Two tons of steel vibrate between my legs as I barrel down the tree–lined passage. I am taller, louder, bigger, faster and meaner than anything this place has ever seen. When I jerk the shift back, the roar strikes fear in small furry creatures, Hyundai owners and Manhattanite weekenders. This is it, this is what my five years in Upstate New York have culminated into: gone is that fashion–shoed, eye–lined, dressed–in–black, East Villager hipper–than–thou Queen of the Underground.
I am now a crotch grabbing macho man; a stubble–cheeked, pale–haired, skull–and–tattooed rural boy; a swarthy biker; an ornery farmer. I swill pale, American beer, ruin the tweeters while playing cock rock and terrorize two–seater foreign cars driven by midlife crisis men with aftershave and 100 dollar belts.
And this is no ordinary truck—this is a friggin’ GMC truck, man. God–fearing American folk with Bush stickers drive by and think I’m their friend and wonder why I don’t have tiny American flags on each corner of my rig. Midriff–bearing girls strut by, then pout when they see it’s only a chick behind this testosterone–pumped, four-wheel drive, axle–greased, oil–slicked, fuel–injected, million–cylindered bitch, errr, dick magnet.
Yeah, man, I’m Queen of the Road and the other drivers will never have to know that I’m really just a five–foot–one, quasi artist/poet type. I don’t listen to suburban rock; I listen to thin, angst–filled, skinny sensitive musicians from foreign countries whine about their paltry existence, I listen to 1950s be–bop jazz, I listen to symphonies by centuries–dead Europeans. They’ll never know that I practically need phonebooks to see out the dashboard, and that tomorrow I’ll have to return this iron–and–steel lover, this auto–endorphin, adrenaline–pumped, hubba–hubba hubcapped shiny, pulsating, humming machine and pick up my nice, safe Subaru from the mechanic.
So tonight I celebrate all that I have learned in this serendipitous rental experience, this long overdue enhancement of my country life, this temporary pick–me–up of a pickup. I learned that driving a new truck is like being a sixteen–year–old boy who just got his license. It’s like sex after swimming under a full moon while the first breeze of the hot summer night tickles your sticky, salty skin. Like leaving your boring desk job for the last time as you prepare for a year–long trek into the Mongolian desert. Like growing taller than all the people that ever intimidated you. Like finally realizing that you don’t have to be male to have balls.
Dina Pearlman is an artist and a writer living in upstate New York. Her work can be seen at http://www.dinapearlman.com
My first car was a Citroën, circa 1948, the one you see in French film noir. I owned this car on the island of Rhodes, in 1963–64. I am still in love with the girl who I seduced (or who seduced me) in the sand beside this car’s wheels. We were both 20 when I bought it. I was teaching school in order to fulfill my military obligation. I sold the car after I fell off the roof of the National Museum of Art and broke my foot in the sculpture garden. I got 60 days, and banishment from the old city of Rhodes for life. I spent what might have been my honeymoon in confinement.
My first car was about a 1968 Opel Kadett. My bride and I bought it from her dad. Not one to pamper his kids, he charged us $500 for it. It was 1976. It had been his “work car.”
My first car was a candy–apple red 1976 Plymouth Duster. It had been my mother’s car, and no one in the family had thought about its muscle-car reputation. Cars in general were just boxes that got you from place to place and I never knew anything different until the Duster.
In 1987, I came home from a summer spent with the Canadian Forces Reserves with a big hangover and a bigger cheque.
My first car was a 1960 Renault Dauphine. Remember those? They were the French alternative to the VW bug. Despite that they weren’t bad cars and a lot more comfortable and quieter than the bug.
Owning your own car meant learning how to fix it, and preferably cheap. As I began driving my own car during the late fall and winter, there were, a number of thing to get used to: One was trying to see the road through a frosted up windshield. Being as a model “A” did not come with all the comforts of a modern auto, you had to compromise, by this I mean there was not a back seat heater, h*ll there wasn’t even a front seat heater. If you were lucky you might just get enough heat off the manifold to redirect it through a small hole in the floorboards to warm one foot. Heaters and defrosters as we know them today were still years away. What we did have was a six-volt electric glass plate that attached to the windshield with four suction cups that was about 9×12 inches in size with two wires leading to a switch on or under the dash. Now when this contraption warmed up you had this tremendous field of vision to view the road ahead. Freezing rain was quite another challenge, you had one option roll the drivers door window down and stick your head out and try to stay on the road with the rain freezing on your eyeballs.
My first car was a 197? Honda Civic. It was canary yellow and did not even make it home from the used car dealer were I bought it!
Jackson, the namesake of my childhood idol and infamous 80’s pop icon Michael Jackson, was my first love – er, I mean, car.
As a child of the 60s in a conservative small town in North Carolina, I missed out on the flower child experiences of big-town living. My non-conforming years, much to my parents’ chagrin, revolved around “hot cars“ and “hot guys.” What did they expect with Richard Petty living just down the road in Level Cross?”