“I wouldn’t even be here, goddamn it.
“I
drove straight as an arrow down the back roads. I
always stayed in the lines and I drove slow, real slow. I always let the dominant drivers go when
they wanted. I let everybody cut me
off. I would take thirty seconds to accelerate
up to forty miles an hour in my beat up old Volkswagon Jetta. It would piss people off, but I didn’t mind
their bitching and finger pointing and hand waving.
“Jerks.
“I
pulled over to the side of the road underneath a large pine tree. I needed some shade. I was worried I would pass out. I could handle being this tired from hoppy
beer. I wasn’t drooling. I was just overheating. The Jetta was overheating, too.
“The
radiator leaked and so I didn’t bother to buy the radiator fluid – I just used
water. I kept jugs of it in the trunk
and always made sure before I left anywhere that the water was between the ‘min’
and ‘max’ lines. During the summer, I’d
have to pull over every once in awhile because the engine was overheating. I’d just chill out and smoke cigarettes on
the side of the road.
“I
waited to open the hood. Instead I got
out of the car and walked back around to the trunk and I opened it. A brown paper bag was stashed in the corner
of the trunk, on the opposite side of the back right taillight.
“I
pivoted and looked behind me. No one was
there. The hood of the trunk blocked my
vision of the road so I poked my head out around the right side of the Jetta
and saw no cars coming. It was a
straightaway. I quickly ducked down deep
among the felt, the wires, the metal and the plastic. I unsheathed the mouth of a bottle and
chugged half of it down. I screwed the
magenta cap back on and covered it up again: the bottle deep in the bag and the
bag tucked away in the corner of my trunk.
“The
steam was worse than usual. I was scared
to open the hood, still. Up, up and up,
into the branches the majestic smoke went when the booze kicked in and I
finally worked up the courage to find the trigger and throw up the hood. I had to dance around the heat as I propped open
my baby’s insides. She was dying. She was dying, but it wasn’t over yet. The Jetta had problems but it hadn’t given
out completely. I was going to have to
start taking ten more seconds or so to accelerate up to forty miles per hour.
“I
had a commute up and down 101. Mornings
weren’t a problem in the summer – I’d get up early in the overcast haze in the
sixty degree weather and drive to work no problem. But afternoons and evenings were sticky. Everyone in Sonoma County becomes angry
during the really bad heat spells during the summer. And I had to be careful
when I would decide to push the old thing.
Explosions, fire, melting steel – those were the images pressing upon
the corners of my skull and behind my eyeballs while I was driving. With blood-alcohol content like mine –
usually in the double digits as a percentage – I couldn’t afford to run into
car trouble. The chances some
well-meaning cop would become my enemy weren’t high, but it’s always the good people
who wind up coming after me. You know -
people good at maintaining moral integrity, people good at getting by without
moral integrity – the truly kind-hearted and those who thrive off of fucking
over the innocent. It’s the people in
between I prefer to be around. They don’t
care that I’m drunk. They’ve seen
worse. They’ve been worse. And they know that even if they told me their
greatest sin I would just look them dead in the eye and say, ‘I don’t believe a
word you say. Don’t say shit like
that. We’re friends, after all.’
“Friends
come and go with me. Someone can only
see you sloppy so many times before they start feeling weird about the fact
that I’ve never actually had trouble with the law.
“’How
do you do it?’ they always ask.
“’I
don’t hurt anybody,’ I always say.
“’But
drinking and driving is bad,’ they say.
“’I’m
never drunk,’ I say.
“’You’re
always legally drunk,’ they say.
“’Science
can’t explain everything. ‘You believe
in God, don’t you?’
“I
figured that retort out a long time ago.
90% of people believe in God and the other 10% lie about it depending on
what the social situation dictates.
“One
time, this time, when I was pulled over on the side of the highway, an atheist called my bluff. It was a youngish, almost middle-aged woman who had pulled over, to see what was wrong. She asked if I was okay, if I needed help. I told her everything was alright. Upon seeing how totally obliterated I was, she threatened to call the police. I had to give her the spiel. I told her how I was totally qualified to be this drunk and to drive. My car would be fine. She should just get in her car and drive on home. She did believe in God, didn't she?
