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My Date with Dawn

Warren McPherson

    Whilst in college I had the great fortune of going out on some very bad dates. I also had the great fortune to drive some very bad cars. My date with a girl named Dawn was a staggering combination of the two engrained forever in the fabric of my life. If you have been reading the stories previous you have an idea that this fabric is nothing like the smooth feel of silk or the comforting embrace of velvet, but actually something more akin to a potato sack.
    As I mentioned earlier, while in college I had a crappy car. It was a blue Nissan Stanza that I called “the Co-Stanza” ala George Costanza and the “by Mennen” jingle addition he added to his name so people would remember him. (The irony of course was that I didn’t want anyone to recall my horrible car.) Other than a bullet hole in the hood my father had put there one night while shooting at nothing in particular, the car ran fine. And that is all that really matters.
    I had driving the car throughout my final year in high school and I do believe it was on its last legs when I packed it to the brim with not only my junk but the junk of my good high school friend Dan who was also going to school in the bay area, only a few miles away at Santa Clara. The Co-Stanza was low-riding all the way down to the San Francisco at 80+ miles per hour.
    The car did not much appreciate this foul treatment and exacted its revenge by consistently breaking down and running poorly while I was at school that year. After replacing its alternator not once, but twice, the Co-Stanza decided to die on the night I had my date with a girl named Dawn.
    Dawn attended Santa Clara and was a friend of a friend. She had long brown hair, brown eyes, an alternative philosophy, baggy clothes and big breasts. Now, I am no pig of a man. But, I was going through a weird time in my life and I’m not gonna lie to you the idea of seeing and/or feeling those boobs was a major turn on to me. This is the only time in my life I have been controlled by such shallow motives and before you pass judgment on me know that like on every other occasion in my life I paid dearly for being a bad person.
    I had already had a chance to fondle this girl while on a drunken rampage the week previous and this was my chance to take her out on a proper date and show her I was not a drunken idiot all the time. You know, turn on the charm and show her the real Warren. Of course, the “real” Warren was totally motivated by what he kind of remembered grabbing under her baggy sweater a few days before. And for this, he will surely pay.
    I was to take Dawn out to a movie at the local mega-plex theatre. The flick was to start at 9:35pm so I started prepping at about, um, 7pm. You see I wanted everything to go perfectly. The guilt I had over the fact I was only going out with this girl because I wanted to play with her fun-bags was eating me up inside to the point I was in denial about the whole thing. I was going to show her, and my conscious, the perfect night and that was not only going to totally make up for my shallowness but also justify the nar-nar I would most definitely be rewarded with at the end of the evening. I realize only now how backwards this line of thinking is, but at the time it seemed reasonable. Be a gentleman and it did not matter what your motives were.
    Sometimes the forces of the universe join together and try their hardest to prevent you from doing something. I have this funny little theory from time to time that perhaps we are all given a second chance when we die to come back as our own guardian angels; we are given the chance to put things right that once went wrong, sort of like a spectral Sam Beckett from “Quantum Leap.” When you come to a decision in your life and you don’t know what to do, who better to whisper the answer into your conscious then you. But there are times in every life when even knowing what is going to happen can’t prevent the outcome. There are times, like the time I had a date with a girl named Dawn, when my own guardian-angel-self had no answer. This is called inevitability.
    And so, I had planned to leave my place at 8pm. It took 25 minutes to get to Santa Clara so I figured, 8 or 8:30 before I would pick up Dawn. I would take her to dinner. You know something nice...like Olive Garden. After breadsticks and salad we would cruise on over to the movie and then who knows. I wasn’t expecting anything, just hoping. I went down stairs to get into the Co-Stanza and as I already told you the damn thing wouldn’t start. A more superstitious fellow might have taken this as an omen, a sign of impending no-goodness. But I was more of the hard-headed type who simply saw it as an obstacle. You know, some occurrence that must be overcome so that the end result is that much sweeter. No one likes to win without a challenge, where is the glory in that? If anything is worth doing, it is worth doing with a little resistance; that is my motto. (Unfortunately.)
    So, I was not going to let a little thing like broken car stop me. I still had plenty of time to call around and find alternate transportation. In fact this might end up working for me rather than against me, I thought. Before I was going to show up in a partially shot-up Nissan and now, god-willing, I could be picking Dawn up in my friend Mike’s Lexus. But, as you all know, god is not willing to Warren. I started at the top and worked my way down. No one was home. No one, but my friend Bryan. He was at the bottom of the list. And this was not Bryan’s fault, I mean he is the best buddy a guy could ask for, but his car was, well, how do I put this nicely....it was not primo.
