Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
*stock revving of engine noise*
This all started because I shouldn't have been driving. I shouldn't have been driving the night I wrecked my car, and at any other point in my life. I am a very lucky individual in that I skidded into a light post at 45mph over a year ago and write a blog about the consequences today. Not only that, no one else was injured by my actions and I am overcome with gratitude that this is so. The car I totaled belonged to my parents. It was the family car, and I inherited it when my parents upgraded. It was my second car from my parents in fact. My first was an '89 Honda Accord that they bought so I could drive myself to my summer school (Algebra II) in Newark, OH (about a forty-five minute drive south of my hometown of Mount Vernon, OH). It was convenient for all involved that I have a modicum of independence and was able to drive myself to my own appointments. I remember the first day that I drove off by myself. State Route 13 connects the two cities and as it parallels train tracks for the majority of the trip , it makes for some picturesque country driving. A traveler even goes by Ye Old Mill, home of Velvet brand ice-cream, and an iconic piece of Central Ohio with its ponds and ducks and wooden water mill always turning. I probably didn't realize at the time how lucky I was to live in such a lovely countryside.
Upon returning home after class on my very first day, I decided to visit some friends in nearby Gambier, OH, home of Kenyon College and another gem of Central Ohio. In my zeal to utilize my new freedoms, I rushed out of my car and onto Middle Path, a gravel walkway down the center of Kenyon's campus, and towards the Kenyon Bookstore only to stop short of the door, slowly turn my gaze back to the faded navy of my new used car, and reach into my pocket to feel the empty spot underneath the
Camel Lights and the lighter. I had forgotten my keys. I locked them in my car on my first day with it. Shit. How could I tell that to my parents? So I ran over to my friend Miriam's house and knocked.
"Hey, Drew."
"Hey Miriam. Do you have a wire hanger?"
She didn't even blink at this strange request. She had once told me that her favorite thing about me (or maybe it was the best word to describe me ... I can't quite remember) was my randomness.
"Sure, come on in."
I waited downstairs with her large, brown, and somewhat intimidating dog until she came back with the hanger.
"Is it okay if I destroy this?" I asked as she handed it to me.
"I think we can afford to lose one wire hanger, Drew," she replied. "What do you need it for anyway?"
"I need to break into my car to get my keys." Miriam laughed at that.
She decided to accompany me as it was summer and we being high school students had little to do. I remember a thirty something woman walking by with a smirk as she wished us luck, before stating that the power locks make it particularly difficult to break into a car with a wire hanger. After thirty minutes or so we gave in, and asked the local mechanic to do it. It cost me twenty bucks which didn't matter because it was my parents money anyway.
That July, the question of how fast an '89 Accord can go having 165,000 miles in the summer of 2000 came to my mind. I was driving home from Summer School and was nearing home at this nice hilly part of the drive where you're west of the train tracks and you can see for about a mile and a half of the road ahead before it climbs another hill. I thought this was the best place to figure out an answer. One hundred and twelve miles per hour, at least when piloted by a new, 16yo driver on a hilly, forested country road. After that, I proceeded to at least match the feat if not top it four more times that summer, and once freaked out my friend Glynda when I reached 88mph. She didn't believe we would go back in time. She was right. I got my first speeding ticket late that fall, on my way to Mansfield to audition for a play. Seventy-one in a sixty. And I had just been passed. Judge made me attend a driving seminar with other teen offenders. One was going seventy in a twenty-five.
After that, I tamed the speeding pretty well, but would usually average 5-15 miles per hour over the limit. In total, I have had three speeding tickets. The last one was in the summer of 2004. I'd also managed to get one failure to stop at a red light and a stop sign each in the same span of time. After '04, I learned my lesson. I drove to Philly with my friend Ally, and Pennsylvania being such a long state and all, I figured a couple spurts of ninety mph driving would help shorten the drive. The cop clocked me at eighty I think, but I know I was going faster. Even with that delay, we were still ahead of schedule when I accidentally got on the Philadelphia outer-belt and crossed into New Jersey. My sister had to talk us back across the city. It was an adventure, and I remember it as the first time I navigated through an unfamiliar metropolis. I like random adventures like that.