“’God
doesn’t exist,’ she said.
“’Oh,
you’re a toughy,’ I said and laughed. ‘So
where does your moral code come from?’
“That
got her.
“99%
of atheists claim not to have a moral code backed up by reason, logic,
observable reality – by truth - because they can’t prove to anyone or to
themselves that ethics exist and matter.
They’re brainwashed just as hard as the religious folk.
“’Well,
from myself,’ she said.
“’And
ethics are universal, or relative?’
“’Well,
they’re relative.’
“’Why
are you justifying Stalinism and the Third Reich?’
“’Well,
I’m not-‘
“’So
which is it? Morals aren’t
universal? You don’t believe in
totalitarianism but your way is correct?
We’re talking about drinking and driving here, not any fundamentally
important social question. For example,
why the hell do you pay taxes to an organization that just got done murdering
over a million people in Iraq?’
“’Well-‘
“’Let’s
skip to the end of this argument. The
roads, right? Well, I’m an honest man,
and I avoided paying taxes throughout the majority of the duration of that war. Technically speaking, from a moral
perspective, I have a higher claim to drive on these roads than you, especially
if we actually are talking about life and death here. Credibility is on my side. Statistics are on my side, too. You know I’ve been drinking and driving every
goddamn day for two years now. I’ve
never hit anyone. I’ve never been pulled
over. I drive better than all the
stoners who claim their intoxicant makes them safer drivers. I drive 55 on the highway. I always look both ways. You just got done voting for two Democratic
candidates for President over the last three election cycles who voted to fund
Bush’s wars every time he asked for the money, one of which who voted for the
war when they decided to invade. Why do
you think I drink and drive in the first place?
It’s so I can point this sort of thing out to someone like you. Because I care about you. You’re an atheist, you clearly care about
ethics because you struggle so hard to have a consistent viewpoint, you’re
making an effort to be a reasonable, good and thoughtful person. But you’re surrounded by religious nutjobs
who bastardize God himself on a daily basis and the horrifying reality you’re
endlessly subject to confuses the BeJesus out of you. I’m no prophet, and I’m truly not a very good
person. Once, I helped out in a soup
kitchen. Best thing I’ve ever done. But I do my best, and I’m here to tell you
morals are universal – they are not relative.
And I love you, and I respect you as a fellow human being. And maybe one day you’ll understand just how
much. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got
to fill my coolant reservoir up with water so my car doesn’t explode on my way
home. It’ll be nightfall soon and I don’t
want to run into a sobriety checkpoint.
I’d like to chat again sometime.’
“She
called the cops after I left and I spent the night in the drunk tank. They took my car, they took my license. Even after I got my license back I didn’t
drive for a year. The speech I gave her,
I honestly believed it. What drove me
nuts was having questions about her. How
did she not see that I had a point, and a good one? Maybe I was missing something. It just goes to show, being as honest of a
person as you can doesn’t exactly make you a great one. Perhaps I should have aspired to more. Perhaps I should have volunteered in a soup
kitchen at least two days in my life, or driven 50 in the slow lane. Maybe I should have anticipated the
possibility of her obvious nihilism being a direct result of her belief in the
relativity of morality. I hadn’t hurt
anybody. I just wasn’t a great person,
even if I was good. Great people are
great at what they do. If I had a great
philosophy, it was my job to explain it in a way that people could understand
and appreciate, in a way that would change the world for the better.
“But
I was a failure, a hack. Whether that
woman was evil or confused – whatever it was – I hadn’t convinced her of the
moral righteousness of my cause. Because
of that, I was sorrowful. And I chose to
submit, to drown my sorrows for awhile in safety. I was a coward. I stayed out of the driver’s seat of a
car. I avoided getting behind the wheel.
