Wednesday

People try to force the positive with sentences like, ‘At least you’re okay,’ or ‘…it could have been much worse.’ It’s called the bright side, so why then is it so hard to find? Nearly every working individual, at some point in the week, functions on undernourishment and less than stellar moments, every week of every month, because working to live isn’t easy and in the city of New York we typically end up living just to work. Just one night ago, I complained about my car being a money pit, using the phrase ‘unnecessary money-pit’ at that. Living is only possible through spending money we don’t yet have, and even before the check clears, people that do not know us or care about our circumstances have divvied it up. It would be justified if every day hundreds if not thousands of people ran the streets in hysteria from the pain of living.

My father, the Scarsdale Ford poster child, invited me over to give the Focus a test-drive.“Just come and give it a ride, see the inside. You’ll see it’s really a nice car. They re-did the whole thing.” I fought off the temptation, as I was saving for an apartment. Also, I had no idea what the original Focus looked like to appreciate this transformation. Yes, it was shiny with a pearly white finish and got 40 gallons to the mile. It had a cute butt, a spacious trunk with swanky black faux leather interior, and a built-in geek squad activated by voice-command that offered me location-based services. I realize that most car-owners dreamed of such math, but I didn’t need a new car. I wanted a new place.

“You can stay here. There’s no rush. You can continue to save. It’s fine, but drive a nicer car, please.” my parents pleaded with me. I eventually caved. Not out of weakness but maybe my cassette plugged into the headphone jack of my iPod was outdated. My 2000 Subaru rattled a lot. Something about the shield was loose and it was a recurring issue. It didn’t bother me and I don’t know how these sorts of things bothered them, as they never rode in my car. What does that word nice even mean? Were they being nice? Yes, this car would help me locate Indian food, a Sprint store, and make a phone call simultaneously, but it did not ask me how I was doing, rub my back while I drove, nor did it take the wheel when I was too tired to drive.

The crash may have, for all intents and purposes, started yesterday when I turned a corner, making a right up a hill. I parked outside St. John’s hospital in Yonkers, not the riverside location on Broadway but the alcoholism unit on Park, off of Ashburton. It’s a place I simply had never been before. I hit the curb on the turn. No big deal. I took it too sharply and as a result made a face at the sound of the scrape. It’s a face people make when something expensive or valuable drops, cracks or scratches, because the condition of things is important, whether you are materialistic or not, it just is. It speaks about who you are to others and yourself. It confirms or denies that you can be trusted; that you are a conscientious person that deserves nice things because you know how to take care of them.

I parked after hitting that little bump of the curb to wait for Will. He hadn’t yet responded to my text, so I cleaned my car in the meantime. Again, how I keep my things is an indication of how I feel about myself. I dug the peels of grapefruit out of the pocket of the driver’s side door, along with the solo gum wrapper in one fist full. In my small walk to the trash bin, I noticed a sign on the exterior of the building: THIS IS A NO SMOKING PREMISES. Really, the whole building, surrounding property, sidewalk, and entrance ramp are smoke-free? Can the smell of cigarettes be so detrimental to someone’s sobriety? I was tired. I was only here at this hospital in this shitty part of Yonkers because Will was finishing a job here and after this he was driving upstate with his boss Wally, and then to Indiana for a couple of weeks. It was a goodnight, goodbye, I’ll miss you, kiss-me-like-you-love-me evening. I opened the passenger door to check for more garbage and arranged my tupper-wares. Everything was ready to be put into the sink when I arrived home. Home: the place I was dying to be since I left it at 5:30 this morning. It was 7:30pm.

I checked my rim. There was a little damage but nothing crazy. The dent was on the outer layer and no larger than a penny, but certainly crushed to a powdery gray. It hurt a little. I winced again, but not because I think this is a reflection of me. I myself do not feel crushed as this particle metal. I am annoyed that it happened, that I notice and that I care as much as I do about this car. I berate myself about how I let my parents talk me into this. They are the kinds of people that throw out toasters because two slots aren’t as good as four, and replace a coffee machine because now that the fridge was stainless steel it just made sense to have everything else match. They wanted me to live like them. I couldn’t. The focus hummed garbage free when Will showed.

