November 29, 2002
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A couple ‘blogs back, PennyDreadful comments that I write and my life sounds more interesting than hers.
Well, lemme tellya. I have to wonder about that. I sometimes think my ‘blog probably reads like a huge long whine about how horrible my life is. Or reads like a tremendous excuse for tremendous pretense. Or is just essentially valueless to people who only care that Michael Jackson is a freak.
But really, it’s a snapshot of whatever I was inspired to write about. There’s plenty of boring shit I don’t write about, just like there’s plenty of happy stuff I don’t talk about. My ‘blog is more coloring book than definitive statement.
I love you all. Some of you I don’t really like, but I do love you all, and both the love and the fact that you’re there to receive it are things I give thanks for.
While I was driving to my sister’s today for T-day festivities, I was listening to the local Pacifica station. Pacifica is a lefty sort of radio network. KPFT is the local station, and it helped to keep me sane while I lived here.
Anyway, the point is that they were playing tapes of speeches protesting Columbus Day celebrations. It was great. Not the speeches themselves; many were horribly reactionary and offered only griping and no solutions. But I was sitting at a Texaco where I had just filled my car’s tank with gas, and was in line for the car wash. The car in front of me was a white Corvette, and when the driver entered her code into the car wash keypad thing, I clearly saw: Late 30s, leopard skin print, bleach blonde, heavy makeup, blue-green iridescent nail polish. She daintily punched the code keys, careful not to scratch her nails. She looked pissed, late for some important event, like maybe impressing some people at some Thanksgiving dinner. Meanwhile the speaker on the radio was talking about Leonard Peltier, the few hundred billion dollars the government had misplaced rather than send to the Indian reservations, the idea that globalism wants to turn the world into an Indian reservation.
Her car was already clean. She didn’t even need to wash it. She paid $7 for the deluxe wash, which takes a full ten minutes. I stared at the back of her car the whole time, listening to some angry Indian talk about the Italian-American groups who were aligning their ideology with Nazis and the KKK (a sucker-punch if ever there was, since what the Italian-American group said was that they were using their free speech just as neo-Nazi and KKK groups had).
White Corvette, approx. 20 gallons of dear, precious water. Then it was my turn to go through the machine. Would I emerge as a middle-class climber? Or would I put war paint on my face?
Comments (4)
Great description of the cougarish woman. I like your idea of emerging from the carwash as something different – take it further.
No, maybe not more interesting, but it is like looking at your life through a tiny little frame, and seeing every single fucking gorgeous detail there is within it.
How long did you have this experience, in line at the car wash? I would be it was less than a minute, you sat there watching this unknown person going through the whatever-impotant-to-her motions of her life. but each mundane moment shines, and has significance–you see what I mean?
You went in and came out as you, I think.
I love you, too.
good thinking, too bad this woman clearly was NOT thinking. and seven bucks for a ten minute car wash. wow, cheap.