Goodbye Loretta
Dear Loretta,
When I came home from school and saw you sitting in the driveway, it was love at first sight. A shiny, new Jetta with Bluetooth (a highly advanced technology!) and a sunroof, you were everything a 17-year-old basic b*tch could dream of. Tragically, it was all downhill from there.
Since our ill-fated union, nearly 10 years ago to date, we have been through so many formative experiences together—our relationship has always been rocky at best, but in the end, you have taught me patience and resilience in the face of cascading episodes of automotive malfunctioning, and for that, I am grateful.
Do you remember the time you decided that honking was beneath you? Even when I became stuck behind someone typing out what must have been multiple paragraphs of text messages—through, I shit you not, three whole light cycles—you fastidiously refused to emit even the politest of beeps, and I was made to roll down my window and yell, “HONK! HONK!” to, unsurprisingly, no avail. This episode was dwarfed only by your hipster phase, when you decided to forgo such modern comforts as power steering, forcing me to rely solely on my meager pectoral strength to turn your wheels. Your fickle battery deserves mention, as well, for having stranded me in such unsavory locales as deep East Oakland, where I was forced to pry you open and jump you beside a yard containing three muscular, seething pit bulls, who, by the time I got you going, had made impressive headway in destroying the sorry excuse for a fence separating them from myself.
I know that I haven’t always been good to you, either: I do remember the time when I struck a curb and proceeded to disregard the grievous harm inflicted upon your tire, ignoring the acrid smell of burning rubber until a kind panhandler finally caught my attention by gesticulating wildly whilst yelling, “Ma’am! Your tire!” This was not the only time I failed to properly attend to your injuries—after an elderly woman backed into your door in the infamously treacherous Market Hall parking lot, leaving quite a large dent, I am ashamed to admit that I pocketed the insurance money. But to my credit, when a man wielding a strange kind of suction tool later approached me as I was parking and offered to pull the dent for $75, I took him up on it, and it almost sort of worked.*
On another shameful occasion, I struck another vehicle that had very egregiously blown a red light. It was a busy intersection, and many onlookers stood aghast at the wreckage. When I emerged from my car, I saw, to my horror, that the person exiting the other car was also a young Asian woman, and I saw that she was equally horrified at our affirmation of racist and sexist stereotypes. Distressed, I neglected to notice that your front plate had been knocked some distance away, and I was too embarrassed about the whole affair to return to the scene to recover it, choosing instead to leave you naked and plate-less until I amassed enough no-plate tickets to motivate myself to go to the DMV for a replacement. And, of course, I have not forgotten the time I stuffed so much junk in your trunk that, when a wild driving maneuver caused bags of groceries to topple in said trunk, I neglected to find the whole, raw chicken that had rolled into the depths of the mess until the smell became unbearable.
Despite all of this, I will never forget the time you were there for me when I needed you most. It was a chilly, fall night in Atherton, and I was very drunk. As the house party I was attending began to wind down, I found myself wandering the halls of an inordinately large mansion, opening door after door and finding, to my dismay, that any beds or couches therein were already over capacity. At long last, I managed to find myself a large, comfortable bed containing only one snoring occupant. I slid under the covers in a manner that I believed to be extremely stealthy, but which, given my level of intoxication, was probably not in the least bit stealthy. Fortunately, my co-occupant was a deep sleeper and made no audible sounds of complaint at being made to share a bed against her will. I was soon fast asleep—but not for long.
Perhaps twenty minutes later (or maybe an hour), I was awakened by a strange sort of movement in the bed, accompanied by sounds which were equally strange. I crammed a pillow over my head and attempted to ignore the mysterious goings-on, but to no avail; the sounds and movements only grew in magnitude. I removed the pillow and, by the moonlight streaming in through the window, I quickly perceived that as I slept, a third occupant had covertly entered the bed, in much the same way as I had, and was now engaged in passionate sexual activities with the original occupant. Horrified, I exited the bed and fled the scene of the crime.
By this point, the party was long over and all of its attendees had retired, and I knew that there was no hope of finding a suitable place to lay my head. Yet, being in no state to operate heavy machinery, I could not return home. On that fateful night, Loretta, you welcomed me into the shelter of your slightly-warmer-than-outside embrace, graciously offering your rubbery fake leather seats as a place of respite for my weary, drunk body. Though this tender moment was rudely truncated when I was awakened by the rising sun and promptly proceeded to vomit upon your floor mats, you kindly consented to take me to the grocery store to purchase a large loaf of cheesy bread and two liters of water, both of which I immediately consumed in their entirety.
Through good times and (many) bad, we have always had each other, and the prospect of parting ways fills my heart with a great sorrow that is dwarfed entirely by my elation at receiving your replacement, which is, frankly, an upgrade of unprecedented scale.
Well, this is the end—goodbye, dear friend; may our paths never cross again.
With love and also deep relief,
Julia
*One could say it made a dent in the dent, but one would not, because that would be super cringe.