I rarely exceed the speed limit anymore. Still, I never attained the level of responsibility a car owner needs to have. I sporadically checked my fluids and remember a number of bumps and bruises my Hermione (that's what I named her) endured before she failed in the fall of '05. I was living at home at this time, having withdrawn from college. I worked at a coffee shop downtown and remember my car jerking violently back- and forward right as I came to a stop. Then she died. So my mom got a new car, and I inherited her old one. The automobile that had ferried me to and from so many of my sister's college basketball games all over the country was now mine. I added so many miles to that car, driving to and from Cleveland or Columbus to visit my boyfriend and the friends I'd made at Ohio State before they graduated. I achieved control over my speeding, finally, to the point where my mother ribbed me for going slow once after she had followed me to the airport.
I moved back to Columbus in February of 2007, and except for taking off my roommate Jenny's driver side mirror, I had few mishaps. (It was winter, and ... eh, I'm tired of the excuses, the point is that I am not the most conscientious driver, but I had improved.) Also someone ran a red light and jacked up my driver side door, but that one was legitimately not my fault. The Columbus Police Department opted out of citing anybody but still. Then, there was a break-up. I'll write about him later, but there was a break-up and it was bad and I didn't know how to cope and I went wild I guess. I'm pretty good at that actually. I had stopped at this random gay bar down the street from me I'd never been to before, and hooked up with an older, fatter, balder bartender right after they opened as I was the only one in the place. I blew him in the bathroom then took him home with me when his shift ended. It was the heart of winter and I had given up. I was so wasted I couldn't see straight, and I heard the bartender shout "Watch out!" before I clipped some guy's door with my mirror. I just gave out my parents' insurance information to avoid the cops.
That summer, after months of ignoring a squealing that I wasn't sure was there, my brakes failed. I continued to drive to bars for a couple of days before getting my car home and having my parents bail me out again. It was the first time I'd attended Gay Pride. It was fun and exciting and I was 25 and mysterious and handsome. Some people rode with Matt (a new friend) and me from this one bar downtown to the Short North. Matt drove since I was drunk, but the brakes were well beyond questionable. My dad wasn't happy. This was just another fuck up in a line far too long now with my twenty-five years. Again? After I just fixed it from that guy hitting you on the red light? Really, Drew, again?
It wasn't six months later, same pattern. Meet up with Matt, scope out Union, get there at 11:00, and mingle and drink 'til bar close. I drove this time. I actually stopped drinking at midnight. That is until right at bar close (2:30am in Columbus) when Matt came out to the patio with a HUGE purple grapey shot and we split it, then bounce. I take him home to Westerville, and then take I270 to SR315 to go home. And that wicked glee hits me (about the same time as the purple grapey shot) to see how fast I could go. I think I hit the upper 80s, I don't remember. The point is that I am going fast, and my exit comes up and I almost miss it. Instead I tap the brakes and swerve onto the exit ramp to skid with the driver side door first into a light post less than a block from my house. The glass shatter into pebbles and scratched as they scattered over me. My car rebounded and continued down into a little copse of brush wood where it stopped. I moaned and shook myself and climbed out of the passenger seat door. The light post had fallen across the concrete of the exit ramp. I heard some nice soul shout that they had to call the cops. I shouted that I was fine. I didn't want no cops. I panicked. I called Triple A, but my account had lapsed. I called my new roomy, and she said she'd be over but she wasn't faster than the CPD. And I relented. I said I'd "had a couple." I stumbled on the field sobriety test. I blew a .13. He arrested me cuffed me and put me in his cruiser. He was sympathetic but fair. He let me call my parents at 3:30, 4:00 in the morning. He held out a cell phone and I tried to reach for it with my cuffed hands. "Just talk into it while I hold it," he said. I felt so weak. And so pathetic. "Mom."
"Drew, whats wrong?" She sounded worried, and she had me on speaker. I could hear my father listening.
"Mom, I hit a light post, I'm arrested for drunk driving." I kinda blurted and blubbered and I heard my dad mutter an angry "Jesus Christ" before the cop took the phone to reassure them that I was all right and that he was taking me home. Then he drove me up the street to my house, let me out of my cuffs, and let me go with my citation, secure in a job well done as the cruiser recorded my every stumble and admission. I walked inside and despaired. Goodbye, driving. Goodbye, freedom.
