Yesterday I went to check out a car with my son. He’s eighteen, about to start his sophomore year of college, and this year he’ll be living in an apartment near campus with three of his buddies. Last year he was in a dorm surrounded by redwoods, and able to use public transportation to get around town. He’s going to need a car to get to campus this year, and in any case, it’s time. He’ll be able to do the 6-hour drive back home once in a while (though I never mind the drive up north), and he’ll be able to take off and go camping for the weekend with his friends, and enjoy the freedom of having a car of his own.
Now I’ll have new reasons not to sleep at night, yay. It’s not him, he’s a safe driver even if he is a lead-foot on an open freeway. It’s the people around him - and all of us - who rage-drive or text-and-drive or god forbid drink and drive, like lives aren’t at stake when they get behind the wheel. It’s the larger issue of not being able to keep my kids safe from all the various things that are out there in the world, and it feels like those things are growing at a pace that is hard to fathom. I don’t understand the world we’re choosing to create, and it breaks my heart, but I don’t want to dwell on that right now.
It was hot as Hades in the Valley known as Woodland Hills yesterday, and this was a private sale situation, so we’d set up an inspection at a local mechanic in the event that he liked the car when we got there. I know what I don’t know, and I don’t know jack about converters or alternators or things you should know a lot about before you let your kid spend thousands of his hard-earned dollars on a used vehicle.
He did like it, and it looked good and felt good to drive, so we drove it over to the mechanic, and walked to a nearby coffee place. The owners of the car (very nice guys) stayed outside the mechanic’s and had a smoke. This seemed strange to me, but so many things do these days. Picture being in a desert where the sun is baking down upon you in a way that is insanely, brutally hot…and deciding to light up a smoke.
I’m not a smoker and have never been a smoker and I’m not passing judgment. I know it’s a hell of an addiction to crack and it’s not like I haven’t dealt with my own self-destructive tendencies along the way, because I have - just not that one. Anyway, they were happy to stay there smoking, and we took off looking for something cold to drink and somewhere cold to sit.
The coffee place was two blocks away, but when we got there it turned out only the drive-thru part was open. The front door was boarded up, and there was a sign saying you could use the QR code to place a mobile order, and then call them and they’d bring the drinks to the outdoor tables. In the baking sun. There was one table with an umbrella, and it offered views of the tables inside, the ones you couldn’t get to on account of the boarded up door. They looked like they were really cold and if you sat there you’d be cold and everything would be cold.
There was nothing else around, really, except for this Asian-fusion place that didn’t have AC, just a fan - spinning hot, fried-chicken-scented air around the place - so we opted for the outdoor coffee situation. I got an iced matcha and we talked about the car and the wisdom of spending $200 to get it thoroughly checked out before dropping thousands on what could be a lemon. Obviously I don’t want to pay for inspections on too many cars, just ones that are genuine contenders, but it’s that whole penny-wise and dollar-foolish thing. I’d rather spend $200 and know if the car is good or not good, than get a call from my kid on the side of the road in two months, and find out he needs a new fuel injection system for $2500.
Lately I’ve been trying to focus on the things I can control instead of the things I cannot control. I can try to make sure my kid doesn’t end up getting screwed buying his first car. I can clean out and reorganize my daughter’s closet with fervor, and walk away feeling certain even Marie Kondo would be impressed. It all fucking sparks joy now, bitch! I can stay on top of all the stuff I need to do to keep a roof over our heads. I can take poor Rufus to be neutered. I can finish my memoir, and I am.
But there are a lot of things I can’t control, and they creep in. I had a great time with my son driving into the depths of hell to look at a car we didn’t buy. We didn’t buy it because it turned out the transmission was leaking fluid from both sides and the suspension belt was broken and there was something else about the axle I’d tell you if I could remember.
