High-Speed Hook-Ups

I am convinced that more people actually enjoy being stuck in traffic than will admit it. I mean, that’s all cruisin’ is really. Kids trying to get stuck in traffic on State Street so you can wave at hot boys, turn your music up loud, hang your head out the window, and try to exchange numbers. Little black coupes make left turns with dirty red jeeps trailing behind. They practically spill out of their cars to feel each other up in liquor store parking lots.

I watched those girls and boys with their halter tops and gold chains while driving away from work. But I wasn’t going to become one. At least not in any conventional kind of way.

We had to wear all black. It was sexy, but hot in the summer. I usually got away with wearing something low-cut (and usually stolen). A few months before they started making us dress like men I sped home from a lunch shift, taking the freeway at speeds that would have aroused the pigs from any hick town from their afternoon donut shop to track me down. But in the here in the anonymity of three million, I was relatively safe. Just three exits away from home and my inner Barry Allen was unceremoniously shoved back into a remote corner as traffic predictably slowed around 90th south. I tried to weave around the black pillars of smoke descending from the semis as much as possible before resigning to idle in the center lane of the I-15. I took the opportunity to check out my nails. Bite the skin around my cuticles. Drum a fast beat on the steering wheel. Adjust the neckline on my black blouse so that it would lounge snugly around the few slight angles I claimed as curves. It took a few minutes before anyone moved again. The douche bag in front of me didn’t get the memo apparently, and was hanging out a good 300 feet behind the next car. I scanned the lane to my right to find an opening. No opening, but there was a hot red Mitsubishi. He saw me too, and flashed a set of picket fences my direction.

Now I was the douche bag 300 feet behind. Traffic started to crawl again as the tumult of iron boxes filed down the off-ramp. I kept the hot red one in my blind spot as we began to break out of the gridlock. He pulled ahead as we resumed typical freeway speeds. He waved, I waved. He held up a cell phone. He kept his eyes on me for uncomfortable lengths of time. He was going to miss his exit at best, or maybe slam into a guard-rail. Then again, so was I. I held up my fingers in succession, steadying the wheel with my elbows. A nine, an eight, he missed it, have to start over. I flashed my digits through the windshield not thinking he’d pick each one out. I smirked as I did a quick break check and scooted behind him to make my exit.

It only took about 30 seconds for him to call me.

It took the next three months of me avoiding those calls before he finally stopped.