Ever since this post I’ve been thinking a lot about my friend, Sarah. She moved to England a year ago to be with her British soulmate and I miss her, mostly because she’s weirder than me and I didn’t think that was possible.
Before she moved, Sarah and I worked for the same company. She lived with The Wendy in Stamford, where our office was, and I lived in New Haven, which was 35 miles away.
You would think a 35-mile commute would take 45 minutes tops, but if you’ve ever driven on I-95 or the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut during rush hour, you know I am not exaggerating when I say it took me two hours to get to work. Each way. Add rain or snow and you’re talking four to six hours.
The commuter train might seem like an attractive alternative, but:
1. The bar car served piss poor beer
2. The 5,000-carat diamonds that adorned the hands and wrists of Fairfield County women took up all the seats
3. After I got off the train I had to walk two miles to work through the ghetto, and for some reason my walk always coincided with the methadone clinic’s field trip
So into the car I went.
Understandably, I was obsessed with traffic reports. I needed to know at all times what was happening on the highways. When I had friends over, I didn’t play music—I put on the traffic channel. When I met new people and they asked me what my hobbies were, I said "traffic."
I also had terrible road rage. During my commute, I daydreamed about pimping out my car with destruction devices, like machine gun headlights. I drew up plans for Go-Go-Gadget legs for my car that would enable me to drive above my fellow commuters while spewing out acid and rockets to destroy them.
So there I was, plotting highway homicides, and there Sarah was, trying to escape The Wendy. It made perfect sense that our after-work routine became this:
1. Stop at Sarah’s apartment for overnight bag
2. Stop at liquor store for Mrs. Mullet’s nightly fix
3. Have Sarah drive Mrs. Mullet’s car back to New Haven while Mrs. Mullet drank and mooned/shouted drunken obscenities at fellow commuters
4. Make up couch for Sarah
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Then one night during the winter, Sarah slept over with the following stipulation: She had had a gyno exam that day and desperately wanted to shower when we got to my apartment. When we got back to my place, however, there was no hot water. I called my landlord and he assured me that in the morning, the pipes would be unfrozen and the hot water would be plentiful.
Mwaahahaha.
Not only was there no hot water in the morning, there was a terrible accident on the highway. The roads to work were gridlocked; we had to take the train. Sarah was sort of a good sport about having greasy hair and an…amply lubricated hoo-hah until the conductor came on to say that the tracks ahead were frozen and we had to get off the train at the next station and wait.
That's when I really started to feel bad. It feels disgusting just sitting in the car after the gyno—they use enough lube to coat a rhinoceros—never mind going two days without a shower, then standing on a crowded train platform for an hour in sub-zero temperatures—all in an effort to get to work.
And we hadn’t even been heckled by the crackheads yet.
The moral of the story is this: Cars should have secret death rays and showers. And tinted windows. And gurgling fountains of Stella beer. Hold the K-Y.
