Everything but the Pedal

November 11

My car (which Scott and I named Denise, long ago, before we began our road trip, believing that it was bad luck to set forth on a wanderjahr in an unnamed vehicle, and believe it or not I didn't realize until much later the certain homonymic quality inherent in naming a Nissan "Denise") is dead, a total loss. Her blue-book value is a hair over $1100, and the total repair costs are at least $1,000. And that would only stave off the inevitable decay, after all. The car is 13 years old and has about 160,000 miles on it. Still starts up the first time I turn the key, every time, though. Sigh. Heather and I had been talking about selling one of our vehicles anyway -- this just saves us the difficulty of deciding which one to get rid of and which one to keep. We're going to invest some money in fixing up Heather's car (the big thing is getting her a new carburetor, which should solve the stalling-in-intersections problem). We don't need more than one car anyway; Heather takes mass transit to work, and we don't do a lot of weekend driving, either. So it goes. In a way, it's a relief -- for the past several months I've been waiting for my noble chariot to give up the ghost, and now she has, and I can move on. But she deserves a eulogy. So, while I have other things to mention, including items of no little import, this entry will be about my car, with the snake hanging from the rearview mirror, and the cherub lamp in the trunk.

My parents gave me Denise when I was in college. I didn't have a driver's license until I was 19 -- I knew how to drive, but couldn't get a license without being insured, and I simply couldn't afford insurance (hell, I still can't, but insurance will be cheaper with only one car, now). I got my license, got the car, and in December of 1996 Scott and I set out on a 20-day road trip. We looped through the South -- Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah (that's when I fell in love with Savannah), the wilds of inner Georgia (with towns like Portal, "the Turpentine City"), Macon, Atlanta, Birmingham, Chattanooga, Nashville, Asheville. We played chess on piers. We ate lunch by fountains. We walked in a snowstorm in Atlanta. We heard The Bloodhound Gang for the first time on the radio in the middle of the night in Georgia, and were singing along by the second verse. We drove the scenic route through the mountains in Tennessee, where the stretches of road in shadow were covered in ice. We drove the wrong way down one-way streets in Atlanta. We ate the best chicken sandwiches in the world on the Savannah waterfront. We gazed at beautiful women. We slept in a field until a train passed by, shockingly close, and woke us in the middle of the night. And through it all, my car kept us warm, never stalled, never died, never had a flat, never overheated. We played tapes endlessly (this was when my car had a working stereo), we sang, we talked. It was a defining time in my life.

My car took me on weekend trips to Raleigh and Chapel Hill, where I visited friends, ingested hallucinogens, went to parties, attended concerts, and fell in love (sometimes all in one night!). I drove my car all the way to Spartanburg one late autumn night when my friend Adrienne needed a ride, and somewhere on that trip I realized that I wanted us to be lovers, and later we were. In the summer of 1999, I drove my car to Clarion, way up in Michigan (still the farthest North I've ever traveled), and it took me on Meijer runs to get sleep aids for Toby, to get me beer, to get granola bars. I drove my car back from Clarion, and she didn't complain, didn't stall, didn't squawk. Later, wasps lived in the trunk; I named them all Thessaly.

And when I made my big move, came to California, I traveled in my car, hurtling through the summer with no air conditioning, rolling endlessly down those Southwest highways, and she never overheated, didn't leave me stranded, though by then she was old. On the West Coast she took me down to Big Sur, and on countless trips from Santa Cruz to Oakland and to the City. She took me to the place that became my home.

She's been in her dotage for a while; squeaky brakes, temperamental glove compartment, long-dead stereo, muffler rusting, and lately the trunk hasn't been closing properly. I knew the end was coming. Such a shame.

I'm not big on sentimental attachments to objects, but that car was with me for a long time, and I'm sad she's gone. I have to get rid of her, give her away or sell her for scrap or something (I have no idea how to go about doing that, either -- suggestions are welcome). Damn. I'm not a car-guy, my knowledge of automotive matters is limited to putting in oil and gas, but I developed an attachment. Scott and I used to talk about driving Denise into the ocean, giving her a burial at sea, when she reached the end of the road. That's not feasible, but maybe I'll take some token -- gearshift knob, rearview mirror, glove-compartment latch, whatever -- and toss it into the waves. She's just a bunch of rubber and metal and plastic, I know, I know, but there's something to be said for sentimentality.

Good night, sweet car.

Words written since February 1, 2002: 176,100

Words written since last entry:
Revising away, just like a Spaniard.

Some teleportation device would be welcome.

Tim Pratt
P.O. Box 13222
Berkeley, CA 94712-4222

If we don't have to worry about carburetors, teeth, applications, and sushi-money, we can concentrate on creating that fine, fine fiction you love so well.

Give until it feels good.