Trying to learn stick shift is a lot like rocket science, in the sense that I don’t know either.
For someone who lives in a permanent state of flurried falls, rushed mornings of perpetual tardiness and a constant burning of phantom acid in my throat, the adrenaline of driving runs parallel to the vigorous traffic in my veins.
(My sister tells me that driving is freedom, but freedom I hold on a chain leash and call “good boy!” when it stops barking. We don’t talk about the neighborhood dog she hit last Saturday night.)
Rachel, the Portland transplant I paid fifteen dollars on Etsy to read my zodiac chart, said that this “fiery passion” of mine actually comes from my Aries Sun, which is a transitional sign in my 9th House.
Whatever that means.
Over the thirty minute Zoom call we had to discuss my results, Rachel’s floating head against the grainy, tropical green-screen mentioned how fire is “just absolutely life bringing!”
When I met her expectant blues in the monitor camera, I realized she wanted me to actively engage with her post-ayahuasca ramblings, so I asked her to explain further.
The conversation went something like this:
“I mean,
if you think about it right? It brought OUR
ancestors—”
“Oh! Well, I don’t know about ours but ok—”
“No but like you get what I mean right? Like, it bought them light and…and…warmth!
And I mean I wouldn’t be surprised if it was literally life-bringing too.”
Rachel then proceeded to wink at me with so much sheer smarm that I considered hanging up, until I remembered that I spent the price of approximately four and a half al pastor tacos on this call.
She continued.
“No but like, could you imagine? Taking your caveman—or cavewoman!—date to the fire pit for an, I don’t know a…a fine dinner of grubs! And then going home to your personal cave and fire, oooh and of course there’s like, a wooly mammoth fur on the floor in front of the fire? Hah! Now if that wouldn’t inspire you to procreate and further the human species I don’t know what would.”
I asked her if she thought they listened to some caveman version of Marvin Gaye when getting frisky with it. She ignored me and focused instead on the way Venus and Mars formed a sextile square at a forty-five degree angle in my chart.
(She said that it meant I was doomed for a life of angry sex but overall happy relationships. I tend to prefer it the other way around.)
I tried to listen to regular Marvin Gaye the first day I drove by myself. I unfortunately did not get frisky—not even caveman frisky! Since I proceeded to crash my sister’s 2016 Mitsubishi Lancer into a brick house. I was ten minutes into my trip to the grocery store.
(A. Fucking. Brick. House. It’s like I was in some fucked up version of the Three Little Pigs. Headlines featuring me: understudy for a recently neutered Big Bad Wolf.)
But you see, the building didn’t come out of nowhere. It wasn’t that I wasn’t sober, or mentally unwell—I mean, suicidal ideation takes far too much time and energy anyways. So trust me when I say that I simply saw the wall, and couldn’t will myself to turn the steering wheel thirty fucking degrees to the left. ▲