It’s all about genetics, the cop said today as my car was dragged onto the tow-truck bed, but I didn’t get these genes. He was speaking about a guy the same age as him that died from a heart attack, a true workaholic he called him as the tow-man agreed as he seemed to also know the bereaved. I didn’t inherit my mother’s pre-occupation for nice things, and I don’t care if they match. The cop was kind. He understood that I fell asleep at the wheel, mentioned that he felt for me because he worked crazy hours too and reminded me, as many others are eager to, that it could have been much worse. He said most people get burned on their face by the airbag, and that I was lucky to only get a little red spot on my thumb.

Just a few hours earlier I carelessly depleted my energy reserves offering that Will, Wally and I eat a late night dinner at the Argonaut diner. It was an old-time reliable and a lovely European served us big diner plates, all with fries. The three of us talked for too long. I was in rare form and hadn’t even known but made Wally run a red light after I took it myself on the way there. Thankfully they didn’t ticket him when they stopped him. I didn’t get home until 11:30. I woke as I usually do, tending to the normal morning tasks, feeling a little heavy in the head, but all to be expected. My first session texted me the night before and even a little in the morning hinting at cancellation but only to see my feelings on it, because if she cancelled, she was still financially responsible for the hour. The idea of letting her slide to catch up on my much-needed sleep was massacred by the feeling that I didn’t have enough money and needed every little bit.

I took the same route I usually take, a left onto Waring Ave, a right onto Bronx Park Rd. and then a left to get on the Bronx River Pkwy. There was a parked car at the corner that nearly hit me as I turned onto Bronx Park Rd. I drove for a while with my mouth open shocked that I hadn’t seen it. Surely, if that car was legally parked, then it would be there all the time, so why did I come so close to hitting it this morning? I rationalized that someone must have been desperate for a spot late last night and parked illegally. That is all. I considered for a second that maybe I wasn’t okay to drive, that perhaps I was reckless and needed to pay more attention. Why did I run that red light yesterday on the way to the diner? Was I going to crash the spaceship? I questioned the rightness of my owning the car, my ability to take care of the car, and god forbid if something happened to this nice vehicle of mine. The clock caught my gaze and I sped to my session.

The session went well and confidence was on a steady climb. A co-worker told me I look exhausted. Thank you I responded, my confidence stayed strong. Asshole. I didn’t buy coffee on my way because it wasn’t good coffee and a waste of money. I now needed to move quickly again for my second session of the day at a different location. I remember swerving in and out of the right lane on the Hutchinson parkway. My eyes kept closing on me. I visually explained my experience in a storyboard for a film. Hundreds of random faces in their car, as they too slipped in and out of zombie drive to work mode. This was autopilot. Our foot presses on the gas and break because of a memorized joint action and tilt of an ankle. There was one come-to that I remember specifically right after I got onto Westchester Ave. I realized that I could damage my car for real and that would be terrible. The spaceship’s lease went for a whole other year. Will and I had plans to move somewhere together. We were still undecided but knew that it would happen in a year’s time and in coming to, I told myself: Just don’t let anything happen to this car for another year. I asked: Why would you say that? I answered: Because you are going to crash this car today.

I shook my head. This was a physical attempt to become a human etcha-sketch to wipe away negative thoughts, but I was still falling asleep. I took the right at the split onto Rt. 120, about a mile and a half from my destination. The music was as loud as possible, and the window wide open because loud beats and a breeze keeps someone awake, right? No. But instead, I woke to the scariest bang of my tire popping and airbag exploding in front of me. I couldn’t have been driving more than twenty miles per hour but I hit someone’s lovely ornamental rocks that really brought their lawn together. I traveled to the left side of the road after hitting that boulder on the right.

