Alas, Beckzy, We Hardly Knew Ye

I decided to drive to work this morning so I could pick up cat supplies on the way home. At the corner of Erb and Caroline, however, Beckzy stalled...and just wouldn't start again.

That intersection is a bit of a zoo during rush-hour and people were honking and waving at me, so I put on the hazard lights, got out of the car, and locked the door. For the first time I was acutely aware of not having a cel phone. I was alarmed to see tiny wisps of smoke coming out from under Beckzy's hood.

Just as I'd decided to walk to the nearby police station, a sweet guy named Ian pulled over and offered to call a tow truck for me. While we were debating who to call, Beckzy made up our minds by releasing an enormous plume of smoke, so Ian called 911 and asked for a fire truck; we stood and watched as Beckzy became obscured by a black, evil-smelling cloud, and then we backed up another twenty feet when the undercarriage began to burn.

So there I was, at nine in the morning, watching my beloved car catch fire with a sweet stranger who was kind enough to stick around. Policemen arrived and they blocked off the road. Firemen came with gas masks and smashed the hood open, spraying water everywhere. It was the most surreal moment of my life.

Once the fire was out I asked the fireman why it happened. "It just happened," he said, and gestured at the melted mess that was once the front of my car. Then he laughed. "You'll never know now!" The policemen were delighted because they'd never seen a burning car before. Ian remarked quietly that the policewomen were very pretty.

I felt a strange giddiness. While waiting for the tow truck we stood around and talked about mundane things, one of the policewomen occasionally running off to chase people who were trying to run the barricade. I learned that Wednesdays are quiet days for crime until 10am, when house thieves traditionally break into homes vacated by the 9-5 crowd. I learned that the police station is too small and that they send their criminals to the holding tanks in Kitchener. I became intimately familiar with the smell of burning toxic chemicals.

Then the old people started to arrive. Nothing makes an old man happier than a melted car. "It just burned up!" they'd say, peering through the windows and poking around underneath. "You won't be driving this one again!" Women brought their children to look. "What a car!" they'd say, and the children would stare, terrified.

The Practical Side of Things

A company came and towed my car to the pound for $269. Since they'd charge an extra $25 for each day the bill was unpaid, my boss was sweet enough to drive me to Breslau and settle the account. They told me to go to a scrap dealer and sign the car over to them, and my boss drove me there too. It was an amazingly cramped and greasy building full of "Beware of Dog" signs, where you have to sign in and wear workboots if you want to go past the counter. Lots of stubble in that place. They had their names embroidered on their overalls. They gave me $150.

I had declined the non-liability portions of my car insurance so I was unable to get any other money for Beckzy's burned-out carcass.

What I Think About the Situation

Thank goodness this didn't happen on a highway during a snowstorm with me in drag. And thank goodness for the kindness of strangers, the cheerful professionalism of the police and firemen, and the guy who ran over with a tiny extinguisher and volunteered to fight the fire singlehandedly. Thank goodness for the instinct that makes humans huddle up when something freaky happens. Thanks most of all to Ian, who calmly directed the situation until the police showed up, and then stood around to shoot the shit, and THEN called my work to tell them I'd be late.

I'm sad because I bought the car and then barely drove it...but the point IS that I didn't drive it very much. I bought it to take me to family functions and drag shows -- which rarely happen -- and to take me to bars, which I decided never to do. I also wanted to drive to remote places and perhaps go camping, but I was never totally confident that Beckzy could take me that far (with reason, it turns out).

I liked knowing that Beckzy was there in case of an emergency, and it was also nice to know that she could take me to places I otherwise couldn't go.

One group of people are now telling me to lease or buy a new-ish car...then I could feel confident driving it, and it would be more comfortable, and I wouldn't worry about people making fun of it or denigrating it. Another group are encouraging me to check out a car share instead...that way I could still get to out-of-town events when necessary...in an emergency I could always take a cab.

In a way, Beckzy's sudden end is a relief because I no longer have to worry about her; I lost enough money to make me sad, but I am no longer faced with thoughts of euthanasia; she can't be repaired, she's already scrap, she's gone. I will no longer sit here on weekends thinking "I should go out and USE the car but I just don't FEEL like it."

I like to think that Beckzy decided to go out with a bang. Instead of whimpering and stalling and dragging along, she burst into flame and created a fiery spectacle. It's how she wanted to die.

Sick Long Weekend Catch-Up

Since I am too ill to spend my night dancing and my head is too foggy for bloggin', here's a quick update.

