When I was 19 I got my dream car - a 1997 Nissan 300 ZX (pearl white with t-tops, naturally). It was such a cliche I almost feel embarrassed mentioning it, but looking back it was unavoidable. My sister’s boyfriend had bought a banana yellow ZX and let me drive it when I was sixteen. Having not yet had the opportunity to see how the world played out, it seemed entirely feasible that the type of man who would go buy a banana yellow sports car had as good a shot at world domination as anyone.
The summer after my freshmen year of college I desperately wanted to hope for something. I was broke, brutally uncool, and I couldn’t imagine flinging myself headlong down any of the roads laid out for a fine young man. Grasping in the darkness, I had mistaken the memory of a fruit-colored Nissan for a glimmer of hope and that was good enough. I hatched a scheme. I would buy a late model sports car in central Florida (where the glut of men trying to forget their mid-life crisis and embrace entropy had driven the prices down), and I would drive it to WI where the harsh winter turns a mid life crisis into a nearly unimaginable luxury. Arbitrage. I would be cool, have money, and be driving a fast car. I felt ready for capitalism.
All I needed was my financier.
My father had a strict regimen to avoiding being the fine art painter the world had hoped him to be. it consisted of planting young fruit trees, sipping his spiked fruit punch and trying to charm the poor old ladies at the cable company into giving him free months of service. This was all done while miraculously maintaining the integrity of an almost totally smoked yet un-ashed American Spirit cigarette in the corner of his mouth. I hoped he would never paint again, because this newest circus trick was more spectacular, my private masterpiece.
My father loved a good scheme, and when I told him about my plan he settled back and began to twist his mustache. I mistook this as a good sign. I thought he was crunching the numbers, taking a shrewd and informed glimpse into the proposal and finding it to his liking.
In truth he was concocting his next circus trick, mixing and matching the ingredients. He’d keep the rum and cigarettes; that much was obvious. Next he’d swap out fruit trees for the yellow pages and classifieds, and instead of charming exasperated hot-flashing women, he would do head to head battle with his favorite type of adversary, dark and swarthy men from exotic lands. Subsequent to a series of dazzling victories, he would deliver a prized jewel to his son, whom he had been able to offer precious little to up to that point
(developing circus tricks is an all-consuming enterprise, you must remember). Yes, I had delivered my father his own private crusade, and with the zeal that begets most crusades he threw himself into the scheme.
Burroughs said that this universe seems to be about war... war all the time. The next day at an abandoned gas station I would meet my first war hero, a barrel-chested Russian mobster with a pearl white Nissan for sale. He was at war with my father, who was theatrically smelling the oil cap with a disapproving furl of brow. With his wardrobe he silently declared war on every man who had moved on from Don Jonson’s Miami Vice (they had clearly missed the mark), and he seemed to be about to go to war at any moment with his girlfriend, an aged Ukranian ballerina with whom diplomatic relations seemed to have broken down permanently.
The car was dusty, the phone number on the for sale sign almost entirely faded away, and we were unable to test drive the car because of a minor mechanical problem which the Russian assured us was “Nothing so great”. There seemed to be nothing but red flags. But not unlike a bull, this only flamed my father’s ardor to create something out of nothing.
Charge after charge my father lowered his head and tried to work out a new angle on the deal. My father knows nothing about cars, but combining all of his jargon he very nearly cast the impression of authority. It was an epic battle. When the dust settled they had settled on an agreeable number - not a cent less than the original asking price.
Money was exchanged and papers signed and we drove away from our broken down prize and the Slavic lovers clearly barreling toward murder-suicide. I looked at my father against the setting coastal sun, already with a hopeful glint in his eye, mentally rehearsing the speech he was going to give to angle a deal out of the tow truck driver.
For days my father danced the great dance, going head to head with tired, oil covered machine men. He had expected to ram through a world he knew little about and come out victorious, only to be met each time by the matador’s sword. I felt the moment that my father broke. It was the fifth mechanic we had been to that day. He had fat, tight split lips. And with true pity in his dark eyes he delivered the final blow “That engine? She locked up.” My dad’s shoulder’s slumped. I knew his dream was over.
He pulled the emergency credit card out of the special place in his wallet and handed it to the mechanic. It was a costly fix.
My simple plan to make a buck had morphed into my father attempting to earn my love and respect. His plan hadn’t worked out. He silently resented me for it and I knew it.
On the drive to pick up the car we were both silent. This day was supposed to be a celebration. We were supposed to race up and down the beach singing Steve Miller together. Instead it was a pearl white funeral procession.
We got to the lot and I turned the engine over. I heard it rumble I had a flash of banana colored hope. Maybe it was all worth it. Dad climbed in his burgundy Imperial and I followed him out of the parking lot. The dirt road leading to the mechanic’s shop was long. It eventually turned to pavement and then to a divided highway. I opened up the engine a pulled up along side my father’s car. He looked at me and though he was lost in some other thought, a faint shadow of a smile swept over his face.
It was then that we came upon a red light. That was the moment my world came crashing down.
This car was supposed to set me free me from the drudgery of red lights. How could this be? Falling into despair, my eyes fell onto the gas gauge that was nearly on empty. Empty. For all that I gave up for this machine, I demanded perfection. And it wasn’t perfect, it was dusty and the radio was too static-y to tell if I was hearing Steve Miller or Shania Twain.
The Nissan broke down before I could drive it to Wisconsin. As I flew home to go back to school I knew I had seen something I could not unsee. Things are just things. Things spoil and rust and fade into nothing, but things can also change people. Relationships. Sometimes things can make people drift so far, not even Steve Miller can bring them back together.