Fear pours into my belly like a cancer. It curdles like cream in coffee, billowing in never ending negativity, sinking like blood in water and paralyzing my ability to see anything clearly. I’m sweating and nervous. The first thought was about the car and the money I did not have for damages. Overcome by helplessness, I thought of my mother and felt shame for crashing. I knew when I agreed to get this car that I chose a $1K deductable, and it was only last month that Manhattanville College, sent me a refund check for that same amount from a 2010 loan. I didn’t cash it because it wasn’t free money, but then again it was mine for the taking, at a reasonable student interest rate. The spaceship went into Crash Mode, I too was learning what that was. It broadcast those two words on the steering wheel display and the radio screen. My android phone had a big red siren on the screen as they were connected. The hazards went on automatically and the horn sounded twice a minute. It called the cops for me, and Harrison police arrived within five minutes. The spaceship disabled the car’s computer and couldn’t be moved from smack in the middle of the road. According to this police officer, males were better with cars and in proving his point, made me get out to give it a whir. He was naturally also unsuccessful.

All before eight am, I avoided a parked car, put a woman through a vigorous workout, drove while sleeping and envisioned a zombie parody to mock US work- culture, only to crash my front end and deploy an airbag on an ornamental rock, all one mile from my destination. Were all of the things that got in our way man-made? And those poor people, who afforded ornamental rocks were now making coffee to sound of my horn.

“What happened?” he asked me.

“I fell asleep,” I answered.

“You just fell asleep.” I shook my head just as disappointed with the answer as he was.

“Yea, I just fell asleep.” I thought of all the ways I could have woken up the body. I could have pulled over, did jumping jacks, push-ups, even a handstand against the car. It was a nice vehicle, right? The least it could do was support my handstand.

I called my 7:30 and told him how sorry I was to cancel. He was the first person to remind me that I wasn’t hurt. It pained me to cancel my second session with him as we really needed to stay with our momentum. Paranoia was beginning to set in and tears were forming. Life without a car would diminish my funds in irreparable ways. This money pit as I called it for the past two days gave the little ingrate inside me what it deserved. Yes it did cost a lot of money to insure and yes there was a monthly leasing fee, but it was a car and without it, I would make no money at all. I was instantly reminded of this horrific threat my mother used to say, I’m your mother. I brought you into this world and I’ll take you right out.

My shame began plotting secrecy of the entire event, but how? The agony of previous crashes and my parent’s ideas on my driving plagued me. I called Will. Mistake. He was sleeping and now burdened with guilt that all of this happened because of last night. He did what most boyfriends do when they only have a phone to console you with: soft tones, and a lot of ‘baby’s.’ The EMT’s were taking my blood pressure. When you fall asleep, there’s no dialog box, no "yes?" or "no?" There are no prompts to go through, yet again they asked me how I fell asleep. I gave them the best answer I could: I was tired. They repeated it: Oh, you were just tired? I repeated it again: Yep, just tired. Without eye contact, we checked my consciousness.

“What day is today?”

“Wednesday.”

“Who is the President?”

“Obama.”

“What year are we in?”

“2011.”

It all reminded me of a conversation I got stuck behind once.

“You gotta take it one day at a time,” said one basic woman.

“Exactly,” answered another.

Life is not a fucking martini, dry or not, dirty or on the rocks, with olives or a twist. You can only take one day at a time because you only have one fucking day at a time. The Harrison police officer couldn’t take me to the Rye Y where I knew I could find warmth, a phone, and a resting place before figuring out a way to get home because he had to stay within his jurisdiction. How does this make sense? Because of some zip-code pissing contest police officers couldn’t help people when they needed them most. I had two options: Go to the Harrison Police Station, or stay on the side of the road. I thought that serving the community was part of their job and passion. Since when does Community have parameters?

But it does, and people are self-serving, just as communities as a whole can be self-serving. Last night, before I asked the waitress what her ethnicity was I made a guess with myself that she was Greek. It got me thinking about an NPR segment I heard in my spaceship about how Greeks, specifically men are dying by the hundreds. The man speaking had a dry mouth. He kept using the word epidemic. He mentioned that there was a dying community of middle-aged men in Greece that were taking their own lives because of a sudden financial and identity crisis, or that the former gave birth to the second. He also stated that due to religious attachments and tradition, many families were unable to speak about their grief as no one wanted to admit losing a father, husband, or brother to suicide. I asked Wally what he knew about this. It was a non- sequitur albeit, but Will had ordered a gyro and the waitress looked like she did. He answered without hesitation.