1. My cat has not pooped as of yet.
2. One nice thing about having a spiffy new computer is that the old games -- which I could barely play on their lowest settings -- can now be played with maximum eye-candy. So "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" looks particularly good. I just have to remember that it's more effective to shoot enemies in the head instead of the groin.
3. Want to see a great scary movie? I highly recommend "The Ruins." Holy vegetable-infested cow!
4. Yesterday I decided I wanted to drive to a lake. I looked on the map for the one closest to me, then drove all the way to Floradale to find it. And guess what...there's no lake there! There's a tiny one, but the enormous one depicted on the map just didn't seem to exist.
5. I did NOT receive the "Record Save and Sell" this Friday, which is a good sign.

Beckzy Is Just Fine

My father knows his car sounds. He is the Doctor Doolittle of cars. I don't think this skill has made him very happy over the years, because cars usually just complain or scream in agony, they rarely say things like "I'm feeling GREAT!" or "I love you!"

I called my father and explained the sound that Beckzy has been making, and he immediately said, "Your power steering fluid is low. Check it out and refill it." So I took my first dive under Beckzy's hood -- she's modest that way -- and discovered that her power steering tank wasn't just LOW, it was TOTALLY EMPTY. No wonder she's been bitching.

One bottle of power steering fluid later...and Beckzy's whine has almost totally disappeared. What's more, she steers like a buttery swan, like the car she always knew she could be. When I drove her to work today ("to get the bubbles out of the fluid") she seemed to be saying what cars NEVER say to people: "I'm feeling great! Love you! And thanks, dad!"

Beckzy Has a Cold

I never fooled myself into thinking that my car has a bright and glorious future. Beckzy is well-worn and poised for the retirement home.

The thing is, she runs so WELL. Sure she sounds a bit farty when she accelerates, but LOTS of old broads sound like that. And if her doors let in the rain and there are a few coffee stains on the quote-unquote "upholstery," who am I to complain?

But today Beckzy began to make a new noise, a sort of pleasant whine which changes pitch depending on her speed. I tried to pretend that she was singing to me out of sheer joy, but self-deception won't get me very far (and will probably just leave me stranded on a highway somewhere). Nope, Beckzy has an as yet undiagnosed problem.

If she went belly-up on me tomorrow I would be very sad, but I would survive. I told Vanilla today that driving my car gives me an incredible sense of freedom. Vanilla said "Driving also gives you the freedom to pay bills." She knows.

So please say a prayer for Beckzy as I gird myself to take her to a mechanic. I'll probably get fleeced but hopefully my darling car will be better for it.

Guelph Pride 2008!

Guelph Pride was, as always, a huge amount of friendly fun. I do miss the sunny atmosphere of the old "Pride Picnics," but it's nice to be able to drink and dance, and to not have to get up at 8am.

I put up some pictures on Flickr but -- as usual -- they're mostly of the dressing room:



Look at this gorgeous place! There were only three of us performing...and they gave us FOUR MIRRORS! Not to mention the treats and the smiles and the great DJ and the enormous amount of respect for everybody, and a truly stellar bartender.

But I couldn't drink too much because...I drove! My first extended late-night excursion, following Mapquest directions and discovering that my highbeams don't work. And driving in heels. A necessary experience!

Thanks, Guelph, for another wonderful Pride...I'm already looking forward to next year!

Ooh-La-La: Paris in the Spring!

The aforementioned all-new Daily Muffy is online now!



Just in case you're new to this concept, the idea is to present a new picture every day, meanwhile telling a more-or-less coherent story. This one is the story of how Tim and I went to Paris...and you can view it here. The pictures will be unlocked every weekday morning and you can view them at different sizes, comment on them, see them on a map, check out the growing archives...it's all so gosh-darned interactive!

Special thanks to Jenn Wilson for suggesting a way of doing this using Flickr. Hopefully it all works! Please let me know if you have any problems or suggestions.

Mother's Day in the Rural Badlands, Amongst the Antiques

I spent much of the day with my mother. I love eating and shopping with her. Since we're both socially-cautious people, it's sort of delightful that we've managed to warm up in particular situations -- eating, driving, shopping, drinking -- sheerly through observation, empathy, and the same cautious approach you use when making friends with strange animals: extend the palm, let them smell you, don't lunge or grab, next time bring treats.

We went to Angie's Kitchen in St. Agatha. When I was very young we used to go there frequently, but that was thirty years ago, so all my memories are of dark woodsy corners and paper placemats with connect-the-dot swans. This Angie's Kitchen experience was a little different as we'd come during a traditionally hectic day, and we were inexplicably seated at a huge empty table in the middle of the room. It felt like I was at a conference, sitting beside my mother because the table was far too wide to sit facing each other at opposite sides.

