An Open Letter To Driving In Strange Cars With Strange Men
Or, the relativity of angst
Dear Me In December 2020,
You are worried and freaked out. You are months into a global pandemic, it’s the weirdest of Weird Times, and the only thing that makes sense is to run away. So you’re gonna buy an RV.
Don’t do it.
Everything will get better, save your money. Also, everything will get worse. Because this is the relativity of angst. The stressor directly in front of us feels insurmountable, even though last week we probably surmounted something that was also very challenging. Sometimes we can even look back on past griefs to feel better about the current ones.
Me here now, in December 2022, frequently taps into this sliding scale of turmoil. I drop a pin on 2020, and ask if what’s currently spiking my cortisol feels as urgent as death tolls, riots, monstrous wildfires or batshit elections. The answer is invariably no.
You’ll think this is crazy, you of 2020, but we even have a thing now called “pandemic nostalgia.” The Atlantic has published a think piece on it, and there are many, many Reddits on the subject.
“Trauma takes away our gray areas. It divides our timeline into a before and an after. And while it has the danger of creating this longing for the before, when things were maybe safer, and when we were unaware of all of this and protected by our naïveté, there’s also something about nostalgic behaviors — fashion, clothes, movies, music — that serve as a transitional object.”
The New York Times, “Why We Reach for Nostalgia in Times of Crisis”
But before the nostalgia, there you were, on an RV lot, about to take a strange drive with a strange man. You’re in a suburb of more interesting suburbs, a town with too many box stores, succulents and cement.
Palm trees line the RV lot, and an In-N-Out Burger is next door. The amazing scent of burger grease permeates the air, along with the static of the drive-thru intercom. Would you like fries with that?
The day is hot. The lot is filled with humans looking to buy a home for the road. Which is fucking hilarious, when you think about it. I’m going to take a house with me wherever I go! I have a house, but I need another one on wheels! I often ruminate on how vacationing is the epitome of privilege:
I’m going to have a temporary, pretend home in this other place that’s not my home, because I need a break from the comfortable life I’ve created for myself in my home.
Recreation vehicles have long been the territory of retirees, young families, and nomads living the #vanlife. But the pandemic has changed all that. RV sales increased 100% in 2020.
In other words, Don, the RV lot general manager, a short, paunchy man in his 50s, is having a very good year.
When I meet him he’s dressed in khakis, a polo shirt, and white socks. He has the confidence of a stand-up comedian and the appeal of a soccer dad. He lives in an apartment above the dealership which he describes as “So nice and swanky.”
Don and I have already talked on the phone. I called a few days ago asking if I needed to make an appointment to come view the RVs for sale, which most retail environments are requiring during Covid.
His reply: “We’re not worried about Covid here.”
I didn’t know if he meant “here” as in the RV dealership, or as in Orange County — notoriously more conservative than where I live in Los Angeles. On my drive to the dealership, NPR told me we are in the midst of the worst surge yet of Covid. A person is dying every 10 minutes in Los Angeles County. A new, even more contagious and deadly strain of the virus is currently wracking the UK.
It is one week before the extension on my unemployment runs out. Congress is fighting over an economic aid relief package. Every gig I had lined up as a travel writer and band photographer is canceled. I’m unsure if I’ll be able to pay rent in the new year. The way I figure it, a monthly RV payment would be much cheaper than rent on a house.
“Do you have a coach in mind?” Don asks me, a Midwest accent coming off the “o” in coach. He leans against an enormous maroon RV and wipes his brow with a brown handkerchief. I hadn’t seen anyone use a handkerchief since my grandfather.
I did have a coach in mind. A little white 2015 Leprechaun I’d seen on Craigslist. It had been converted to an office inside, the dining table ripped out in favor of a custom desk. All the usual cheap RV inside details had been upgraded. Wood interior siding. Stage bulbs in the bathroom. The bed lifted to create extra storage underneath. Most of all, at 22 feet, it seemed like something I could realistically drive without plowing anyone over on the road.
“Oh yeah, that’s a nice little coach,” Don says, “Let’s check her out.” I wondered, not for the first time, why vehicles and boats are given female gender assignment, and if this colloquialism was something the activists of Instagram would eventually take to task. Like estimating the end of the pandemic, only time will tell.