“They don’t have money. They haven’t had money for some time and they’ve been asked several times to stop spending, to cut back on healthcare, to make adjustments to their lifestyle but they can’t. As a country, we are poor but right now we are even, we produce just as much as we import, which isn’t good,” he felt the need to say. “…But it’s better than the Greeks. They have no shame too, they’ll take financial assistance and with little to no promise of paying it back.

“It’s just so hard,” I said. I ate French fries by the handful. Living was difficult but saving money seemed impossible.

“You’ll never have money!” He said with a smile. It was said as a joke but he just stared at me for a long time making sure I understood that nothing about what he was saying was funny. Here was a man of fifty-something years, established in his industry, with a beautiful home and equity, the love of a wife and a family of four, telling me I’d never have money. “Because, just when you think you’ve gotten over the hill, you’ll have yourself a Wednesday.”

“What’s a Wednesday?”

“If you don’t know what a Wednesday is, you’re lucky, but a Wednesday is when the government comes and takes it away.”

“Takes it away?”

“Yep,” he said with a mouthful of burger. “Something will surface, and there it goes, all your money. That’s a Wednesday.”

I still didn’t get it but it didn’t matter. Paranoia had already set in. I was working all hours of the day, sacrificing sleep, sacrificing my youth, not turning my car off because it costs more to start, not getting coffee because it was unnecessary spending, posting my yogi tea sentiments that go something like, ‘Work, but don’t forget to live,’ to justify anything I might have done that was enjoyable and leisurely, all to find out that I am still going to be poor, just because, and that it’ll happen on a Wednesday.

Luckily a friend of mine answered when I called for a ride out of the useless Harrison Police station. The interior of her car smelled of cheap musk mixed with cigarettes, just enough to trigger my unconscious and destructive patterns. We bought coffee and a pack of parliaments and smoked as she drove me home. I understood the sign outside the hospital now, and all the signs that had been coming to me as of late. This whole experience was unavoidable. It did happen in the best possible way. I was thankful that I wasn’t hurt, but what the fuck was next? I used the Student Loan for the deductible. I had to go to the DMV to purchase a duplicate license so that I could rent a car while my spaceship underwent repairs. I misplaced the old one a couple of days ago; the timing was sublime. I expect to find it soon, maybe there’s a day set aside for when those kinds of great things happen. The sky was powder grey, desperate to rain, spitting tiny droplets here and there. In the DMV, the walls were a yellowish grey and the floor was a dirty blue grey, and all the outlets were barred up with solid plates. My white sweatshirt seemed filthy as I looked down at myself several times in the three hour stretch it took me to move at a snail’s pace in line. When B313 was called to window 9, I remembered to be as upbeat as possible asking the clerk how she was. The condition of our belongings may be a representation of us, but a similar lesson was, you get more flies with honey than you do with whatever was fermenting inside of me.

“Do you want to renew your license while you’re here? It’s going to expire in December of this year, you might as well,” she suggested.

“Okay, that makes sense, how much is that?” I had 20.50 already in hand, to cover the 17.50 it was going to cost for the duplicate ID. The woman who made me B313 had told me the price.

“$80.00,” she said. My mouth dropped. This time I did not come to as I did from that scare rounding that corner and nearly hitting that parked car this morning.

“$80.00!” I repeated myself. “You want me to pay $80.00 to renew my license?”

“I don’t. That’s the Governor,” she said governor without any r’s.

“It wasn’t always eighty was it? It couldn’t have been. How much did it used to be?”

“It yusta be 20.00, then 40, then 60, it’ll go up too. Next time you come, price’ll be different,” she spoke as if she was giving me directions. “The state’s in trouble.”

“$80.00!” I said again in disbelief.

“When you recover, tell me what you’d like to do.”

After making my big license purchase she handed me two documents to sign and initial. I did. She took it from me and then slid it back and said,

“Date it at the bottom.”

“I’m sorry, I’m in shock. What’s today’s date?”

“Today’s Wednesday, October 12th.”