Jeeps and Roses

[Flack]

Summer, 1993. Radio stations were pushing grunge aside for Janet Jackson and UB40. Jurassic Park was the summer blockbuster.

I was sleeping twice a day in shifts back then. Five days a week I'd commuted to college in the morning from an apartment complex that has since been condemned, and wasn't all that great when I lived there. After attending some random subset of classes I was paying for I'd grab an assortment of value items from Taco Bell, drive back to the apartment, and sleep for another two to three hours. After waking I'd play on the computer, watch horror and kung-fu movies on VHS, or play video games. By four or five I was off to the pizza restaurant, and by midnight I was hanging out with my friends. When the sun began to rise I'd return to the apartment, sleep another couple of hours, and do it all over again. That time of my life was like a time-lapse video of moving traffic. There were no individual days, only a constant stream of dreamlike events that began one spring and lasted a year. Our motto was if you never stop partying, the hangovers can never catch you.

There was a girl -- there was always a girl -- named "Thing 1". When I met her she was wearing a leather duster and leaning up against her RX-7, which was always filled with empty packs of smokes, bottles of Zima, and dirty underwear. It was a garbage car and she was a garbage person, but she drove a stick shift and met my fetish of busty women wearing tight fast food uniforms. We didn't share much in common other than some inexplicable desire to see the other naked, which happened in record time for me (probably not for her). She asked me to do nasty things and I asked her to leave the lights off.

All bad things must come to an end, but not before Thing 1 introduced me to her friend, "Thing 2". Thing 2 dressed like a cowgirl (which I hated) and listened to country music (which I hated), and had a boyfriend who was 10 years older than either of us. When you're nineteen, you cannot compete with a 29 year old. He owned a house and worked at a firm. I owned one towel, an entertainment center made from cinder blocks and 2x4s, and drove a Ford Festiva that wasn't even a particularly nice Ford Festiva. There was nothing I could offer this girl, but I tried. Man, did I try.

In high school, the cool place to go was 12th street, a two-mile stretch of road that became the cruise spot. Hundreds and hundreds of cars from all over the metro and beyond would descend on 12th street every weekend, turning the road into one giant traffic jam. It took over an hour to make it from one end of the strip to the other, at which point we would turn around and do it all over again. Every stereo was loud. Guys showed off their rides and girls showed off themselves. It was the era of minitrucks and Honda Preludes -- the more neon underneath your ride, the better.

By 1993, 12th street had largely been shut down. It was such a nuisance to the town that cops began parking along the drag and writing tickets for loud stereos, seatbelt violations, and blocking entrances to businesses. The city even put up signs forbidding U-turns on 12th street after dark. Still, people went. 12th street had always been a high school crowd, with a few stragglers who wished they were still in high school. Thing 1 and Thing 2 went every weekend. By this point the RX-7 had died and Thing 1 was now driving a Jeep. The two of them, Thing 1 and Thing 2, cruised 12th street in the Jeep and teased the high school boys.

Despite my lame jokes and poor grooming habits, I just couldn't seem to win over the heart of Thing 2. Sometimes, at night, Thing 2 would invite me over to her parents' house where I would sneak in through her window and lay in the narrow spot between her bed and the wall as she told me how she and 29YO would someday get married. They would have three kids and live happily ever after. She would tell me how sweet he was and how good he was in bed. And I would lie there, hiding and secretly praying that he might die of old age soon, because back then 29 seemed pretty old.

In the summer of 1993 I got a pager. I didn't have a phone at my apartment so I bought a pager from the flea market that also sold service. The first Saturday of every month I would drive to the flea market and pay an old Chinese lady $6 cash and she would write me out a hand receipt. I invented an intricate system of codes and messages that nobody could ever remember, not even me. One night, as I was scrubbing clean the last pile of pizza pans, I got a page from a number I didn't recognize... followed by "911". I called it immediately.

It was Thing 1. She and Thing 2 were in her Jeep on 12th street -- 20 miles away -- and had run out of gas. Could I please, please, please rescue them?

This was my chance. Thing 2 -- a stranded passenger, a woman in distress -- would finally realize I, and not her 29 year old boyfriend, was the man for her.

I left the pizza shop and drove to the nearest gas station in order to purchase both gasoline and a can to carry it in. While inside the store I saw those crummy old roses next to the register. You may have seem them before, mostly red but partially black with a hint of rot setting in, and wondered who buys them. The answer is, 19 year old boys, desperate at midnight and smitten with girls uninterested in them.

At night, alone on the road, my brain works overtime. During that 20 mile drive, something happened. Whatever Thing 2 was doing, whether it was teasing me, or tempting me, or just leading me on, it wasn't the basis of a relationship. And it hadn't been Thing 2 who had called me -- me, their knight in shining Festiva armor! -- and asked me to rescue her. It had been Thing 1! All this time, I had been ignoring Thing 1 in my pursuit of Thing 2! But Thing 1 was the only one of them who had given me the time of day (and a pair of panties as a souvenir). The roses weren't for Thing 2. They were for Thing 1.

And for this moment, during this dark stretch of interstate, I had a vision. A vision of me, as a middle-aged manager of a pizza joint, taking a break from work to run packs of smokes home to Thing 1 as she talked on the phone and screamed at our kids for playing too loud. My car would be full of Zima bottles and her stinky smoky clothes and that would be my life. And that was the life I deserved, because I would be a garbage person, too.

I found the four of them sitting in the Jeep, broken down in the corner of a grocery store parking lot. Thing 1 and Thing 2 had met a couple of high school boys on 12th street and the four of them were all hanging out. I don't remember introducing myself to the boys or saying much of anything, really. As I poured five gallons of gas into the Jeep, Thing 2 told me the four of them were going to iHop and invited me to join them. They could get a table for five!

I don't know if they saw it in my eyes that night, but I think they did. I hope they did.

Once the Jeep had started I returned the gas can to my car, promised to meet them at iHop, and then drove off in the opposite direction. On the way back to my apartment I stopped by Taco Bell and ordered a few items off the value menu. The girl at the window was short, busty, and wearing a polo two sizes too small that was covered in beans and sour cream. Before pulling away from the window, I handed her the roses.

Some fish just like playing with their bait, and nothing seems to drive a woman's interest levels higher than disinterest. Despite a few more calls and visits to the restaurant, I let those fish return to the sea. Fall was approaching, I think, and I had grown tired of fishing. I wasn't any good at it, anyhow.

[Casual Observer]

Great story. I too remember fondly the southern tradition of Cruising. And I too suck at women.

[AArdvark]

Gotta give Flack credit for posting that. Those personally embarrassing scenes are tough to live down. Publicly writing about them is even harder.

[raecoffey]

A great tale of failed romance, Flack! Thank you for sharing that snapshot of your life with us!

[Jizaboz]

That is a cool story! I read it a while back and kept meaning to leave a comment.

I didn't have much luck with girls back then either. Looking back there was one pretty (though a bit skinny for me) girl I used to hang out and smoke with a lot that out of the blue one day that actually asked "Do you like me?" to which I obviously replied "uhhh well like uhh" and she of course got miffed with that response. She ended up going to crazy town shortly after though; last I saw her, her and her crackhead boyfriend were trying to drop off a caged chinchilla in my drive way at random.

Once I was 19 though I got with my own "busty fast food chick with stains on her shirt" lol