Then we went shopping in Shakespeare, which over the years has become a flypaper-strip meant to catch tourists on the way to the Stratford Festival. It's baited with antique shops. I saw things there that I might actually buy, if I had a lot of money and I had more concern about my personal space. My mother liked the weatherbeaten stuff that looked slightly decayed, whereas I am unable to eat around such things without thinking of fingernail dirt and feces. The one item I decided to buy -- a sort of art deco yoga ornament which could be explained away as an "interpretive dancer made in China" -- ended up having a cracked leg, which wasn't my fault, honest.

(When you are prevented from buying something because it turns out to be broken, don't despair! You've saved money that you can spend on something else, like a belt or a down payment on shoes! You should be happy!)

Speaking of spending money, I decided to re-learn pumping gas. After two months of driving my car to such far-off locales as Paris, Wellesley, and Philipsburg I still had a quarter tank of gas left, but fuel-efficiency can only get you so far: it was time to finally brave the pumps. I was astonished to learn that my mother has been shelling out for full service all these years and has never pumped gas herself, so we combined our experience (and our ability to follow written instructions) and came out feeling empowered and fulfilled. The price for this experience? $50. Less than I'd expected.

Here's hoping you had a good mother's day, and that you both did something new, and that your breakfast sausage was ladled out by a cheerful buffet lady wearing a clean smock.

Globetrotters

Would you believe that Victoria and I actually went to PARIS in order to take pictures for a "Daily Muffy?" It's true! C'est vrai!

This first in a new season of "Daily Muffy" episodes will begin on May 12th, in a brand new format and location. Stay tuned for all the details!

The Trapezoidal, Slightly Flattened World

I have taken the car out for a few more trips, primarily to force myself to get accustomed to her. But I'm really having trouble getting accustomed to something else: my glasses.

In the past my decision has been to wear the glasses only for distance vision, and nobody has given me a good reason for why I shouldn't do so (besides a few silly, teasing comments in this blog). It seems to me that if I don't need the glasses for everyday life I probably shouldn't wear them, partly to avoid wear and tear on them, but also because there are times when I won't WANT to wear them, and I don't want to be blind at those times because my eyes EXPECT the glasses then.

But the thing is, even after ninety minutes of wearing my glasses at a stretch the world still looks and feels funny. The ground is never where it's supposed to be, my reach is slightly off, round objects are slightly ovoid, and reality REALLY warps when I pay attention to the way it hits the frames.

So I've begun to wonder if I NEED to wear them constantly, otherwise I'll never get used to them. Maybe after a certain amount of cumulative exposure my brain will know how to adjust to them faster when I put them on. For that reason I'm still wearing them as I type this, which is why the browser window is a disconcerting trapezoidal shape (maybe it always was and I just never noticed?)

I've done Google searches for "get accustomed to glasses," but I've found no information about how people actually do so. Is there a support group? Can I join a class where we learn to see things again?

Is this a problem with my prescription, I wonder? Is it my glasses that need fixing, or is it my head?

In the Kingdom of the Sighted, the Vision-Corrected Myopic is Peer

I understand that's not a very catchy title but I felt the need to stretch an old saying, maybe because conventional wisdom has always told me to "get glasses" and I just never have...until now.

About ten feet in front of my nose, objects begin to fuzz and blur. This is one reason why I ignore you when you walk towards me on a street or in a bar; unless you have a characteristic hairstyle I simply don't know it's you. Other than needing to sit near the front of lecture halls and movie theaters this hasn't really disrupted my life.

But there was no way I was going to drive a car in that state, so part of my "I'm driving again" regimen required buying my first two pairs of glasses.

It was surprisingly easy, though apparently cannot be done all at once. I walked back and forth to Hakim Optical far too many times in order to make a vision test appointment, actually TEST my vision, pick out frames, and return on two separate days to pick up the two pairs I ordered. None of this was actually fun.

But when I put the glasses on...wow! I can see every stain on the bricks of the apartment building across the street! My cat's dandruff is suddenly apparent! My carpet needs vacuuming! Maybe I should take the glasses off and return to blissful ignorance!

Vanilla makes fun of me when I say I plan to only wear them while driving, and I see her point: when I put the glasses on it takes about ten minutes for me to stop walking like there's an invisible pit in front of me, and when I take them off I'm virtually blind for another ten minutes or so. Plus I don't really want to spend the money on another pair if I fall over and break them.

So if you see me with glasses on (probably falling down a flight of stairs because I'm not used to the way they refract my vision yet), tell me that they look good. I don't want to be like Marilyn Monroe in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," implying by extension that I also don't want to die of a drug overdose, no way.

A Testdrive

My car has been sitting in the parking lot since I got her, staring at me in a disgusted way. "You're too scared to drive me," she says when I walk past her. "Come sit inside. I won't bite."

