Monday, I caved. I drove to Sheetz, bought a pack of cigarettes, then drove to the hotel parking lot across the street. I took off my jacket and sweater (because in my mind I wasn't relapsing because I couldn't smell smoke on ALL of my clothes), tossed them in the back of the car where I still have my graduation cap and gown, and fired up--staring across the road to a small field where somebody's horses were grazing. Their butts were towards me and their tails swatted at flies. Throughout this whole sequence of events, I was consumed by my favorite fantasy: That I was going to turn my radio to the Top 40 pop channel, grab the steering wheel with both hands, and veer my car into oncoming traffic.
I have always been a pretty fearful driver. I credit this to my driving instructor in Libertyville, Illinois. For our class, he wheeled out an old TV, plugged in a cassette, and played a video montage of car wrecks. Corpses mashed against the dashboard, strung over the dashboard, through the windshield, over the hood. I think he probably showed this same video since the '80s (I remember specifically a dead guy with high-waisted pants). He walked us through the physics of a fatal head-on collision--you smash against the brakes so hard that on impact your ankles wrap around the pedal, your face smashes against the airbag, your nose shatters, the forward momentum enough to slam your body through the air bag and though the steering column. I took his word for it since I barely passed Physics in high school. I always imagined that like an old comic book: BIFF! POW! KRUNCH! Then he showed us some Dateline or 60 Minutes segment about car accidents. There was a clip where a man in China ran across the freeway, got smashed by a car, and took off vertically like a bottle rocket. He played it twice, saying, "I wanna see that again! That was pretty good!", then rewound the video.
So there has always been a deep-seated fear that that was how I was gonna go as well as the comfort that went with it--that I can turn myself into projectile hamburger at any moment of my choosing. The only thing stopping me, besides the will to live and my depressive laziness, but the lack of perfect circumstances that would lead me to make that fateful left turn.
First off, the car:
I currently drive my mom's Toyota Rav 4. It is the 2006 model, the year after Toyota decided that their cars shouldn't look like they were made of plastic and decided to make something nice. The thing is, I love that car--I've driven it through high school, college, and my early working life. It's really nice and it has held up pretty well over its 8 years. There aren't a lot of fond memories attached to it, but it's a good machine, and it would be wasted in an intentional wreck. I need a proper shitbox--one of those dumpy sedans with the doors that are a different color than the body of the vehicle. I know nothing about cars, I'm adverse to what I perceive to be a macho obsession with cars, so I don't even know where to begin searching for the perfect shitbox to die in. A car that's both reliable (who knows how long I may be out on the prowl for that perfect moment) and but cheap. It has to be embarrassing. I want people to look at the car after the disaster and say to themselves "I can see why. He had to take it down with him." But it can't be so embarrassing that people will assume I just died years before and the car just took a little while to catch up. Aesthetics first, people. Which brings me to...
The Music:
As stated above, if I were to smear myself and bits of shitbox on the front of a Mack truck, it would have to be to Top 40 pop radio. One Direction would be the funniest music to die in a car crash solely based on their name. I would happily kill myself to Fun., but everybody hates them now. I suppose it's more a teenage idea of rebellion, but it seems honest to me, though. Another issue with a car wreck is that the radio is part of the car and if its a part of the car, it won't survive the car wreck. And if it does, then what guarantee would my music choice still be playing when emergency services comes. What if something decent is playing? What if the EMT looks to the cop and says, "Christ, even Bruno Mars couldn't save this kid." I would feel pretty guilty for bringing Bruno Mars into it. My solution to this problem would be to strap a gigantic surround-sound stereo to the back of the shitbox with bungee cords and duct tape. I would need to have an MP3 or CD plugged into it playing the same song over and over again. Most importantly, it would need to be wrapped in a protective layer that wouldn't muffle the music.
Finally, The Target:
So here I am in a horrible little car with a fuck-off stereo encased in bubble-wrap strapped to the back of it. It's trundling along the highway, "Story of My Life" is blasting on repeat, my eardrums are whining, and I probably have an erection. So which stranger is the perfect person to murder me? This is the most significant problem. I can only rely on make and model to figure out what kind of person they are. I don't want to kill them, so I need the target to be a bigger vehicle that can soak up my momentum. I mentioned above that I see myself splattered against a container truck. Big target, can't miss, but I can't put that on the working class.
In my mind, the obvious murderer would be a hardcore conservative with NOBAMA written in white-out on his rear windshield and old, faded Bush/Cheney bumper stickers from the early 2000s plastered at weird angles. He's driving a Ford F-150 that looks brand new (in my opinion, if your pick-up isn't covered in dirt and dents you should just do everyone a favor, man the fuck up, and just accept that you should be driving a Honda Civic). However, that guy wouldn't feel bad if some depressive plastered himself against his windshield. He would probably drive home, wash bits of me off with a hose, then eat dinner with his fat kids and strange wife while they watch X Factor. There might even be some closeted gay kid singing "Story of My Life" and he'll make a gay joke that nobody will hear. His family tuned him out years ago. This coincidence would escape him. As his gigantic truck mowed me and the shitbox over, he couldn't hear that horrible song over Darius Rucker and his internal monologue about how he's a boss and not the problem. With a banker, who is the absolute perfect target, it would be even worse. He'll either drive on as if nothing happened or pull over to a quiet place and devour my remains before burying his mistress. I think I would be okay taking one of those guys out, but I can't guarantee that I would die with their little European cars. In that situation, dying would be the only option, I won't last a minute if I make it out alive. They'll probably keep me on semi-conscious in some kind of lung or tube. Over a period of years, they'll execute all my Facebook friends in front of me so nobody can help me pull a Schiavo. They'll tell me how they crashed the economy and how they plan on doing it again, but I would be helpless to stop them. Honestly, the only person who will have the right reaction to some stranger imposing his will to die on them (tears, grief, guilt) is some squishy liberal, which is the last person I'd want to inflict myself upon. They're cars aren't nearly big enough and there aren't a lot of them where I am. I might be driving for hours with that fucking song stuck in my head.
When I finished that cigarette, I really began to resent those horses. I couldn't pin-point a reason why, if it was the simplicity of their existence, if it was because they were unaware and uninterested in mine, or if it was because they were forcing me to stare at their assholes. Over the past three or four years where I had this fantasy, I have come to grips that its just that. Not only is it just a fantasy, but its one that a lot of people who I consider normal probably share. If I was a horse, though, my fantasies would make sense. I would climb into some shitbox coupe and climb into the driver seat. My head would have to turn at weird angles because my eyes are on the side of my head. People anthropomorphize horses so when they imagine them driving, they see the forelegs draped over the steering wheel, the horse smiling and flapping its huge lips. That's ridiculous. How will the horse get a grip on the vynil? As a horse, I would have to grip the steering wheel with my teeth, put all four of my legs by the seat, my forelegs on the pedals, and use my butt to squish against the back of the driver's seat for leverage. The discomfort alone in being a large ungulate trapped in a metal box would be enough to just end it all. I would be the most dangerous motherfucker on the road.
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