When I was a senior in high school, I was extraordinarily poor at actually going to school. There were two major causes of this:
1. Up to that point, I’d maintained a good girl reputation, having never graced the halls of detention or Saturday School, and also, I was a member of Moorpark High School’s award-winning, ass-kicking Academic Decathlon team, which had dessicated the county competition and came within inches of a first place spot in the state of California. The school’s security guards just assumed that when I was leaving campus, I was doing something academically challenging and rigorous, and that of course I had permission to go. I could literally drive out the front gate waving cheerfully at the guards, who’d wave back with big grins before busting the football player trying to sneak off campus over the back fence. It was the one time in my high school life that being a nerd brought me any kind of power, and I relished it.
2. I finally had a car, my mother’s old 1986 Volkswagen Golf replete with broken roll-up windows, no air-conditioning, no radio, torn seats, and a heater that occasionally fried out the engine. Despite the fact that the Golf was essentially an ugly piece of moving tin, I adored it: it handled well, and all the boys I knew said it had “good pickup.” I was never really sure what that meant, but I had a feeling that “good pickup” was the force that slammed me back in my seat after my right foot tapped the gas pedal, the force that scooted the car across the road and made fast, tight turns around corners. In other words, it was unsafe and fantastic, and I loved driving that thing.
These two privileges combined — my own car, and what I interpreted as an endlessly free off-campus pass — I began skipping a whole lot of school.
At first, I’d just drive back to my house and hang around there. That got boring.
Then I’d go for drives in the farm and ranch land surrounding my town. I’d explore the back roads, get lost in acres of orange groves, and zip through the canyons. As wild as that was, it also got boring.
Then, I got bold enough to drive to the Valley to visit the college I’d be attending in the fall. I has zero interest in college in general, but driving around the campus (literally driving in circles around the campus block) was kind of exciting. Eventually, though, the San Fernando Valley lost its allure, became one more series of parking lots and strip malls, and I yearned for a wider Earth.
One day I drove to Santa Barbara.
And one day I drove all the way down to Hollywood. I spent the whole morning exploring Mulholland and thus falling deeply and irreversibly in love with Laurel Canyon. I drove up and down Hollywood Boulevard, Sunset, Melrose, Highland, all the streets with their near mythical names and the drunks on the corner were sadly dusted with glamor magic in my youthful stupidity and I just wanted to bury myself under the Hollywood sidewalks and become a part of the city forever. Hollywood. HOLLYWOOD. I still can’t explain my love for that crapfest city. It’s not the fame thing. It’s the Hollywood-ness of Hollywood.
I found a road up to one of the lookouts in lower Beachwood Canyon and the panorama of the city spread out before me like Oz. One day, I swore to myself, one day I would live in a little house here and write stories and people would visit me in my little house and we’d all sit on cushions on the floor and drink iced coffee and talk about books and movies and listen to music and laugh and dance and people would say, “Man, have you seen Vanessa’s place, it’s so great there.”
Satisfied — sated, even — I cheerfully drove home.
On the way back to Moorpark, I stopped in Simi Valley to have lunch at In-n-Out, as one does when one ditches high school in southern California. I felt good. Another day I’d spent in the valuable pursuit of wasting gas and daydreaming about living in Hollywood when I could have been learning about economics and French. As I walked into the restaurant, I heard a number of people gasp and laugh. “Look at that car!” someone hissed. “Man, I’d hate to be the owner of that car!”
Eager to take share in what promised to be a spectacle, I began to turn.
I remember turning around took a long, long time. Somewhere in me, I knew — I knew – that the car everyone was pointing and laughing at was mine, but 98% of me had no clue, no premonition whatsoever, that the inevitable had inevitably occurred. Denial is a powerful force, you know, squashing even the sharpest sense of lyrical justice.
When I finally finished the turn, I saw it: the hood of my little VW was spewing volumes of steam (though at the time I thought it was smoke) so thick and viscous that the body of the car literally disappeared in it. The steam wafted in streams up to the tall maple trees that framed the parking lot. People’s voices seemed to come at me distorted, distant, like a bad telephone connection back in the day of landlines. And slow, as if some giant cosmic sound editor had warped the track.
“Doooooo yooooouuuu neeeeeeeeeeed heeeeeeelllllpppp?” someone asked me. No surprise that he guessed I belonged to the steaming pile of scrap metal I was clearly the owner of the car now — my shock was palpable.
Of course I needed help. I had no idea what to do. I’d never dealt with a car breakdown before, and I had absolutely no understanding of how a car engine worked. As far as I knew, the steam (or smoke, as I still thought) signaled the ultimate demise of my old VW beater, and all I could think about in that moment was that I would never again be able to drive so freely and so far again.
Shock, luckily, does wear off, and somehow I figured out how to work my arms and legs again. The someone who had spoken to me — a very nice man — helped me open the hood of my car, informed me of the difference between smoke (gray) and steam (white), and told me that he guessed something was wrong with the water pump (whatever that was) or the radiator (I’d take his word for it). I needed, he told me, to call my mechanic and a tow truck because there was no way I could drive the car off the parking lot, much less back to Moorpark.
I thanked him woodenly. The reality of the situation had set in. The world wouldn’t end, of course: the car could be repaired.
Of course, in order to do that, I’d have to call my parents.
And tell them that the car was broken down.
In Simi Valley.
Miles away from home.
In the middle of the school day.
I dragged my feet to the pay phone (by the way, remember pay phones?), picked up the heavy-yet-sticky receiver, and began to dial.
Well — do I need to go on? Five minutes into the conversation with my mother, who was hard at work in downtown Los Angeles making money to support me, she figured out that I’d a) ditched school, b) to drive for miles in an ill-equipped car, c) managed to break said car, and d) needed money and transportation in a hurry.
It didn’t really go well.
A few hours later, I was ensconced in my bedroom, the keys of the car taken away, and my social calendar curtailed until I was able to pay my folks back for the repair (which, gratefully, managed to be relatively small). Nor would I reclaim possession of the car once it was repaired — oh no, I was car grounded as well as home grounded.
Ever since that fateful day, I’ve had a strong sense of the absolute rightness of the universe. At least, the universe of me. Any time I’m about to do something intentionally wrong or stupid, I think of this event. I think of the time I ditched school and drove to Hollywood and broke down the car and had to admit to my parents that I’d wasted my time and their money. And I reconsider.
At least, some of the time.