He leads the way across the lot, zig-zagging us through alleyways created by bus-sized RVs. I notice he walks with a slight limp, and that his brown handkerchief hangs neatly from his back pocket. I think about what kind of man he is to choose the color brown for his handkerchief. A color that wouldn’t show stains, that would match almost any outfit. The tradeoff of a boring shade in favor of practicality. Perhaps this is a tiny triumph of aging, to choose function over fashion.
My first impression of the RV I’d come to see: meh.
It looked safe, practical and realistic. Squat and white and whatever. My fantasy is a vintage, stylish RV, straight out of the 70s. But for once, research has beaten the aesthetic out of me. Anything retro era was bound to have problems with rust and decay, not to mention engine issues unless it had been totally overhauled. Ugh I’m bored just writing that sentence. Normally, I throw caution to the wind in favor of something cool looking. But I’d done a lot of adulting in 2020, security suddenly topped the list of desired outcomes.
The inside of the RV was clean. All white. Maybe even elegant? It felt like a different world than the outside. A little shelf with tiny fake cacti hung above the door. “The ad said the RV had two beds?” I asked.
Don pulled a shelf out of the storage compartment above the cab. He looked a little sheepish as he said “It could sleep a child. Or a very skinny person.” I realized he meant the shelf was the second bed, akin to climbing inside an oversize silverware drawer. Or a coffin.
I started to make a joke about vampires, but then the thought of coffins made me think of how many people had lost their lives in the pandemic. It seemed in bad taste. I noticed for the first time that Don did have a mask on, just pulled down like a chin strap.
“This coach has good front girth,” he says. “Women are like cats when they drive, they want to have their whiskers in front and to the side.”
“I love cats?”
Don hands me the keys and gets in the passenger side.
Seatbelt fastened, I glide the RV forward, then swing the box-on-wheels in a large arc around the lot, through the gate and to a stoplight next to the In-N-Out Burger. Don inhales with glee.
“I can smell that! Do you smell that? The burgers?” I reply in the affirmative as I accidentally click the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal.
“I just started getting my sense of smell back, I had Covid last December, a year ago. Took a year to smell anything again. There wasn’t a test then but I know it was Covid. I’d be next to this In-N-Out every day and couldn’t smell a damn thing. When it first came back everything smelled like sewer. It still does a little bit, but better.”
I didn’t really know what to say. “Congratulations” might have been appropriate, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I smelled like sewer to him, sitting so close together in this RV. He directs me to take a right, down a wide boulevard with smooth suburban pavement.
I steal a glance at him. He’s grinning, head out the window, sniffing deeply, enjoying his retained sense of smell. As we pass a Panera Bread in a strip mall, and then another Panera Bread in another strip mall, I wonder if it’s dangerous for me to be driving in an RV with a man I don’t know in a place with such an aggressively pleasant facade.
We drive for several minutes in silence. The RV is surprisingly easy to drive. Almost too easy, with the same Ford engine a small SUV might have, it’s easy to forget there’s a whole house behind me, and I merge too quickly into the slow lane, almost hitting a bottle blonde driving a sedan. As she veers around me, honking and waving her tattooed middle finger in my direction, Don says nothing.
“I guess RVs have a pretty big blind spot?” I croak, white-knuckling the steering wheel.
“Oh yeah, the whole thing is basically a blind spot. Just signal for a long time. If your turn signal is on and they don’t get out of the way, it’s their fault.”
Don says this with such nonchalance, I take it as a sales tactic. Make the customer feel like driving 3,000 pounds of metal is as easy as tying a shoe! I wonder if any customer has ever filled out an accident police report with “Don said it’s not my fault!”
We continue down the wide lane in silence. It’s awkward. Too intimate. We’re strangers a foot away from each other, driving into the sunset. When I can’t take it anymore, I ask if he ever gets bored going on so many test drives.
“I’ve lived a lot of lives, I’m number 12 of 16 kids, I grew up on a farm in Indiana. I can always find something to talk about. Take a left at the light.”
“This light? Or the one up ahead?”
“Up ahead. Where the guy is putting the inflatable Santa on his roof.”
