That's Why I Live in a Car

Being single is like subjecting your heart to the disorienting sensation that’s common when you are sitting in a car and the adjacent car begins to drive away. At first you think you are the one rolling away so you hit the brakes and then panic and look at a thousand things at once before you realize you had it right the first time. The sickening ripple of equilibrium returns you from the accident you thought you were in, but weren’t, to where you already were.

Eventually you start the car, put it into drive, and take off like an idiot. You stop at a gas station and talk to a homeless man for an hour. His puffy jacket reminds you of going to Sears with your mother to buy winter jackets when you were a kid, and the guilt of losing them. Mom checking the tags to see if they are down or not. Those were low times.

“Hell!” the homeless man says. “You’re just like me!” and you look at him, and look around, and yell out: “fill it up!” but it’s not that type of gas station. You’re walking toward the car.

“How come none of my children ask me to live with them?” he calls after you. A flash of lightning above. You get in the car and close the door. Starts raining. You settle back, noticing the gas tank is full. Smile as the muffled voice comes through the door, remembering your favorite part of childhood camping trips was being in the tent in the rain. The safe feeling of--

“Ahhhhh! ya!” SMACK!

It’s the homeless man. Smashing his cave head against the window.

SMACK! again. The suction-cup mouth. The tongue trying to find a way out, maybe to find the teeth. “AHHHHHHHHHHHH! Where are you going!?”

“Get the fuck off my car!”

“Ahhhhhhhhh ya!”

SMACK!

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh ya!”

SMACK!

“Ahh! Ow! Ohh. Wow. Haha.”

“Serves you right!”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh. ohhhh. Oooooo. Ok.”

Then he rears the head back, seeming, for whatever reason, triumphant.

“Ahhhhhh...”

“Hey!” you yell.

“…..ahhhhhh!”

“Hey!”

But it’s too late. He swings his solitary brain toward the glass, putting his hand out for the retractable side mirror, which retracts, and he falls, letting out a retroactive: “Ya!” He rises with a squeegee, no worse for wear, wiping the rain and blood from the window. He looks inside. Looking for a change. His face an ocean. You look into it, and at it, but..and he sees the change, and lunges for the door, which is locked, and he drops the squeegee and you drive away.

It’s fucked up. Some people have nobody.

So you drive onto a main street with lights and bars. An attractive woman is standing on the corner. You’re an OK guy so she opens the door and sits beside you and instead of telling you where to go she says thanks for the ride. And instead of asking her her name you drive without aim and pretend the car or the rain will go on forever.

“Hey,” she says, looking out the window, “is that blood?”

You look over your shoulder.

“No.”

“Well it looks like blood.”

You think, “Now what does that add to the conversation?” and then she says, “So! What do you want to do?” and you slow the car and ask, “Why do you care? Didn’t you just want to get out of the rain?”

Having been in love, you forget to tell yourself the little lies that make people want to have casual sex with you.

So then you’re parked again. Same spot. If only you could go back. That’s another thing that you forgot when you were in love: the importance of location. Single people always worried about locations. Why is that? You have nothing to do and you get finicky about time? Worried about wasting it I suppose. That’s a waste. Worrying. I'm single again and I'm loving it. That’s why I live in a car.