars. We had fake NYS I.D.s I’d altered using my mom’s typewriter. We got caught once, after our softball league championship game, drinking beer in the locker room; the powers that be banned us from going on to play sectionals, the next level up. It seemed so important and awful at the time, especially given that everyone was drinking, including our parents and coaches, all of whom drank like the proverbial fish; all of the boys on the boys’ teams were getting away with it, at this or that camp belonging to so-and-sos parents, but it was getting caught that mattered. We were not young ladies, not good role models, my other said. Fuck that shit. We went 10 and 0, two years running, mom. Fuck that shit. Although I didn’t say the ‘F’ word in front of her, or use it much, then.
For many years I didn’t wear my seatbelt whatever the speed; them thangs is uncomfortable, brother-fuckers, digging into the female neck and boobage, although they’re somewhat better now, now that they are actually, finally designed to move and adjust, getting longer or shorter in order to accommodate differently sized bodies, and boobages. In my most common and recurring nightmare, I am on the big hill I drove ten thousand times as a teen in the red Rabbit or green boat, coming down at high speed without brakes – wheeeeeeeee. Except it wasn’t a joy ride, it was, truly, a nightmare, until finally, finally one night I dreamt that the car with me in it went straight through and down several village blocks and past a stop sign without mishap or crash, only to land, and softly, in the creek that parallels Main Street. Nowadays I wear my seatbelt and try (and fail) to drive more slowly and still dream, occasionally, of driving a car without brakes. I drive too fast, even in my dreams. Perhaps because I have forever had a sense that this particular life is one to be endured, not enjoyed, and the faster I can get to the next moment, the better. Get this shit over with, already. Still and all, I wear a seatbelt. I guess I’m maturing, or as mother used to say it, ‘ma-tour-ing’. Fuck that shit.
