copyright © 2001 Adam Hahn
Driving
Adam Hahn
688-5041

(Lights Up- Adam is upstage center, seated)
     The car was an impossible gold color found only on football helmets and Chevy Luminas.
     It was a clear day, but I didn't see what was directly ahead. I hit the brakes just as the the perfect gold hood of my father's car folded toward me.
     Plastic shattered, metal crumpled, and the car I hit wouldn't restart.
     I can't think of a better way to describe my relationship with my first girlfriend.

(Lights Down, Beat while Adam moves forward, Lights Up)
     The Jeep was silver.
     Two years after the first girlfriend became an ex, it would be one more year before I stopped taking her clothes off. Our mutual love, hatred, and habit of almost having sex with each other had suspended my interest in other females.
     One minute, nothing but fog. Then lips.
I didn't even know the girl's name when she started kissing me at Perkin's, but I was unquestionably hers.
     Only fog. Then a stop sign visible too late, and a pair of headlights moving too fast.
Exchanging insurance information, I didn't make it to her lips that night.
     I still can't pass that intersection without getting nervous or smell incense without thinking of her hair.
     Fog. Then her lips one last time letting me know I'd been replaced for the night.
     We sold the Jeep. It survived the crash, but it was already too unstable for the highway.

(Lights Down, Beat while Adam moves forward, Lights Up)
     The car was red- the red of a swallowed grunt as my fist collided with the brick of Currier Hall.
     The one girl I've ever said I loved without later retracting the statement was gone and not coming back. My first, my last, my Goddamn It, she left me with Barry White lyrics stuck in my head.
     I couldn't sleep through thoughts of her skin and the things it contained. Instead, I drove.
     I spent nights that summer tracing and retracing the same paths on southeast Iowa's highways- speeding through the dark until I was too tired to think.
It felt kind of like being in control.

(Lights Down, Beat while Adam rises, Lights Up)
     Like I said, the car's red- the red of one drop of blood from a broken scab that should have healed by now.
     Shivering next to that car, I met the softest lips that God has ever made. Kissing them was like eating pudding, like kissing water. That water stayed on my mouth- stayed that night and stayed the next day when I was told that kiss wouldn't be repeated.
     If I ever did know how to drive, I've forgotten. My hands and feet are going through the motions, but they're careless and out of rhythm. I try and fail to make sense of the lights on the dashboard. By some kind of reverse tunnel vision, I can't look at anything directly ahead of me.
     I'm done faking it. After six years and tens of thousands of miles, it should be clear to anyone watching that I haven't learned.
     Now I pray that the yellow line is where it should be, I close my eyes, and suddenly I know that I will die driving.

(Blackout) "Driving" IS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AND MAY NOT BE DOWNLOADED, TRANSMITTED, PRINTED OR PERFORMED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR

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