The road keeps rushing by as I sit in the seat. I’m not moving on my own, but there I am watching trees and churches and life blur by me. I shift my gaze to the road, watching the lines on the road, the dotted lines, blur into an almost imperceptible line of pale white. I turn my Discman down. I hadn’t realized how loud it was — I couldn’t hear the car over the music. I don’t like that fact. I want to be a part of the rushing, the exertion. I want to take part in the struggle of the wheels pushing against the blacktop. The friction. Sexual when thought of like this. I close my eyes, immediately feeling less dizzy. Less like I am fighting the motion. Bass pounds in my ears. I want to come, to orgasm, not out of hormones, but out of respect. Out of ecstasy. Does that make sense? Karl Hyde sings to me, reminds me I’m human. Or perhaps that I’m more than human. Not in any sort of pretentious way. But that I, as an individual, embody more of everything than I could ever think possible. This is a good feeling and part of the reason I want to feel that release. That return to feeling as if I am part of the entire world as it breathes and pumps and lives and dies. Yes, that’s it.
Hope.
I open my eyes, just enough to see, and roll the window down a bit.
It’s down for less than 10 seconds before I hear something. I’ve closed my eyes and I refuse to acknowledge. I feel a tap on my leg.
I open my eyes and see Polly looking back at me. She smiles and her mouth moves. It keeps moving.
She’s talking to me.
I pull off my headphones, feeling the air sweep over my face from the window. It’s cool, but only because it’s rushing through the window. It’s very hot air once it stops moving and settles inside the car. I don’t mind. I like the sensation and I like the feeling. It is, after all, June.
It’s hot and the car reeks of summer. The air is thick around me, smelling of heat and plastic, as cars seem to in the summer, in the heat. I can’t smell sex though. I’m glad.
“Jason has the AC on. Can you roll up your window?”
A produce stand rushes by on the left. It seems on the way to the beach, they are always on the right. As if the farmers want to catch you on your way to the beach, before you have been caught by sculptures made out of shells and cheap towels. It’s an interesting phenomenon and one I’ve never noticed, even though I’ve been to the beach with my family almost every summer since birth.
I nod at Polly, who is still looking at me expectantly, and roll the window up. It pains me. I wanted to be one with the car. With the voyage. With the trip.
It’s okay though, in the longer, bigger run of things. I don’t really need the window down. I don’t have to feel like I’m the one zooming down the road. And I don’t really want to come in the back seat of Jason’s car where he has dropped his seed in Polly so many times.
Polly, satisfied, turns back to a normal sitting position and I pull my headphones back over myself.
The music burps. Or farts, I’m not sure which. And I turn it back up.
