7/26/26
When I was 17, I bought my first car for $800. It was a 1995 Geo Prism. It was a little teal granny car that felt more like a go-kart than a vehicle.
This is when my life started getting duller. Not because of the car: I think it was because I was starting to get pieces of the world that made my life a little bigger. I worked a job at a Walmart an hour away from home. Every morning I would wake up, and my house would grab me like a big fist and squeeze air out of my lungs. I would go to the gas station and look around on the side-walk for a half-smoked cigarette someone had dropped.
Then I would drive. To celebrate the new car, I had bought an Abba: Gold CD which I would play on loop while smoking my second-hand cig. I would look out the windshield and the flat, yellow fields of stubble would seem to groan and sigh. I was in a state that I refused to consider my home, despite living there for years at this point. It was my small act of defiance against a world that was getting greyer and greyer.
My second act of defiance was rattle-canning the car two-tone pink and yellow. I remember making this decision and buying the paint within the same day, and asking my sister to help me. It was a windy day, but I pushed forward. I kept thinking “fuck, Something will be vibrant.” The paint ran, it sprayed, it got on one of the passenger windows.
By the end of it I finally had a piece of color: my Geo.
I drove this car for a few years after. By the end of his life the passenger door had stopped working, so I bought a pack of bungee cords and tied the door to the passenger seat. It was so cold in the winter.
At around this same time I had gotten my cat - who now just had her sixth birthday. She is a tortoiseshell and in my perspective very colorful. Her first night back, we both sat on my bed in my shitty studio apartment and just stared at each other: Two scared kids in a new place.
Around a month into having Ravioli (the cat), I was making the hour drive to pick up my sister to go to the state fair. I was listening to Lady Gaga’s Bloody Mary, and there was a new thumping sound that I thought was part of the song. Then smoke came, and then fire. The Geo was on fire.
I pulled over and popped the hood, and saw a big hole in the engine. There was oil everywhere. It was like a slasher movie: My beloved car’s guts had been ripped apart, and his blood was everywhere.
I was on the side of the road for a while, just crying.
I did get home safe, I don’t remember how. I spent the rest of the night sitting across the bed from Ravioli, just staring.