Alan Sincic

         I will have the baco-burger combo special, one for me and one for my new car. No, no: do not roll the window down. Slide it in through the vent. We do not wish to break the exquisite aerodynamic profile of this, our recently purchased motoring vehicle.

         How extraordinarily handsome he is at the wheel of his handsome new car. He is a go-getter, he is a sexual object, he is a gigantical rumbling four-door erection.

         Hey, baby. Hubba-hubba. Yowsa-yowsa. She is dazzled by the fine flashy looks of my brand new car. "If I had a kind of a car like that," she says, "I would not have any need for a pair of legs."

         Come on out and take a look at my brand new car, Bob. But out in the middle of the lawn is where it looks the best, Bob. No, no: there's not enough room on my front lawn, Bob. Yes, yes: I'm sorry about your dog, Bob. Come on out, Bob, come out from behind those bushes and take a look at my brand new car.

         The day that I bought my brand new car, I burned up all of my old clothes, and scrubbed myself from head to toe, and stepped out into my brand new sleek and racy Italian motoring footwear: the black silk socks from Garucchis's in Milano, the pointy-toed togs, the cream-colored French idling sunglasses for when the car is idling and the blue-tinted British motoring goggles for short hops and the high-speed West German rocketry periscopes for high-speed cross-country chases whoa, whoa, whoa!  I am exceeding the speed limit!  I am turning into a blur!  Quick, somebody give me a ticket, give me a ticket!

         I like to sit in my car even when it is parked in the driveway. I am no pedestrian. I have the wife bring my dinner out to the car. She rolls the TV out onto the lawn so that I can catch the evening news. Headlights: Check. Wipers: Check. Cigarette lighter: Check  (I'm learning how to smoke so's to take a full  advantage). Radio: Check. Children: Check. Fuzzy-dice rear-view mirror ornament: Check.

         I am going to spend the rest of my life in my brand new car. Here comes the wife with the clean bed sheets. I myself was conceived in the (Junior, get back in the trunk) in the back seat of a brand new car and this is where I intend to do all of my conceiving in the future. Zoom zoom.

         We are the peas in the pod, the beads in the rattle, the toffee with the soft sweet center stuffed into the guts of the cast iron piñata, we all fall asleep in our portable womb like we are little tiny baby cars waiting to be born. It's like we are being driven away on a very long trip -- all night long the car it steers itself -- and when we wake in the morning, it's like we have arrived at a brand new location.

         It is hard for people to recognize me when I am not at the wheel of my brand new car. I go for a walk I have to jangle the keys in my pocket, I have to signal for a turn with the blink of my eye, I have to splash myself with a cologne that makes me smell like a brand new car.

         At work at my desk I close my eyes turn the fan toward me pretend that I am rushing rushing down the highway in my brand new car because I am a driven man, I cannot be stopped, my wife, I had to leave her but at least I have got my brand new car, I could not handle the both of them it was just too much but now I am free.

         I brush my teeth in the gas station bathroom. I do not need a wife. I hose myself down in the faucet out back. You hear the rumbling of that XJ-424 dual quad intake manifold, that Muncie 4-speed synchronized torque converter, that multi-transversal boost regulator, Mr. Garage Mechanic?  I am going to tear up the tar in my brand new car, I am going to go get me a cheerleader.

         Hey, baby, would you like to have sex with me in my brand new...?  But all of the other pretty... How’s about if I...?

         The money has nothing to do with it. The women they beg to have sex in my new car because of the challenge, there is barely enough room to get the job done, there's a lot of twisting and banging and complicated ambidextrous maneuvering. It is very much like driving a car. The most exciting thing is when there is no room for the girl and you get to climb in there alone, one at a time, to have sex with the car.

         I call my new car "she" because she is a real beauty, much prettier than my wife, I tie streamers to her bumper so that people can see how fast she can go, I rub her and rub her with the wax and with the buff, I rip off my shirt and I hose her down good, I buy perfume for her and a number of expensive gifts so that everyone can see that she belongs to me, that she is my baby.

         And what about my wife?  My wife -- -- with all of the mileage? With all of the added features?  My wife who was last year's model?  I swing by to tell her I'm getting a new car telephone so as to better enhance the communication between us.

         Get out of that damn car, she says, and go meet some new people. I try this but I cannot walk fast enough to keep up with these new people, I cannot get them to roll their windows down, there's a vibration in my shoes, I look down from the overpass, wave as they as they whiz by beneath me with their thick creamy hair blasting out behind them in this wind that they are creating...

