Monday, July 4, 2011

For a Friend

Author's Note:  This essay was written shortly after my car went missing on April 16, 2011.  A follow-up essay will be published later this week.  

You have never let me down. This is one of those facts that escape one's notice until it is too late.

Remember when I worked at FedEx? Working in 120 degree trailers, making walls of boxes. I'd come out every day, my clothes soaked completely through with sweat. I sat in your seat, laid my head back and let the air conditioner do its work. I sweated into your seats.

This continued when I moved to Texas with its sweltering summers. I fit all of my meager belongings into you - a feat that I bragged about any time someone asked about you. I didn't need an SUV or a moving truck. I had you and my mad Tetris skills.

Remember when I got Keaton? How, on that drive home from the shelter, he kept stepping on me to look out the driver's side window? Keaton will miss you, too, I think. As much as I sweated into your seats, his fur has married itself to your upholstery. It is a part of you that no vacuum can remove.

This past Saturday, on my last day of work my mom witnessed me crying for the first time in many years. But who was it that let me hide in its shell and let me shed a few tears in private first? I blared "All My Friends," didn't I? As loud as I could. It's a great song, and it always sounded especially great when it came from your speakers - that repeating piano, that repeating bass, James Murphy's insistent voice - as it all bounced around in your small interior. I could feel the music in my chest. Even now, listening to the same song on my fancy surround sound system at home, it isn't the same. It's the difference between hearing your friend play a song next to you, and hearing that same song in an empty arena. The urgency evaporates. You don't feel the body heat rising.

I know you're just a car. I know this sounds like a goddamn Honda ad. I know that I'll probably never see you again, or if I do you will be unrecognizably traumatized. I have learned that there is not enough good in the world. I have learned it suddenly and completely.

But at least I can say that - for a few years, anyway - I had a good car.

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