Brake Lights and Idols

Brake-lights and Idols

I bought my first car when I was fifteen years old with money I earned babysitting. A slate blue 1982 Volkswagen Jetta. Four doors, a crank sunroof, and hand-rolled windows. Stick shift, not automatic—what was called a “manual,” but no one said it like that.

It was beat up. The radio only worked if you smacked it. The back passenger door wouldn’t open. Inside it smelled like hot garbage left in a tin drum in mid-August. I paid everything I had for it but I would have paid double. I didn’t buy a busted up car that needed more money in repairs than I could ever earn. I bought freedom.

I loved that car. It sat crooked in my parent’s driveway and some nights when I couldn’t sleep, I thought of it. I’d get that fluttering feeling like some winged insect was trying to escape my ribcage. Quietly, I’d get out of bed, step outside in my pajamas and crawl into the front seat. Then I’d open the sunroof, lean the seat back and look at the stars though a hole I’d broken a minor sweat prying open.

I bought the car from my friend, Sara. She was older than me - sister of someone I went to school with - and we hit it off immediately. She had thick, wavy, blonde hair down the middle of her back, sparkling blue eyes that made you believe in yourself, and a smile that was both mischievous and genuine at the same time. To this day, I’ve never met anyone with a better smile. Sara’s effervescence pulled you into orbit. She was so unbelievably cool. I felt lucky that she actually wanted to hang out with me.

For me, cool wasn’t just social currency - it was safety and security. If you were cool, you couldn’t be dismissed. People noticed you, liked you, wanted to protect you. Cool people had this way of making you wish you had perfect posture and designer shoes.

At this point in my life, I was obsessed with the singer of a band called Danzig. He wasn’t a baby-faced boy on a poster. He was dark and gritty, had a voice like sandpaper. If darkness had a soundtrack, he’d be the one playing it.”

I remember trying to explain it to Sara once.

“Oh, I guess he’s…. hot,” Sara said. But I could hear the skepticism in her voice so I tried harder.

“No, not hot. More like he crawled out of a basement and dared the sun to fight him.”

She blinked.

“He’s untouchable. It’s power, don’t you see?”

She didn’t see. I let it go. I didn’t want to scare her away by telling her that I thought she was in the same stratosphere as him. That she looked like she swallowed starlight and was so unaffected, she didn’t even know she was glowing.

Sara was barely 23 and newly divorced. She had two boys - a toddler and a pre-schooler that had inherited his mother’s smile.

“Dad, please,” I begged, with big, watery eyes, “she has no where else to go. No family in the area, no other friends. Do you really want to put her and her kids out on the street?”

I must have laid it on really think because my dad relented.

I watched the two boys while she worked the nightshift. On the weekends I’d keep the kids until the afternoon so she could get more sleep. I got paid ten dollars when tips were good, nothing when they weren’t. But I didn’t mind. I enjoyed having them in my life. I liked feeling needed.

Before I knew it, a couple of months had gone by. Sara saved up enough money to buy a car to better suit her and the boys,

“What are you going to do with your old car?” I asked.

“I don’t know, probably try to sell it?” She paused, eyed me for a moment. “Hey, you could buy it! I’d give you a really good deal.”

My heart skipped a beat at the thought of owning my own car.

“I don’t have a lot of money, just what you’ve been paying me. About two-hundred, I think.”

I couldn’t believe my luck because she said “I was going to try to sell it for three-hundred but I can let you have it for two. What do you think?”

In addition to being so cool, so beautiful, she was generous too.

The car didn’t come with a title or bill of sale, just an exchange of money and a verbal agreement that the car was now mine.

I only had my permit at the time so I didn’t take the car too far from home but I drove it to school every day. I left the house twenty minutes early and took the back roads. That was the safest thing to do. The car always ended up stopping as long as I pumped the brakes until the pedal became firm. Though sometimes I found it easier to pull the driver’s side door open and use my foot. I never drove more than five miles an hour.

A few weeks after I bought the car, Sara announced she was moving in with her new boyfriend.

“I met him at the club during my routine. We made eye contact when he put the twenty dollar bill in my g-string and I knew it was love!”

I was completely devastated. Not that she had found love, I was happy for her. But I didn’t want to be alone again. I wondered if she would continue to choose me as a friend if she didn’t need me anymore.

“When are you moving out?” I could barely get the words out through my tight throat.

“Tomorrow.” I felt like I’d been flattened but I smiled anyway.

She gathered her hair and pulled it across her one shoulder, stroked it like it was an animal.

“I’m going to need to take the tags off the car. They belong to my ex, I have to give them back.”

I didn’t know the first thing about getting my own license plate. I asked for her advise and she told me to go to the DMV, take a number from the red ticket-thingy, wait my turn and the nice lady at the counter would tell me everything I needed to do.

“Oh! You can get a personalized license plate!” She exclaimed, so suddenly it startled me.

“Naw, I probably won’t. I don’t even like it when people put stickers on their bumper.”

“No this isn’t like a sticker. When you have a personalized license plate it means you really like something, it’s your thing.” She seemed so excited about it, I thought maybe it might a good idea. I trusted her instincts.

“I wouldn’t even know what to get.”

She paused in contemplation, the tip of her tongue sticking out as she thought. My chest swelled. She looked so adorable.

“I know!” She threw up her hands. “You could get a license plate that says Janzig so everyone will know how much you like Danzig! Get it, because your name starts with a J?”

That’s when all sound dried up in my ears, like when the instant pot reaches pressurization.

Sara’s charismatic blur snapped into disappointing focus. Her glow dimmed. She wasn’t cool. She was an adult with two kids, divorced, hanging out with a teenager. With that one corny suggestion, the spell broke. Her once smooth, shiny appearance looked dull and scratchy. I could see all the ways she took advantage of me.

Even so, I couldn’t be mad at her because I felt sorry for what a steaming hot mess she was. That glittery smile was all she really had going for her.

The next day she moved in with her boyfriend.

I never ended up getting tags for my car because I didn’t have proof of ownership. I drove it back and forth to school for a little while longer until I knew I could no longer keep it. I wish I could have given it a Viking’s send off — noble flames blazing bright as it floated away. But in the end I had to pay my last fifty dollars for the junkyard to take it. I like to think we were reunited years later when I bought my first toaster.