Exit 13
My best memories occur in Winter.
Wait, that's not quite right. A better way to put it would be that the memories that always head to the forefront always have winter as a backdrop. So maybe they're intense memories, or, and forgive the redundancy, just memorable ones.
I try not to date on Valentine's Day, a quirk a few men have tried to fix, but despite their well-intentioned efforts, I don't immediately think of checking the wine list for the first time at the Blue Moon Cafe and realizing I probably wasn't going to be a drinker, or when I gave someone a red Swingline, and received in return the ability to finally appreciate Firefly, I remember something else.
I remember the night I almost died.
Melodramatic, I know. Looking back it wasn't nearly as bad as it seemed at the time. I was twenty-two, and had no idea what that meant. It was better to consider me a sixteen year old with six years experience. I was on my third boyfriend, second rebound, a guy I'd later regard as one of the top 5 in my list of unfixable regrets. I'd been driving a couple of years though the bulk of my instruction came from Gran Turismo, long enough to know what I was doing, but not long enough to know I had no idea how bad a driver I really was. Lead foot, I think the term is, but I'd only received one speeding ticket, the kind you brush off by saying the cop was just out to get you.
I loved my car, though, mostly for what it represented. If I wanted to go somewhere, I could hop in the car and go, and consequences be damned. Friends in Virginia have a free weekend? What's an 8 hour drive? There's a movie playing south of Buffalo that I wanted to see but missed in the closer theaters? Who cares about tolls? It was the kind of constant high that only came from a combination of freedom, wanderlust, and the means to pursue it, the kind of flashpoints in your life you lose somewhere in your twenties and spend the rest of your thirties trying to recapture over the space of a weekend, making for road trips they'd put on basic cable and pitch to car companies advertising the 2011 Mid-Life Crisis.
I was pretty cynical back then, too.
Which brings us to Valentine's Day of 2001.
It was my own idiocy, I'll start with that. If I could go back in a machine I'd shake the Hell out of myself for being so stupid as to use cruise control in a snowstorm. But I was young, and overconfident, and assured at the time that sex was a given that night. All I had to do was get home.
I could try to ground this in details, what we had for dinner, where we had it, the shape of the snow as it fell, the knowing smirk that seemed permanently on his face, eyes always slightly squinted in some strange mix of mirth and smartassery.
I never thought I would forget the song that was playing when it happened, that I would forever associate the drum track with the way it ended with the smash of the bumper against the guardrail, how my brain continued it for a few seconds as the nose crumpled and the airbags went off.
That's all it was, really, two hits. Bam. Front against the guardrail. Then a spin through the slush and snow, similes involving dancers and pirouettes need not apply. There was no grace or beauty in this. Just fear, no time for regrets or scenes of better times flashing. I remember him saying "Oh shit!" the way you do right before a roller coaster hits that first big drop. Bam. Trunk hits the guardrail. Then down into the median, the snow doing what the brakes couldn't. It was so quiet, I remember that.
A contusion. That was the extent of my injuries. A gentle bruise on my palm that faded long before the memory did. It was several hours before we got home, well after 2am. We listened to the second disc of Henry Rollins' "Think Tank" in the dark just to have some sound there. I cried during the "Marius" story just to give myself an excuse to finally let the tension out.
A couple weeks later he went to visit his mom in Boston and never came back. A week after that a friend in Syracuse asked me to drive him to the airport in my new older car, which involved driving 30 miles in one of the worse winter storms while the radio informed everyone listening to stay off the roads. I hated that friend for four days afterward, but in his rush to get down to NYC to get laid, he'd pushed me through the crucible and I was able to drive again. I was still alive, just more cautious.
And to this day I still don't use cruise control.
Wait, that's not quite right. A better way to put it would be that the memories that always head to the forefront always have winter as a backdrop. So maybe they're intense memories, or, and forgive the redundancy, just memorable ones.
I try not to date on Valentine's Day, a quirk a few men have tried to fix, but despite their well-intentioned efforts, I don't immediately think of checking the wine list for the first time at the Blue Moon Cafe and realizing I probably wasn't going to be a drinker, or when I gave someone a red Swingline, and received in return the ability to finally appreciate Firefly, I remember something else.
I remember the night I almost died.
Melodramatic, I know. Looking back it wasn't nearly as bad as it seemed at the time. I was twenty-two, and had no idea what that meant. It was better to consider me a sixteen year old with six years experience. I was on my third boyfriend, second rebound, a guy I'd later regard as one of the top 5 in my list of unfixable regrets. I'd been driving a couple of years though the bulk of my instruction came from Gran Turismo, long enough to know what I was doing, but not long enough to know I had no idea how bad a driver I really was. Lead foot, I think the term is, but I'd only received one speeding ticket, the kind you brush off by saying the cop was just out to get you.
I loved my car, though, mostly for what it represented. If I wanted to go somewhere, I could hop in the car and go, and consequences be damned. Friends in Virginia have a free weekend? What's an 8 hour drive? There's a movie playing south of Buffalo that I wanted to see but missed in the closer theaters? Who cares about tolls? It was the kind of constant high that only came from a combination of freedom, wanderlust, and the means to pursue it, the kind of flashpoints in your life you lose somewhere in your twenties and spend the rest of your thirties trying to recapture over the space of a weekend, making for road trips they'd put on basic cable and pitch to car companies advertising the 2011 Mid-Life Crisis.
I was pretty cynical back then, too.
Which brings us to Valentine's Day of 2001.
It was my own idiocy, I'll start with that. If I could go back in a machine I'd shake the Hell out of myself for being so stupid as to use cruise control in a snowstorm. But I was young, and overconfident, and assured at the time that sex was a given that night. All I had to do was get home.
I could try to ground this in details, what we had for dinner, where we had it, the shape of the snow as it fell, the knowing smirk that seemed permanently on his face, eyes always slightly squinted in some strange mix of mirth and smartassery.
I never thought I would forget the song that was playing when it happened, that I would forever associate the drum track with the way it ended with the smash of the bumper against the guardrail, how my brain continued it for a few seconds as the nose crumpled and the airbags went off.
That's all it was, really, two hits. Bam. Front against the guardrail. Then a spin through the slush and snow, similes involving dancers and pirouettes need not apply. There was no grace or beauty in this. Just fear, no time for regrets or scenes of better times flashing. I remember him saying "Oh shit!" the way you do right before a roller coaster hits that first big drop. Bam. Trunk hits the guardrail. Then down into the median, the snow doing what the brakes couldn't. It was so quiet, I remember that.
A contusion. That was the extent of my injuries. A gentle bruise on my palm that faded long before the memory did. It was several hours before we got home, well after 2am. We listened to the second disc of Henry Rollins' "Think Tank" in the dark just to have some sound there. I cried during the "Marius" story just to give myself an excuse to finally let the tension out.
A couple weeks later he went to visit his mom in Boston and never came back. A week after that a friend in Syracuse asked me to drive him to the airport in my new older car, which involved driving 30 miles in one of the worse winter storms while the radio informed everyone listening to stay off the roads. I hated that friend for four days afterward, but in his rush to get down to NYC to get laid, he'd pushed me through the crucible and I was able to drive again. I was still alive, just more cautious.
And to this day I still don't use cruise control.
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