         I go to the glove compartment, take my daughter's red crayon, draw an arrow on the map to point to where I am at. "You are here". Every few blocks I have to stop so that I can draw another arrow.

         You are here, you are here, you are –

         -- here. It's getting crowdeder and crowdeder I am forced to go further and further to make room for more arrows. I take my daughter's blue crayon and draw a blue arrow to point to where my daughter is at, I measure the distance between the blue arrow and the red arrow, I fold the map up into a tiny square so that the reds and the blues can be closer and closer together.

         But I am not lonely because I roll back out onto these roads that we all of us share together, and I park myself beneath the green and red and yellow flashing lights, "The Lights of Friendship" as they are called, and the people gather up behind me honk wave hop out of their cars so as to be together with me, to cover the distance between us, to build a new relationship with another fellow traveler.

         "Get moving!" they encourage me, so I swing by to pick up my last paycheck. It was not the right kind of job for me. They wanted me to stop making the rumbling noises from out of the corner of my mouth.

         I call my wife to tell her that maybe we could work out some kind of a compromise. Move into a mobile home!  Hitch it up to a big tractor-trailer, hire a driver, sit together eat pork chops and yellow rice, drink Kool-Aid from a canteen, look out across the TV tray, out the living room window to this great country of ours rolling past us like a long unbreakable movie...

         Hello?  Hello?  There is some kind of a problem with my new car telephone. I do not seem to be getting a very good reception. I will go to the blankest spot on the map, the most roadless location I can –

         The National Park, the National Park, the place to go and the place to park….

         The grizzly bears gather to lick the marshmallows from the front my windshield. Look how they love me!  Look at their tongues against the glass, the white breath steaming out from between their yellow teeth -- shhh! -- listen to the clack clack clack of their claws against chrome-plated wind scoop, the platinum gas cap, the magnesium alloy wiper-guards, the bright silver racing stripes on either side. Look how they ...

         Something is wrong here. Something is wrong with my life. I am a failure. I have got to have a change in my life, a change in my way of thinking.

         I have got to go get me a new new car!  I leave the motor running, head out down the highway, the first car that hits me is the kind of a car that I am going to get for my new new car!  Zip zip, the cars swerve and swerve, but none of them can hit me. … they are not very good cars, they are not precision instruments. I lay down in the road to give them a better chance but still they cannot hit me. Here I am. Here I am. HERE I AM on the way to my new new car. Why am I not using the keys to open the door to my new new car?  I am not using the keys because I can do just as good a job with this brick.

         My friends now they number in the thousands, out on the super-highway we squeeze in close together because of the way that we feel toward one another. They honk and wave their arms because they are so excited to see me. I give them a playful little nudge onto the shoulder of the road and they are so excited they cannot help themselves, they do a little flip, they roll over and over in their happiness and then they burst into flames!  I am a hit!  I am too much fun!  Everybody wants to be with me. They send out the special government escort cars with the blue flashing lights and the noisemakers like at New Years Eve and we zoom down the highway together like we are all of us in some kind of very very fast parade.

         Out on the interstate I pass my ex-wife. I drive alongside her for a while. I roll down the window and shout across to ask her how she is doing. The billboards whiz by us like bits of confetti and it is hard to steer and to talk at the same time. Good thing that we are both of us skilled drivers. I tell her that the moments of passion between us have not ever by me been forgotten. She cannot hear me over the wind that is whistling through the crack in her air-conditioner vent.

         I motion with hand-signals, I act out the words of the sentence, there's the pit-pit-pit of the insects against the windshield and the grill and my head like a metronome I motion for her to stop but she shakes her head and points to a thermos and a big cardboard box full of canned goods in the back seat. She is out for a drive and she is not going to stop. This is America and we can drive where we want and you do not have to stop nowhere you can drive if that is what you want, if you have got enough gas, if you have got enough food to last you.

         Our kids whiz by us in their brand new cars and I wave. A warm feeling of togetherness overcomes me and I cry. I have been so alone and now at last to be together with them again. I think of my wife, the touch of her skin, the whole family popping right out of our own two bodies, the babies when they did not know how to walk and had to be carried the way that now they are carried by their brand new cars, how we slept under the same roof, shot out of the same driveway -- bullets from out of the same gun -- I think how big it is, America, but how crowded, and even in Montana or Texas, if you close your eyes, and floor the accelerator, and keep driving straight, you are bound to hit something eventually.