But I did have a hot flash on the way back from the coffee place and that happened when we were inside the Asian-fusion place where we went to use the bathroom. My face was so flushed it looked like I’d just worked out, hard, which I was alarmed to see when I looked in the bathroom mirror. My son ordered chicken because he isn’t vegetarian anymore, but that’s a story for another day, and it isn’t mine to tell.
I tried to position myself in front of the very unsatisfying stream of fried-chicken-fan-air while we waited, but all that did was ensure that my hair smelled like fried chicken, and I told my son I was probably going to die right there so he could just have my car. Luckily he thinks I’m funny so we laughed and went back to the mechanic and found him there with a dire-looking face.
The guys were still smoking, but still really nice, and they took it in good stride, and we gave them the report from the mechanic since we don’t need it, and they drove us back to my car. It wasn’t even awkward because they were so nice, and we were all apologetic. I really don’t think they knew all the things that were wrong with the car, because the one guy bought it for his wife as a surprise two weeks ago, but she didn’t like it. Probably because it’s a deathtrap, or maybe because it has roll-down windows. I thought they stopped making those when “Stayin’ Alive” was rockin’ the charts, but this was a 2012 model.
They were all, so sorry to waste your time, and we were all, so sorry to not buy your death wheels, and honestly, it’s nice to have a decent interaction with people, especially strangers.
We’ll find a car before school starts, I’m not worried about that. But on the way home we were talking about how Florida has decided to end all vaccine mandates for school kids which is the batshit craziest thing I’ve heard in a long time, and that’s really saying something these days. Because hi, does anyone out there remember polio? You understand if one state stops requiring vaccines there will be other batshit crazy states who follow their batshit crazy lead, right? And then we can all die in a miserable polio heap.
Anyway, my son said he’d already considered if things don’t change, he wouldn’t want to bring children into this world. My eighteen year-old son. He said he’d adopt, and try to give a child who was already here a good life with a lot of love, but he wouldn’t feel good about bringing a child into this world himself. And I was both proud of him, and so fucking sad that this is how it is. He’s sane. That’s a sane, understandable thought.
I told him this is the first time in my life I can remember thinking if someone offered me a crystal ball so I could see into the future, I’d say yes. Up until now, I’ve always felt I’d want to be surprised, but at this moment in time, if some crazy way I could see ten years into the future, I’d do it. I’d like to know if we’re going to pull ourselves out of this authoritarian bizarro world where a shocking number of people think it’s a good idea to put the very worst people in charge, or if this is actually what we’re going to stick with, in which case maybe there are some ways to plan.
I was going to try to write a “choose your adventure” this week, where one way you get to have universal healthcare and freedom of religion (which includes no religion), and freedom to love who you love, and safety and equality for all marginalized groups, and billionaires and millionaires paying their fair share of taxes so we can afford to take care of our most vulnerable people like any normal, sane society does, and environmental protections so there’s clean air for our kids to breathe and their kids, too, where corporations are not treated like people, and we value children more than guns, and women and girls have bodily autonomy regardless of where they are, and the ERA is ratified and we stop bombing other countries and invading other countries and killing people in the name of religion, when really it’s always about resources like oil…
Or, you get a world where everything is privatized and all the poor people who haven’t died from preventable diseases like polio and measles and smallpox and tuberculosis are carted away and used for horrifying medical experiments - their brains implanted with AI - with no regulation or oversight or concern for ethics, because by now the independent regulatory boards would all be under the control of the CEO of the country (the American version of a dictator, of course).
That way billionaires like Musk and Bezos and Zuck could have even more money, because it’s never enough. There would be white babies growing inside of artificial wombs at this point, and consent would be a thing of the past. Who am I kidding? It’s never been a thing, not really, not in any way that matters legally.
Eggs would be harvested from young girls as soon as they started menses. Fifteen eggs each cycle for one year, or whatever the government decided. The United States would be majority-white since all immigrants would have been “sent back to where they came from” - except for (maybe) the wives of men in high places, assuming they wanted their wives around.
