|
auto
Saturday morning. Little else to do, so I shifted Eva Schwartz - my volkswagon - out from under the carport, into the back yard, and gave her a wash and a polish. I didn't really need a car ... after I bought Eva, that brought the family's auto total to five, including Maximilian the Hillman and my sister's Morry Minor - five cars between the four of us. It was ridiculous, but that's just the way it happened, so the least I could do was to take proper care of Eva. I didn't start thinking of Eva as a 'her', until after the guys at Bug Heaven had worked her over, transforming her from a drab mustard- yellow 76 Superbug into a sleek black convertible goth-mobile. I used to zoom down the Nepean highway late at night, full of cough syrup, with the top down and the Sisters of Mercy's 'Vision Thing' blaring from the stereo. It suited my temperament at the time ... it still does, depending on the occasion ... but I'm getting off the track of the story. I put on a tape of Michael Brooks' Hybrid album - perfect music to lose ones' self in while working - and began to sponge the first layers of grime off with warm water. First, over the smoothly curving bonnet (again, wishing that the 76 Superbug had a 'VW' badge on it - I wanted to replace it with one of my own design, perhaps with the 'Throbbing Gristle' flash-symbol, or a silver pentagram), then down the sleek sides, running the warm water over the wheel- hubs, around and over the turbo fin at the back. I carefully removed the dirt that had adhered to the personalised number-plates- GOTHIC-and dutifully attended to the headlamps. I rinsed the sudsy warmth off with cups of cold water (imagining that she would flinch at its touch), and then started applying the wax. This was something which I was never really fond of. Not that it was too much like hard work - I always had time for Eva - simply because with even a thin layer of wax, she looked drab, almost dusty, as if she had been sitting in the basement of some automotive museum waiting to be discovered by a team of archaeologists from the 22nd century. I repressed my distaste and worked on, until her previously glossy surfaces were completely covered in a thin layer of wax. I stood back for a moment (this had become a ritual), closed my eyes, muttered "Om Mane Padme Hm, Hail the Jewel In the Lotus, The Breakthrough of Seeing the Absolute in the Relative Beyond Individuality, Time and Space" and opened my eyes again. There she sat, enmired in the mucky grey stuff ... I could almost sense her desire to be clean again. I got to work. This is where it began to get strange. As I leaned over the bonnet to reach the area at the base of the windscreen, I brushed against the indicator-lamp (which protruded from the wheel-hub) with my groin, and I felt a familiar sensation. I paused for a moment, and the feeling went away. The tape playing on the stereo chose this moment to finish, change sides and begin playing the Cocteau Twins' Tiny Dynamine. I stood back and regarded Eva levelly. The headlamps seemed to be looking back at me (I'm sure it had something to do with the traces of wax left on the wheel-hubs) with a degree of amusement. Unconcerned if my nosy neighbour was watching over the fence, I wagged my finger at her, and said, "Now you just stop that, Eva." The moment passed, and I cautiously resumed polishing. Working around the back, vigorously rubbing the chamois over the curves of her rear-wheel hubs, I discovered that i had an erection. I suddenly stopped polishing and stepped back ... she rocked slightly on her suspension, as if she were a girl saucily wiggling her ass at me. I waited for the tingling sensation in my crotch to subside, which it did ... eventually. I went inside, looking for a cassette with something really silly on it, to try and break the mood ... what happened to all my tapes of 'They Might Be Giants' and 'The Butthole Surfers'? Then I asked myself: Why try and change this mood? The answer: because it's sick. That's remarkably narrow-minded of you, I thought as I went back into the yard. Remember: the normal is that which no-one ever quite is. "Great... Markoff Chaney-isms. Now look, Eva: I'll continue polishing only if you behave." She sat there, radiating a sense of hurt innocence, as if she was saying, "It's none of my doing, buster... if you can't control your libido, then don't take it out on me!" I sighed and resumed polishing. Now, Eva's suspension was good ... not as loose as a Citroen's, but ... no, I wasn't imagining it: she was swaying again as I removed the last vestiges of wax from the bonnet. While I don't want to give the impression that the subject dominates my thinking, I couldn't help thinking that the rhythm was reminiscent of coition. I spotted a patch of unpolished wax on the far side of the bonnet, and rather than move around to the other side and reach it easily, I stretched over the front of the car. With a click, the bonnet catch released itself, throwing me against the windscreen. Eva rocked on her suspension, which squeaked as if she was enjoying a good joke. "Eva." I murmured levelly. The squeaking