“Okay.”
More silence.
“You’re 12 of 16 kids? I have so many questions.” He laughs. I feel triumphant.
“Yeah, one of my brothers lives right there.” He points to a beige house in a development of beige houses, the kind where there are only five styles of homes, alternating for the illusion of variety. “Five of my sisters are psychologists. The rest are still in Indiana.”
I am amazed a person can have so many siblings he can say “five of them.”
“Do you have a favorite sibling?” I ask. “Or I guess you could have a different favorite for every month of the year, with some left over?”
“I don’t know if I can call him my favorite, but one of my brothers used to live at the next block. You know (name of famous internet company I’m omitting for privacy), it’s pretty famous?”
“Yea, I know it, of course I do.”
“He’s the CEO. Proud of him. The life he created. Yeah, he really had life by the balls. He died last month on an ATV. It flipped over while he was driving and crushed his neck. The first one of us siblings to go, and the last one you’d think. He had it all. Two beautiful kids, a wife he still really loved.”
“Ohmigod I’m so sorry, that’s terrible.” I say the things you say to someone in this moment. When they’ve revealed they are in the midst of life-rattling grief.
But Don is unemotional. As we drive the wide lanes of Orange County, he calmly tells me many tragedies of his life.
How his ex wife dragged him thru a nasty divorce. How she has several DUIs. How it’s complicated with the daughter they share. How he has also has a drinking problem.
On the lot when we met he was reserved, composed. On the open road, in an RV, I’m his shrink and he’s a talk therapy champ, eyes looking straight ahead as he pours his wounds into my ears, voice neutral as if he’s describing the weather. He switches between trauma and comedy like a Shakespearean minstrel. “Up ahead,” he says, “take a right on Antonio, it’s right after Banderas. Someone was on a jolly the day they were naming those streets, eh? See the hole in that fence? That’s where I hopped the curb driving wasted to my ex girlfriend’s house. Whoops! Hahahaha. I miss her. She was probably the love of my life. She won’t talk to me now. Dammit.”
Two months later, “Nomadland,” a movie for Frances McDormand / I mean starring Frances McDormand as a woman who lives in her van, wins Best Picture during a socially distanced Oscars. The allure of life on the road is an American tradition. Don is a cog in the wheel of helping people achieve that dream. But who’s helping Don achieve his dreams?
I drive a few extra blocks just so he can keep sharing his tales. Finally I pull the RV back onto the lot. We go into his office and he runs my financials to see what I can qualify for. It’s not impossible, but it’s not great. I say I have to think about it.
He asks if I want to have a drink with him in his apartment above the showroom. I demure. He launches into a lesson on how to improve my credit score, what stocks to invest in, what percentage of my income I should be saving. He’s somewhere between a lonely uncle and a sleazy financial advisor. The Panera Bread across the way turns off its lights for the night. I say I have to go. He tells me to come back soon, to think about the RV.
I never go back, I never buy an RV. But I think about Don sometimes. I wonder if he’s doing alright. And I think about other strange men I’ve been in strange cars with:
The tow truck driver who gave me a ride from Malibu to the tire place in Reseda, my little Nissan on his flatbed. How he told me stories of his trade, being on the scene of car accidents to clear debris, the dismembered bodies he’d seen, how it kept him awake at night, how he was sleeping on his sister’s couch til he found his own place, and did I want to smoke a joint together sometime?
The young love in high school, who drove a truck given to him by his one-legged uncle. The uncle had welded a contraption he could flip over to press on the accelerator, which he operated with his right hand. And the young love was probably going to fail out of school, but at least he had his truck, did I like his truck?
And I think about what was bothering me in 2020, and what’s bothering me now.
And I say to you, Erin of 2020, keep riding in strange cars with strange men, because they too have their stories, and we’re all swimming somewhere in the relativity of angst.
Yours,
Erin
An Open Letter To Driving In Strange Cars With Strange Men
“… and we’re all swimming somewhere in the relativity of angst.” Epic truth. Also the part about keep riding in strange cars. Thanks Erin for this.
Love the visuals in this ❤️ especially “climbing inside an oversize silverware drawer. Or a coffin.” 😂