Cars

I’m a stick shift kid. I’m all about manual. I only drive an automatic now because I received an offer that I couldn’t refuse.

I had this little Acura Integra that I bought in 99 and, by 2005, I had put a couple hundred thousand miles on it and it caught on fire because I loved the fuck out of driving back then. There’s something about manual that’s… I don’t know. Like sex without a condom.

Automatic is very much like sex with a condom. You feel like you can just curl up in the backseat and the car will continue on without problem. There’s also this sense of not being in control. Like there’s a big hamster in a wheel under the hood and it knows what to do but you don’t. The bitch is all moaning and squirming and you’re like, hmmm, if I keep thinking about Jenna Haze getting assfucked, maybe I’ll stay hard enough for her to finish whatever she’s doing and be able to get back to Stargate.

But manual? Oh, yes. Strip off the condom and drive in there. Feel every inch of that quivering love pudding! Fill me up, Mr. Sasha!

And that was my Acura. Zipping along with music coursing through me. I drove that baby everywhere across the US and Canada.

And, yes, it did, literally, catch on fire. I put it out quickly and had it towed home and there it sat, for $80 a month, in a Silver Spring garage. I finally let it go for $200 scrap and became one of those people without a car for 15 months. It was strangely liberating. I lived next to the Metro, so getting to work was no problem. I also lived next to a supermarket and a liquor store. Perfect. I didn’t need a car, and I didn’t miss it, either.

Not having a car is also a great way to get rid of women who are interested in you but are hideous. Without a car in the DC area, you become something of a gimp. Suddenly people who, normally, would only be 20 minutes away are impossible to meet. Sorry. Can’t get there. I don’t have a car. Maybe if you put out and weren’t so terrifyingly ugly I’d get a Zipcar… But… Nah. Because I’ve got Jenna Haze right here. Like – click – oh, Jenna.

I find that few women can present a compelling argument that they’re better than porn. They say they are, my hopes soar, and then they’re shit in bed. Which is why I’m going to offer a sex instruction class in the coming months. Stay tuned!

Anyway! Enough about women. Let’s go back to talking about cars. I moved to the outer suburbs, because finances demanded and my roomie was preying upon teenagers and, I think, raping and murdering them. I have no proof, but life was becoming unbearable because I constantly felt like an accomplice to serial sex crimes. Time to live alone! I found an apartment in the ghetto, settled in on my own, and crept around in the dark counting every penny and not uttering a word for days on end.

The situation demanded a car because I was not able to see any of my friends unless I tearfully begged them to make the long haul out to my place. At which point they sat there and watched me drink and tearfully beg them to stay a little longer because I had forgotten how to speak.

One of my friends sold me his wife’s Nissan Maxima, which was in top shape, for four grand. That was in 07 and the thing hasn’t given me a lick of trouble. Which is very un-Acura-like. I’ve sat here for three years and been shocked that my car’s upkeep has only been oil changes. The Acura had numbed me to the fact that I would have to spend a grand or two each year just to chase several leprechauns out of the exhaust system.

I recently became concerned that I had forgotten how to drive a manual so, last weekend, at my fish-fucking, shit-swilling weekend job, I “borrowed” the company pick-up and drove it around the neighborhood. I recalled a common criticism all my friends made of my driving: At red lights, I would sit in first gear. They always told me not to do that, and I don’t understand why. They’ve obviously never driven US 50 and looked up in the rearview to see a gigantic logging truck bearing down on them at 80 miles an hour, brakes burned out, wildly flashing its lights and honking. Yeah, assholes, be sitting there in neutral when that shit happens. The first lesson of driving: A runaway logging truck is going to fucking kill you at some point.

Well, anyway, I took the Nissan because it was cheap, and I knew my buddy had taken care of it, but I had reservations about driving an automatic. Beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose.

So now driving is as boring as sex with a condom. I spend most of my time in the backseat with a good book after I set cruise control, and sometimes I just call out my bedroom window for the car to go to the gas station or pick up a six pack. That’s the other problem with condom sex – after a while, you feel like a flesh dildo whose only purpose is to go out on lunatic errands for unnecessary groceries.