“When
I got back to driving I did everything by the book. I got myself a car that actually ran decently
and didn’t leak oil everywhere. I quit
smoking in my car and throwing the still lit butts out the window, especially
around dry grass in the summer.
“And
you know what? I was fucking miserable.
“People
should stand up for what they believe in, or at least sit down, like Rosa Parks. All I had to do was continue driving. Keep the wheel steady and the other drivers
around me safe. And educate the protestors
- explain to them the nature, meaning and justice of my form of social
protest. But Rosa Parks was a great
woman. She stood up to a racist and
bigoted culture, to a racist and bigoted society.
“But like I said, I’m not a
great man.
“I was just a depressed white
guy who only had the conviction to do and say what he believed in when he was
drunk. And then I became a coward. I was a sober man in public and on the road
and in his car, acknowledging an apparent shame and a disgusting moral
impotence.
“I am less of a coward now,
because I have written out and described to the best of my ability how drinking
and driving can be used as a form of social protest if it is done responsibly
and for a just and righteous cause. But
I do not practice what I preach, not anymore.
“And you know why?
“I don’t want to be punished
for drinking alcohol. And I certainly
don’t want the law to take away my car, my means of getting to and from each
place at and in which I get liquored up.
I didn’t think I would become a man of so little integrity, but
unfortunately, the truth won out: my selfishness dictated I drink responsibly
enough to always drive sober.
“The reason being?
“I love drinking too
goddamn much to go without it for as long they might keep me in the tank a
second time. Hours I can stand, but
days?
“My failure is the same as the
next guy’s. People love getting
intoxicated too much to do anything worthwhile or meaningful in this life. People don’t sacrifice for their fellow human
beings. They follow the rules outwardly
and sin within the privacy of their own homes while the world – people,
animals, plants, the ecosystem itself dies – not in the spirit of the achievement
of humanity’s greatness with pollution and the end of the world as a byproduct,
no, but in the abdication of the greatness we all have inside of us, the
potential greatness we’re all born with.
“If everyone drank and drive –
every day – to work, to school, to weddings and funerals and to the grocery
store and to high school and family reunions and to meet a friend at the bar,
we would all get thrown in the drunk tank so often we’d reduce our carbon
footprint, we’d make an impact and actually strive to combat global
warming. We’d reduce deaths on the
road. We wouldn’t hit as many possums,
and other rodents and animals of similar aesthetic beauty. We’d police ourselves into not needing roads,
into not needing to expand our population and our unnatural and unhealthy impact
upon the environment, upon the planet that is our home. We’d be better people for it. We’d be happier, knowing we had the integrity
to make an effort to save the world, a possible future outcome that is well
within our reach. The answer, the method,
is as simple and as far away as the liquor store on the corner down the street
from your suburban neighborhood, your literal and physical encroachment upon
your victims – the people of the third world suffering from rampant imperialism
and global finance’s high-tech corporate theft of the world’s poor and less
fortunate, the endangered and soon to be endangered species of both plant and
animal variety, and of course, Mother Earth herself. And if I’m wrong, well, hell – at least we’d
all be taking the edge off. It’s a
full-proof plan, but some godless atheist and an allegedly well-meaning officer
of the law were enough to destroy my conviction in everything I know to be true
and good:
“My ability to be drunk all
day, every day while still maintaining the privilege to operate heavy machinery
weighing thousands of pounds hurtling down the road at speeds fast enough to
hurt you and your children. I was doing
it for your own good. And for your
children and their children and their–“
“Hey asshole, why don’t you shut
your pie hole so we can all enjoy the game?
I’m trying to have a beer! Is
that too much to ask?”
“Fuck it, pour me another
one Marty. I can get a ride with your when you're done closing up shop, right? I don't know how to work this phone of mine. Otherwise I'd call an Uber or a taxi, it's just this damn technology stuff. Come back, Marty! Another shot of bourbon, and don't cheat me this time! Fill it all the way Marty, people's lives are on the line here. When people hear and read what I have to say, the world's going to change. You won't believe it Marty! And hurry with the bourbon!"