stopped. "Thank you." I slid down the left-hand side, and the end of the aerial (which was, for no good reason, connected to the stereo tape deck) poked into my behind painfully. "OW! Now, what was that for?" She remained silent. "Okay. Be that way. See if I care." While the bonnet was up, I perfunctorily checked the windscreen-wiper-fluid reservoir - it was within proper limits - and decided to take her for a spin, to fill the petrol tank and check the air pressure on her tyres. I got behind the wheel, made sure she was in neutral, and tried to start her. Twin lamps lit up on the dashboard, but nothing else happened. I sighed, tried again. Nothing. I returned the ignition key to the 'off' position, tapped my fingers on the steering wheel. The hurt feeling that she projected was still there. I twiddled the crucifix and rosary beads that dangled from her rear-view mirror, and began, self-consciously, "Eva, look, I ... I'm sorry." (the sensation that she was turned away from me with her arms folded -even though I was sitting inside her - mitigated somewhat) "I didn't know this meant as much to you as it seems to." At this, a feeling of genuine warmth flooded through me. "Come on, let's go get you some petrol." Of course, after this, she started immediately, and we edged out of the narrow driveway and onto the open road. We stopped, twenty minutes later, at one of those old-fashioned petrol stations - a pair of old dogs asleep under the sandwich board that advertised 'super: 6-.4' (the middle numeral having fallen off from repeated price-changes), petrol pumps that didn't use digital displays ... the sort of petrol station that you'd imagine was run by someone called 'Zeke' or 'Duke'. There was even an old Coke machine (that didn't have Diet Coke) next to the door. It was a self-serve station, so I got out and removed the cap on the tank. Ordinarily, I'd have to balance the fuel-nozzle on the edge of the hole - something about the way it curved into the tank fooled the more modern pumps into thinking that the tank was full. These old pumps weren't that smart, so I slid the nozzle all the way in. Did I hear a squeak? There was only the occasional whoosh as another car flew by on the nearby highway. The pump clicked as the fuel flowed into her. I waited attentively, knowing that she would only need about fifteen dollar's worth before reaching satiation. Right on cue, as the meter clocked up fifteen dollars, she gave a delicate shudder, and I could smell the petrol backing up the line. I rattled the nozzle to shake the last drops out, replaced it in the side of the pump, and tenderly wiped away some stray drops of fuel with a paper towel. I dropped fifteen dollars on the counter inside the station (I didn't want to wake Zeke, or Duke, or whatever his name was) and we hit the road again. We were up in the hills around Mount Martha, that section of road that winds around over the bay, and she was taking the corners somewhat faster than I'd normally dare to. I gave the brakes an experimental tap or two ... she responded, decelerating to a safer speed, but as soon as we came to a short stretch without any curves, she sped up again. I called out over the rushing sound of the wind, "Eva! Calm down, please? You're making me nervous!" She responded by swerving onto the wrong side of the road for a moment. I wrestled with the steering wheel until we were safely on the left side of the intermittently appearing white line. Suddenly, it was as if the steering column had come loose ... the wheel dropped about five inches, until it was resting in my lap. I desperately tried to shove it back into position, but she resisted wilfully. The next curve came up and I awkwardly steered into it, ignoring the feeling of the steering wheel rubbing against my crotch. There was another curve after that one, turning the other way, which I barely negotiated by a superhuman effort. It was only after making it safely around the second curve that I thought to try and slow down. There was a truck-stop at the side of the road ahead, and I managed to steer her into it and screech to a halt, turning through ninety degrees as we did so. I gasped as the shock of how close to the edge we'd been became apparent. "I suppose you think that's supposed to excite me?" I tried to tug the steering wheel out of my lap, but she resisted, pushing it against my stomach, pressing me back into the seat. Her suspension creaked slightly as the wheel turned a few degrees to the left... and then back to the right, rubbing against me playfully. "Okay ... okay, let's continue this somewhere more private, hey?" Only then did the steering wheel lift from my lap. It was twilight in the parking lot at the Sorrento back-beach ... there were a few 'sin-bins' containing coupled surfers, gently rocking to and fro in the soft fading light. Eva drove us up to the end of the parking lot, a discreet distance from the others, and there she had her way with me. Afterwards, I let her drive us home, curling myself up in the back seat. |
|
|
( top )
All work on this site is © Nikolai Kingsley unless otherwise stated. |