It's one and a quarter years since my DUI (actually called OMVI in Ohio) and I know now that cars are better earned. I squandered the gifts of my parents because I had never lacked a car, nor did I need to work for one. In fact, I earned my first car with the C- average I maintained in my freshman year Algebra II class that required me to take a summer school algebra course in Newark in order to advance to Trigonometry and Calculus. Everything was just so easy for me then. My parents did their jobs a little too well. I never had to work for anything because everything was provided for. Now I know the value of work, its dignity, its frustrations, and its content. I grow excited at the thought of the first car I save for and buy outright by my own hand. Only then will I value that car to the point of caring for it, checking up on it, and keeping it. It will be a symbol of my power as an individual to get things done. For now, I'm trading wheels for feet. My aunt died recently and willed me her car, but I had to renounce it. I couldn't afford the loan, and loath as I am to admit it, I don't think I'm ready for that again. I haven't earned it yet.
Upon returning home after class on my very first day, I decided to visit some friends in nearby Gambier, OH, home of Kenyon College and another gem of Central Ohio. In my zeal to utilize my new freedoms, I rushed out of my car and onto Middle Path, a gravel walkway down the center of Kenyon's campus, and towards the Kenyon Bookstore only to stop short of the door, slowly turn my gaze back to the faded navy of my new used car, and reach into my pocket to feel the empty spot underneath the
Camel Lights and the lighter. I had forgotten my keys. I locked them in my car on my first day with it. Shit. How could I tell that to my parents? So I ran over to my friend Miriam's house and knocked.
"Hey, Drew."
"Hey Miriam. Do you have a wire hanger?"
She didn't even blink at this strange request. She had once told me that her favorite thing about me (or maybe it was the best word to describe me ... I can't quite remember) was my randomness.
"Sure, come on in."
I waited downstairs with her large, brown, and somewhat intimidating dog until she came back with the hanger.
"Is it okay if I destroy this?" I asked as she handed it to me.
"I think we can afford to lose one wire hanger, Drew," she replied. "What do you need it for anyway?"
"I need to break into my car to get my keys." Miriam laughed at that.
She decided to accompany me as it was summer and we being high school students had little to do. I remember a thirty something woman walking by with a smirk as she wished us luck, before stating that the power locks make it particularly difficult to break into a car with a wire hanger. After thirty minutes or so we gave in, and asked the local mechanic to do it. It cost me twenty bucks which didn't matter because it was my parents money anyway.
That July, the question of how fast an '89 Accord can go having 165,000 miles in the summer of 2000 came to my mind. I was driving home from Summer School and was nearing home at this nice hilly part of the drive where you're west of the train tracks and you can see for about a mile and a half of the road ahead before it climbs another hill. I thought this was the best place to figure out an answer. One hundred and twelve miles per hour, at least when piloted by a new, 16yo driver on a hilly, forested country road. After that, I proceeded to at least match the feat if not top it four more times that summer, and once freaked out my friend Glynda when I reached 88mph. She didn't believe we would go back in time. She was right. I got my first speeding ticket late that fall, on my way to Mansfield to audition for a play. Seventy-one in a sixty. And I had just been passed. Judge made me attend a driving seminar with other teen offenders. One was going seventy in a twenty-five.
After that, I tamed the speeding pretty well, but would usually average 5-15 miles per hour over the limit. In total, I have had three speeding tickets. The last one was in the summer of 2004. I'd also managed to get one failure to stop at a red light and a stop sign each in the same span of time. After '04, I learned my lesson. I drove to Philly with my friend Ally, and Pennsylvania being such a long state and all, I figured a couple spurts of ninety mph driving would help shorten the drive. The cop clocked me at eighty I think, but I know I was going faster. Even with that delay, we were still ahead of schedule when I accidentally got on the Philadelphia outer-belt and crossed into New Jersey. My sister had to talk us back across the city. It was an adventure, and I remember it as the first time I navigated through an unfamiliar metropolis. I like random adventures like that.