Women would stay at home with the children, churning butter like the old days, and if they didn’t like that, they’d be sent to labs where they, too, would undergo whatever testing was needed for whatever new technology was coming down the pike. Maybe a new hybrid of the Stepford Wife, half woman/half AI, easily programmable.
A Lady in the Streets and a Freak in the Bed, Version 3.1 will update tonight. Please be sure your wife is fully charged.
Flights to Mars would be available for the most powerful, where the planet would already be undergoing a huge transformation.
Anyway, it sounds like Sci-fi, but that’s who these guys are. They’re the kind of men who see fifteen women stand up at the Capitol and talk about the ways their childhoods were taken from them by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell - and the president - best friends with the guy who did it, calls it a hoax. Even though he’s the reason Maxwell is enjoying her new prison-spa setup in Texas.
I don’t hold out a lot of hope for the Epstein files, friends. I’d like to, but this has been going on so long, and clearly the president does not want this information to come out. He talks about the “thousands of pages” that have been released, and how “it’s never enough” - but 97% of those pages have information that has already been released, and most of the pages they released are redacted to the point of being comical. It would be comical if it weren’t so enraging and wrong.
I have so little faith in this government anymore. I have so much respect for the women who went and stood on the steps and spoke out, some of them with tears streaming down their faces, but they should not have to be re-traumatized this way. I appreciate the bipartisan effort to get them some justice, finally, but I am afraid their hopes are going to be crushed again, by the same kind of people who watch our babies get shot down at school and refuse to give up what they believe is their “right” to military-style assault weapons. They’re the same kind of people who put AI in the hands of our kids, and offer condolences when it goes horribly, horribly wrong.
These people are never accountable. They become irate when you suggest that anything they want to do ought to have some guardrails - like a spoiled toddler, having a tantrum. So I hope this time the files will be released, but I’m afraid to hope too hard because I know exactly how painful it is to come forward, and how crushing it is not to be believed. The people who call it a hoax when you find the courage to keep telling the truth even when the world keeps letting you down? They’re the very last people you want running the show.
I really hope we choose the right adventure. It would be so strange and sad to do anything else. Like getting in a car with your kid, and intentionally driving it toward disaster.
Yesterday my 17 y/o came home from school and told me about a debate they'd had in his Global politics course about taxing the rich. And we talked and I passionately spoke--or as my kids say, yelled--and he did and we nodded and fist pumped, metaphorically, and I smiled to know that I'd helped to raise a fundamentally sound person. Earlier that day my older son called me--for advice!!!--and I smiled to know that I helped to raise another fundamentally sound person. That's what I sort of hang onto these days, especially on days where the crazies are crawling out from under the rocks with the speed of Clickers in The Last of Us and endangering us all.
There seem to be a lot of those days lately.
Ally, every time I read your writing I find myself thinking "I wish some MAGA person would engage with this." And I'm sorry for thinking that, because I know that would actually be horrible in practice, but I just feel like if people could see things the way you lay them out, how could they possibly argue? It's wishful thinking but there's also a rage behind it, like people who shove their dogs face into their poop when they go in the house (that metaphor is not a commentary on your writing hahaha). I want to be like "Look at this!!! Look at it!! Now explain yourself!!!" Anyway, that same rage place had me almost get into a fight with another grown man at a social adult soccer game and then crying about it this morning because I am so frustrated by entitled men who are bad sports who never seem to give any passing thought to the feelings or the humanity of the people around them. And I'm tired of being treated badly (in the world, as a trans person - this wasn't so much about the soccer, you see) and expected to still play fair and be positive and have a good attitude. Anyway, it wasn't my proudest moment because I definitely had an "if you can't beat em, join em" mentality but you have written your rage so beautifully that I thought I could probably share this story with you.
Thanks for writing it down and sharing it with us. It makes me feel seen. I hope your son has a great return to college in the coolest, safest car of all time. (As someone who inherited my great-grandmother's Honda Civic at 16 for a few hundred dollars and the promise to drive her around, I highly endorse that model. 😁)