Chasing Cars
Everyone’s got a nice little skeleton hidden in a closet. Some people escape to Vegas to gamble, others dress up in red feathers they got on sale at “Condom Revolution” or “JoAnn’s” and attend private parties down in San Diego. Me… I chase cars. I have been a devotee of this game for three hundred and sixty four days. I don’t chase just any car. I specialize in chasing beamers. Silver blue beamers.
I learned, there were hundreds, no, thousands, of silver blue beamers in Orange County. Like shining bullets, they are zooming on the 405, pompously parading down the four lane streets of Irvine and Newport Beach, cruising along the rolling hills of Turtle Rock. As one of those gorgeous creatures comes to my sight, something inside me clicks and turns me, a righteously looking person, into a hunter. My eyes narrow and my hands claw the wheel. I put my car, a tiny silver rocket- native of Germany, into a motion. It dances around Hondas and Fords, aiming at its prey, innocently lingering along. I get close enough to drive the pedal to the floor to pass or slam on the breaks to follow along my catch. That’s when the chase is over.
That’s when I get a glimpse at yet another beamer’s driver in hope to see Yan, a fifty something year old man wearing round glasses, with the halo of gray hair around his head. The man, I thought, I loved “forever and ever”. But it’s happened every time, my hunt has always failed and I have to move on to chase after yet another beamer.
On the morning of day 364, I failed twice. First, I chased down a young Asian guy. Then, a forty something year old woman, her blond hair pumped up a la the 60s, sunglasses hiding half her face. Her hands were squeezing the wheel so tight, I could see white knuckles; her eyes were glued to the car in front. She never looked at me. Something in me snapped, I sunk into the seat and my shoulders drooped. I felt exhausted with the game. The intoxicating blend of a burning desire to see the grey haloed man and a freezing to the bones fear of finding a slim woman next to him just got the best of me.
“Damn. So damn, for God’s sake!”
At lunch break, I wrote a poem about cars.
On the way back home, I didn’t chase anyone.
The next day, which happened to be exactly a year from that day when I packed my suitcase, walked out of Yan’s place, and drove home, choking in a flood of my own tears, I went out for a casual glass of chardonnay in a local wine bar. Fortunately, my date, who succeeded in blending a charming talk with a brain twisting conversation, didn’t own a beamer.
It’s when I learned, it is not about a car. It’s all about the driver.
And thought, I know that there are still a lot of those boring silver blue beamers snailing along, and they’ve got drivers, because someone has to drive them, it doesn’t bother me. It’s just that, I am not into that junk anymore.
As I fall asleep every night and as I wake up every morning, I know that if I do happen to fall for this game of chasing cars again, it will be so much easier, this time.
You see, there just aren’t that many black Ferrari's in Orange County.
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