“First thing: a driver and a car should make love.”
“Should love each other?”
“Have sex. Consensual.”
“Who’s male, female, or—”
“Doesn’t matter. The pedals, for instance, may be
like a clitoris.”
“Which I’m supposed to feel with my feet?”
“Just imagine.”
“Okay. What’s next?”
“Stickshift.”
“Is a penis?”
“Erect.”
“That makes more sense. But then the strokes would
go in an H-pattern…”
“Just imagine.”
“Steering wheel?”
“You tell me.”
“Um, turning positions once in a while?”
“Um, turning positions once in a while?”
“Yep. And various more subtle adjustments.”
“What about the buttons and gauges: defrost, fog
lights, hazards, Dolby…”
“Atmospherics. As needed. Mirrors are more
essential.”
“Because I’m checking out… others?”
“You’re keeping your situation—driver and
car—safe.”
“This is all too mechanical. The car, then, is like some bot programmed to—”
“Well, then, you’re missing the point.”
“Being?”
“Making love. Considering the best interest of the
other.”
“The car thinks of me?”
“Just imagine.”
They walked from the Driver’s Ed facility to the
parking lot, where a blue Prius waited.
The cauliflower ‘L’ atop the roof somewhat clashed and reminded Dana of a
taxi. Something temporary—merely to get from A to B. The instructor noticed
Dana’s chagrin and reminded: “you’ll go out and find your own car, for real,
after training.” And maybe even a blue Prius, with a sunroof instead of an ‘L’.
Getting in, adjusting the seat and mirrors, felt at
the same time smooth and self-conscious. Dana was glad to have the instructor
there, if stifling a thought that the session would be a threesome—newness on
another level. The instructor noticed this, too, and clammed up to Dana’s
questions. “Pretend I’m not here. Everything is like the simulator upstairs,
which you passed with flying colors.”
“Pretend you’re not here,” Dana repeated, pushing
the clutch and brake with tender timid feet and the starter button with a flittering
index finger. The Prius responded with a purr. The stickshift lured Dana’s hand
in a way the simulator never had, and a magical realization then occurred: the
clutch and gears from foot to hand are symbiotic, traveling from the brain’s
behest to and through the middle of each body. The Prius agreed, inviting Dana
to slide from the brake pedal and brush the gas—not yet an ‘accelerator’, as
would become when they were moving. The purr merged as theirs, together, and the
instructor smiled at this epiphany—then quickly
looked out the passenger window to allow for privacy: let the driver and car get to know
themselves.
The jerks of reverse, sputters of engine and
patience required to restart: all this the Prius was used to, if Dana fretted, I’m killing the moment, the trust, the
assumption, the
“Sweet spot is different per clutch,” the instructor
said. “Take time to find it—better now in this lot, than out on the road.”
Dana did so, again in reverse, again in 1st
gear, then 2nd and (just for fun) back to 1st. The lot
had its own complications: shopping carts passing or in need to be passed, with
little kids dangling and racing and ambling around as if drunk. Cars zipping
out and into spots, errands that don’t want to wait for an ‘L’ to putt by.
“Just ignore them,” Dana said to the Prius, looking up to see if the instructor
would chide.
“Well, you can’t just ignore aggressive drivers. But you also can’t be bothered by them,
or let their behavior dictate yours. You see, they aren’t making love with
their cars.”
“They’re fucking them up?”
The instructor considered this take, “One could say
that.”
“One did!” Dana smiled. “No—two, if I’m speaking
for Prius.”
Now on the road, heading west into a 5pm sun, Dana
reluctantly lifted a hand from the steering wheel to feel for the visor and
flip it down. “Not easy to multi-task—”
“Oh, but you’re not,” the instructor contended,
“not if the motion is part of the drive. You need to know when and how to
respond to the road with the car. It’d be dangerous to screech to a stop to
pull down a visor, or adjust a mirror, or…”
“check my phone? Just kidding!”
“Better be. I don’t even like the handless phone
trend—drivers without any passengers speaking with gestures to someone not
there. Can’t stand it.”
“’Cuz the car is left out?”
“They’re not making love.”
Dana shifted from 3th gear to 4th,
now that the driveways into this road were fewer and farther between. Hands curved around the
contours of leather to soften the polycarbonate underneath. “How am I doing, in
that regard?”
“Making love? You’d have to ask the car.”
Dana looked into the rearview mirror to assure that
town was largely behind. The sweet spot from 4th gear to 5th
was easiest of all, and the road most agreeable. “Prius,” Dana whispered, “will
you marry me?”
The instructor blushed, not sure whether to laugh.
“Um, let’s concentrate on this test.”
“Shucks, I forgot it’s a test.”
“Always is, to some degree. Driver and car,
mutually.”
“That’s a poem.”
“More a jingle, I guess, but yes: love’s a test.”
The Prius continued to purr, as did Dana. The
instructor looked out at the woods going by, safe in the success of this
training and able, as such, to recall other such tests. Most of them happy, for
having somewhere with someone fulfilling to go.
Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2019)
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