I'm not worried about sitting inside my car, I'm worried about actually driving her. Part of this anxiety has been due to my not having driving glasses, so when my first pair arrived this week I had no choice but to schedule an outing: I would get inside my car and not only sit in the seat, but I would DRIVE her as well.

So I did, and today was the perfect day for it. I drove out to Wellesley and found myself on some awful dirt roads. I think I cut somebody off on my first trip through the roundabout, but my second time through seemed a little better; I just followed the leader.

I am slowly getting over my totally-unexpected performance anxiety: when I'm driving my car I feel like I am in everybody's crosshairs. This feeling of being under scrutiny is a problem I have in everyday life, but there's no doubt that when you're driving a vehicle -- or when you're in a conga line -- you are a crucial part of a social pact. The system only works because everybody more-or-less knows the rules. I suppose that's why we have licenses and are supposed to actually study up on what the speed limit on a dirt road is. And unlike a conga line, when you bump into somebody your insurance goes up.

Since I am my own worst critic, I look at the people in the cars around me and I think, "Damn, they all KNOW I'm scared, and they HATE me." When some guy in a hummer gets on my butt because I'm only driving 15kph above the speed limit, I find that I've somewhat lost my devil-may-care attitude. I've forgotten that people will ALWAYS pass you on the road, and that the best recipe for a speeding ticket (or a rear-ending) is to try to accommodate them.

This situation isn't improved by the fact that, with my new glasses, I can actually SEE those faces. Vividly. The fact that they look indifferent instead of disgusted just makes me think that they'd play great poker.

So anyway, I survived my first deliberate test drive. Now I'm going to pick up a driver's ed handbook and go through the tricky parts (because nothing brings confidence like thorough knowledge), and then next time maybe I'll try some city driving; for the most part I have yet to deal with left-hand turns and pedestrians.

The Week of Beckzy

A month ago I set my father a task: find me a car, daddy-o! This is a point-form summary of the results, covering the last week and perhaps explaining why I haven't been up to blogging.

Saturday: While spending Easter with my parents, my father -- who works at a car dealership -- is sad to report that the perfect car for me -- actually exceeding my minimum requirements as to practicality, price, efficiency, and age -- has slipped through his fingers. Oh well, at least the family gets to come together and eat ham, car or no car.

Monday: My father calls me at work to tell me that the aforementioned car, under miraculous circumstances, is once again available. She's a blue '95 Chevrolet Corsica named Beckzy, in perfect running order, very fuel efficient and small enough for my limited spatial skills to handle. He can bring it by my workplace tomorrow for a test drive.

Tuesday: For the first time in fifteen years I am behind the wheel of a car. I have no insurance and haven't even set my eyes on Beckzy before now. A horrendous rain/sleet storm has arrived with gusting winds, and I re-learn my driving skills by sliding my white-knuckled father around the block. Even this short experience is enough to tell me that I'd be CRAZY to pass up this opportunity. I'll take it!

Wednesday: My father calls to say that Beckzy has passed her E-test and is going in for her safety. Things have taken on a sudden immediacy. Vanilla, conscious that this may be the last time she needs to drive me someplace, takes me to State Farm where I get both auto and renter's insurance at surprisingly low prices. I have a payment plan. If somebody breaks in and steals all my showgirl outfits, I will now be able to afford NEW showgirl outfits.

Thursday: It turns out that I will have to go to New Hamburg in order to get plates and ownership as my father is not allowed to forge my signature. I have 24 hours to brace myself for tomorrow's ordeal.

Friday: My father shows up at my workplace, driving Beckzy. He hands me the keys and we begin what is simultaneously a right of passage, a refresher course, a final legal hurdle, and an impromptu driver's exam. I discover that Beckzy has a ridiculous blind spot: when I turn to my left to check for oncoming traffic I can only see my headrest. We take the Expressway all the way into New Hamburg, allowing me to re-experience city streets, on-ramps, merging, highway driving, and extremely pokey small town navigation.

In New Hamburg I get the ownership, we put the plates on, I sign a ridiculously miniscule check for my dad, and Becky is mine...if I can get her home again.

After the return trip I swear that I'll never drive again: I'll just park the car in my lot and look at her, and maybe sleep in her when it's hot outside. Gradually I come to grips with the situation: I'll simply need to keep ramping up my experience until I'm really comfortable driving.

Saturday: I go to Hakim Optical for an eye test and glasses, only to discover that they don't do such things without an appointment. Since Beckzy has a quaint little tape deck I go looking for one of those audio-adapters which allow you to plug in an iPod, but I have no luck. Now I know why I kept all of those mix-tapes from my University years...driving Beckzy will be a '90s experience in more ways than one!