Saturday, October 4, 2014

Fuel.

Yesterday Bigskeptic jumped in her rickety bucket of a Nova and attempted a short drive around the block, after which, I was going to wash and wax. She looks like hell, she really does.  The time spent in pieces, stored car-knapped from me outside in the California sun, uncovered and unloved meant that the aging paint was ruined, as were the wheels.  It really looks the part of the 70's POS these days.

Instead of a quick run around the block and pleasurable wash/wax, my nose was assaulted with fuel, and I luckily coasted into my driveway as gasoline dumped from the carb onto the intake and subsequently...everywhere below it.  A smart person would have made a trip to the store, bought a "For Sale" sign, and washed her hands of the whole damned thing.

I may not be smart after all.

Sweaty, wearing Eu Du Fume perfume, I went inside and sat down with a coffee and thought about the path of the Nova, how she got here, with me, how I got here, with her.

I have taken immense shit for that car.  While there have been the occasional blubbering males commenting on sexy women with cars, it's been more judgement than anything from even those closest to me about why the hell I hang on, with claws, to that ridiculous, dilapidated car.

The closest I can muster to logic on the matter is because all this time, that stupid Chevy quite literally fueled my passion for cars---how they work, why some matter and why some don't, why some get restored and why some get left behind, the history, the physics, the design.  She is antithetical to custom cars and hot rodding as I am antithetical  to those typically involved in this industry.  I cling to her, because somehow our plights are tied together, and where everyone else would leave her behind because she doesn't matter, I cannot.  She has to be along for the ride.

Once I met someone at a car show that looked at my Chevy and said, "who brought that??" and my response was "fuck off, that's mine."

That's exactly how I still feel today about my bucket of bolts, our outsider plights intertwined, both of us taking a moment to sit and be broken  until we figure out just exactly who we should be in this iteration of our self-revision.

Skeptically Yours,
Bigskeptic
Dirty crawlin'-around-cars-legs. My shoes smell like gas.