I rarely exceed the speed limit anymore. Still, I never attained the level of responsibility a car owner needs to have. I sporadically checked my fluids and remember a number of bumps and bruises my Hermione (that's what I named her) endured before she failed in the fall of '05. I was living at home at this time, having withdrawn from college. I worked at a coffee shop downtown and remember my car jerking violently back- and forward right as I came to a stop. Then she died. So my mom got a new car, and I inherited her old one. The automobile that had ferried me to and from so many of my sister's college basketball games all over the country was now mine. I added so many miles to that car, driving to and from Cleveland or Columbus to visit my boyfriend and the friends I'd made at Ohio State before they graduated. I achieved control over my speeding, finally, to the point where my mother ribbed me for going slow once after she had followed me to the airport.
I moved back to Columbus in February of 2007, and except for taking off my roommate Jenny's driver side mirror, I had few mishaps. (It was winter, and ... eh, I'm tired of the excuses, the point is that I am not the most conscientious driver, but I had improved.) Also someone ran a red light and jacked up my driver side door, but that one was legitimately not my fault. The Columbus Police Department opted out of citing anybody but still. Then, there was a break-up. I'll write about him later, but there was a break-up and it was bad and I didn't know how to cope and I went wild I guess. I'm pretty good at that actually. I had stopped at this random gay bar down the street from me I'd never been to before, and hooked up with an older, fatter, balder bartender right after they opened as I was the only one in the place. I blew him in the bathroom then took him home with me when his shift ended. It was the heart of winter and I had given up. I was so wasted I couldn't see straight, and I heard the bartender shout "Watch out!" before I clipped some guy's door with my mirror. I just gave out my parents' insurance information to avoid the cops.
That summer, after months of ignoring a squealing that I wasn't sure was there, my brakes failed. I continued to drive to bars for a couple of days before getting my car home and having my parents bail me out again. It was the first time I'd attended Gay Pride. It was fun and exciting and I was 25 and mysterious and handsome. Some people rode with Matt (a new friend) and me from this one bar downtown to the Short North. Matt drove since I was drunk, but the brakes were well beyond questionable. My dad wasn't happy. This was just another fuck up in a line far too long now with my twenty-five years. Again? After I just fixed it from that guy hitting you on the red light? Really, Drew, again?
It wasn't six months later, same pattern. Meet up with Matt, scope out Union, get there at 11:00, and mingle and drink 'til bar close. I drove this time. I actually stopped drinking at midnight. That is until right at bar close (2:30am in Columbus) when Matt came out to the patio with a HUGE purple grapey shot and we split it, then bounce. I take him home to Westerville, and then take I270 to SR315 to go home. And that wicked glee hits me (about the same time as the purple grapey shot) to see how fast I could go. I think I hit the upper 80s, I don't remember. The point is that I am going fast, and my exit comes up and I almost miss it. Instead I tap the brakes and swerve onto the exit ramp to skid with the driver side door first into a light post less than a block from my house. The glass shatter into pebbles and scratched as they scattered over me. My car rebounded and continued down into a little copse of brush wood where it stopped. I moaned and shook myself and climbed out of the passenger seat door. The light post had fallen across the concrete of the exit ramp. I heard some nice soul shout that they had to call the cops. I shouted that I was fine. I didn't want no cops. I panicked. I called Triple A, but my account had lapsed. I called my new roomy, and she said she'd be over but she wasn't faster than the CPD. And I relented. I said I'd "had a couple." I stumbled on the field sobriety test. I blew a .13. He arrested me cuffed me and put me in his cruiser. He was sympathetic but fair. He let me call my parents at 3:30, 4:00 in the morning. He held out a cell phone and I tried to reach for it with my cuffed hands. "Just talk into it while I hold it," he said. I felt so weak. And so pathetic. "Mom."
"Drew, whats wrong?" She sounded worried, and she had me on speaker. I could hear my father listening.
"Mom, I hit a light post, I'm arrested for drunk driving." I kinda blurted and blubbered and I heard my dad mutter an angry "Jesus Christ" before the cop took the phone to reassure them that I was all right and that he was taking me home. Then he drove me up the street to my house, let me out of my cuffs, and let me go with my citation, secure in a job well done as the cruiser recorded my every stumble and admission. I walked inside and despaired. Goodbye, driving. Goodbye, freedom.
