___
____
_____
After
winning my coup, I went directly to the luggage pick-up and was relieved to see
my trunk already rotating around the bend. I was grateful that I had already
grabbed a luggage cart, finding the thing to be much heavier than I had
remembered.
____
I placed
my carry-on on top of my kit and began pushing the lot towards the generally
vague arrows pointing me in the direction of the car rental services.
_____
While
navigating through the differing and sometimes contradictory arrows presented
to me (a poor substitute for a proper map, in any case) I went through
cross-cutting corridors, up two different elevators, and finally, emerged to a
new hallway with a string of counters, each named after their company’s
namesake.
_____
There
was no rhyme or reason behind how they were organized (alphabetical seemed to
be the most useful) so I passed by numerous differing logos before settling on
the one that was relevant to me, noticeably the one with the longest line.
______
I stood
there, stammering impatient, listening to a couple, fat enough to declare
themselves to be from the Midwest, discuss their plans for the next few days:
_____
He
said: I think we should go directly to
the hotel.
_____
She
said: I don’t see why we even need a
car. I don’t need to go see a damn dam. If you wanna go see one, fine, but I’m
gonna stay on the strip!
_____
He
said: You said this was going to be an
adventure trip!
_____
She
said: That’s right! We’re gonna see
Paris, Rome, Venice, New York – we’re gonna see it all!
_____
He
said: You’re gonna spend it all you
mean!
_____
She
said: That’s the price of adventure, my
friend!
______
I wanted
to tell the woman that if she had basic map-reading skills, she would
understand that there was no way that she would be able to see all of the
locations she tooted off about in a weekend, not even a long one.
______
After a
20-minute or so wait listening to this kind of piffle, I was finally up at the
counter where I was able to produce two different forms of identification, sign
multiple pieces of paper that all seemed to say the same thing, hand over my
credit card, sign another slip of paper (one that, in this day and age, seems
entirely irrelevant) and finally be handed a set of keys and a shoddy “map” of
the garage where my vehicle was currently located.
_____
I did
not receive a map of how to find said garage, and so what ensued was a pushing
of a luggage cart into various dead-ends until a kindly gentleman put me on
foot in the right direction.
______
“They
seem to want it to be a hassle,” he
said, and I thanked him in a tone of agreement.
______
Finally
finding my vehicle, a rugged black jeep – a kind of vehicle I had never driven
before, but it seemed small enough for a person my size to be able to maneuver
without much of an issue – I was instructed by the sheet of paper in my hand to
roam around the vehicle and map out any visual marks/disturbances that could
potentially be posited to my profile and thus incur more expense than what was
originally part of my rental agreement.
______
I looked
at this as if it were a brief quiz on my mapping skills, using a landscape that
is not normally mapped, per se, but something that had the opportunity for a
certain kind of poetry, albeit one that held a certain contractual obligation,
of which most poetry does not.
This is
what, in essence, I was given:
____
____
___
-____
It was
clearly meant to be a “catch-all” for any type of vehicle, all of which do have
a front, rear, driver and passenger side. But it was difficult to map the
specifics of any damage upon my inspection to the exact point of the jeep, a
jeep having a significantly different shape from a typical car.
______
I did my
best, pointing out, where necessary, more explicit details of the few Ds and
Ss’ that I found.
_____
I didn’t
not find anything requiring an M, but what would I know? Likewise, I couldn’t
even tell what an R even meant, but decided to keep my ignorance mute.
_____
I handed
my Pre-Rental Vehicle Inspection Form over to the foreman on duty, who likewise
signed off on it. He then handed me a set of keys, with a small smirk that made
me feel he did not believe a woman of my stature would be able to return such a
vehicle in the same condition it then was in.
______
I
ignored the small smirk and thanked him, but using the diminutive of “thanks”,
given more to the garage than the man himself, surely spoken with an air of
derision, which I then felt was completely justified.
______
I loaded
up my trunk in the trunk, keeping my carry-on available to me as a passenger,
knowing the things I had packed therein would be handy to have on the road.
______
Finally
behind the wheel of the jeep, I sat there and began to cry.
_____
Like
what the foreman must have guessed, like
a woman, I began to cry.
______
This
burst of emotion, I guessed, was similar to what all brides experience at their
weddings, with all the planning going into the event finally forced out for all
to see.
______
Planning
something requires a certain amount of restraint, emotional or otherwise.
______
One
cannot, of course, plan one’s
emotions, and hence they always seem to take us by surprise.
_____
But,
upon reflection, I could tell you everything that led up to this moment of
breakdown, bit by bit, nearly at the atomic level:
______
The
change from the air-conditioning of the airport to the hot, desperately so,
garage caused my temperature to continue to rise as I walked, searching the
spots for my jeep, later bending down deep next to each panel of its exterior
to search for any blemishes I wished not to be held accountable for; the
heaviness of my trunk and carry-on, even while pushing, caused a further
acceleration of my body temperature, making streaks of sweat form underneath my
shirt and, even more uncomfortably, my crotch; my experience in line as well as
at the counter waiting for my paperwork, etc., had put me in a somewhat foul
and cynical mood which only expanded exponentially with the hunt for the garage
itself; even winning the $100 at the slot machine on my first go-round didn’t
alleviate my discomfort caused by the dream I had had while on the plane
itself; I was frustrated by my inability to truly mark up the faux-map of the
jeep, crouching down most of the time, and found my handwriting illegible,
which I assumed would be a strike against me if anything were to happen where
the document would have come into play; I had been feeling cramping which had
brought to mind my miscarriage, and then Jefferson, which made me cramp up even
more; the sum of these memories had made me relive Jefferson’s last words to
me, or the last words he has spoken to me in some time:
______
I want to love you, but not now.
I hope you understand.
______
Of
course, no one would truly understand such a statement. It sounded desperately
like a grad student trying to keep his pants open and available to anyone while
still letting the one he had been fucking down gently.
_____
He
always fucked me gently.
_____
_____
_____
_____
_____