It's one and a quarter years since my DUI (actually called OMVI in Ohio) and I know now that cars are better earned. I squandered the gifts of my parents because I had never lacked a car, nor did I need to work for one. In fact, I earned my first car with the C- average I maintained in my freshman year Algebra II class that required me to take a summer school algebra course in Newark in order to advance to Trigonometry and Calculus. Everything was just so easy for me then. My parents did their jobs a little too well. I never had to work for anything because everything was provided for. Now I know the value of work, its dignity, its frustrations, and its content. I grow excited at the thought of the first car I save for and buy outright by my own hand. Only then will I value that car to the point of caring for it, checking up on it, and keeping it. It will be a symbol of my power as an individual to get things done. For now, I'm trading wheels for feet. My aunt died recently and willed me her car, but I had to renounce it. I couldn't afford the loan, and loath as I am to admit it, I don't think I'm ready for that again. I haven't earned it yet.
to newness
You know it's funny to me that 2009 was the most magical year of my life as it was probably one of the worst in memory for most people. Recession, debt, war, unemployment. It kinda blew from an outside standpoint. And let's face it, even my own life status over the course of this year past would leave most observers wondering how a 26yo boy with a dead-end job, no college degree, and a fresh conviction for DUI could refer to the term of his probation as the best year of his life. What's that you say? He also totaled his car in the accident? This guy sounds like a keeper. . .
The title of this blog references the word "imago". Merriam-Webster defines "imago" as: 1. an insect in its final, adult, sexually mature, and typically winged state and 2. an idealized mental image of another person or the self. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imago). This is my goal with this blog. I want to document the metamorphosis of me over the course of the past two years. There is so much that I want to examine and describe, so much that I want to preserve, but I can't string every moment to prose. I have limits (one thing I've learned) and defining them ultimately makes me free (another thing I've learned). I want to show you who I was before, what happened, and how I am now (those of you who have attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting will find this format familiar). I want to introduce you to the events, people, books, and activities that have inspired my transformation. And finally, I want to show you how the human imago and the insect imago mirror each other with infinite subtlety.
This project is only the climax of my metamorphosis; it is the turning point as I am now at a turning point. I am back in college (yay!), and am determined to make the most of my hours and days. There are things that I want to do, people I need to visit, exotic locales I wish to make intimately mine, and this blog is the expression of my primal urge not only to give back to the world that has given me itself, but to make love to it in all its messy glory. To play with it and cherish it and fix it when it needs fixing and most importantly to nurture something out of it that is lovely, meaningful, and lasting. This is the climax because there are Acts yet to play out. Think of the imago, and imagine these pages to be my chrysalis. The most wonderful transmutations are going on within.
The title of this blog references the word "imago". Merriam-Webster defines "imago" as: 1. an insect in its final, adult, sexually mature, and typically winged state and 2. an idealized mental image of another person or the self. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imago). This is my goal with this blog. I want to document the metamorphosis of me over the course of the past two years. There is so much that I want to examine and describe, so much that I want to preserve, but I can't string every moment to prose. I have limits (one thing I've learned) and defining them ultimately makes me free (another thing I've learned). I want to show you who I was before, what happened, and how I am now (those of you who have attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting will find this format familiar). I want to introduce you to the events, people, books, and activities that have inspired my transformation. And finally, I want to show you how the human imago and the insect imago mirror each other with infinite subtlety.
This project is only the climax of my metamorphosis; it is the turning point as I am now at a turning point. I am back in college (yay!), and am determined to make the most of my hours and days. There are things that I want to do, people I need to visit, exotic locales I wish to make intimately mine, and this blog is the expression of my primal urge not only to give back to the world that has given me itself, but to make love to it in all its messy glory. To play with it and cherish it and fix it when it needs fixing and most importantly to nurture something out of it that is lovely, meaningful, and lasting. This is the climax because there are Acts yet to play out. Think of the imago, and imagine these pages to be my chrysalis. The most wonderful transmutations are going on within.
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