    They called the car the Dirty D, as in Dirty Diana. Part reference to the Michael Jackson song, part reference to a girl he knew named Diana. I never got the whole story on the girl, but I did get the entire story on the car. Let me set the table by telling you Bryan purchased this car and another one just like it (they were twins, only different colors) for $500. That is two cars for $500! Here is a list of idiosyncrasies the car possessed:
    - There was no key to start the car. Instead there was a big metal button you pushed to start the engine. When finished driving the car one had to stall it, pop the hood, and disconnect the battery. When you wanted to start the car again you had to pop the hood, re-connect the battery, and push the start button.
    - The passenger seat slid back and forth along its rails. We affectionately referred to it as the “ejector seat” because every time the car stopped you flew forward and as you took off you slid back. The only way to prevent this movement was to buckle the passenger side seatbelt.
    - The gear shaft did not have a ball on top with clear markings of 1-4 gears (that’s right, it was a four gear car) and reverse, like a conventional manual shift. Instead there was a sparkling gold handle bar grip, much like the one my sister had on her bike as a kid with streamers shooting out of the end. (As a side note, the Dirty D did not have streamers coming out.)
    - Huge, enormous crack going from one end of the windshield to the other. What crappy car doesn’t have a huge crack though, am I right?
    - Broken door locks. But this didn’t matter because check this out, the door handles themselves didn’t work. The Dirty D was equipped with a brown, woven leather belt that had been attached to the inside latch of the driver side door handle. When the driver exited the car he had to make sure to pull the belt out and close the door on it so upon his return he could pull on the belt and open the door from the inside. Does that make sense? Picture looking at the Dirty D from the outside; you would see the tip of a belt hanging out from the driver side door. As you got close and peered into the driver side window you would see the other end of that belt latched to the door handle inside the car. Now does it make sense?
    - The car was gold and it was a Datsun.
    There were other things wrong with the car. Bad interior. Bald tires. Jack in the Box antenna ball. But, we don’t need to make this story any longer than it already is. The point is that the Dirty D was the last car I wanted to show up on my redemption date with Dawn in. It was actually a step down from the Co-Stanza. But, as my mother always said, “Beggars can’t be choosers.” So, when Bryan was at the home and was willing to loan me the car for the night, I accepted.
    By the time I ran (literally) over to Bryan’s place to pick up the Dirty D it was closing in on 8:30 in the pm. I wasn’t sure if I was going to have enough time to do a decent dinner with Dawn at this point. We might just have to grab a slice of pizza or something, and this was definitely going to put a hamper on my chances of a little hanky-panky later on in the evening. I got to Bryan’s place, finally, and he told me there was only one little, teensy tiny problem. The Double-D needed gas. No problem I thought. There is a station right around the corner, and it will only take five minutes to fill up. That will make my approximate arrival time at Santa Clara about 9pm. Time for pizza, some light banter, and all we will miss is the coming attraction previews.
    I pulled on the leather belt to open the door, popped the hood, connected the battery, got back in the driver’s seat, pushed the start button and was on my way. Next stop, the Shell station on College street. (This was my first mistake. My dad told me never to put Shell gas in my car. Sure, this wasn’t my car, but.....)
    I pulled into the station with much haste. I popped the hood and jumped out of the car to disconnect the battery because you can’t pump gas into a car whose motor is running. The problem is that after I disconnected the battery the car continued running. What? Oh snap! I forgot to purposely stall the bitch. As I went to get back into the driver’s seat I realized I had forgotten the cardinal rule of driving the Dirty D; Thou shalt always shut the door on the woven leather belt. I was locked out of the car, in a Shell gas station with the motor running, getting later and later with every passing minute for my restitution date with a girl named Dawn.
    This being the days before everyone had a cell phone (not that this would have mattered because most likely my cell phone would have been locked in the car anyway) I had to run to the nearest pay phone to call for help. Now, here is where the powers of the universe slipped up a little, they allowed me to remember my friend Bryan’s phone number. (When I look back on it perhaps allowing me to remember was part of the plan.) I was able to call him to ask him what I should do. He told me he had a key. A key, I asked. Yes, there was a secret key only he knew about that opened the trunk. You could crawl through the trunk and into the body of the car, and would then be able to stall the car and open the driver’s side door. The only little, teensy tiny problem was that he had the key and no car to drive out and get it to me. That made sense. He told me he would look around. Fifteen minutes went by and my friend Bryan was finally able to hitch a ride with a neighbor out to the Shell station. He crawled through the trunk, stalled the car and opened the door just as he had promised he would do. I filled the car up, gave Bryan a ride back to his place and was on my way.
    By this point I was mostly late. Dinner was no longer a possibility. Witty banter would have to be made in the car on the way to the movie and I was hoping the coming attraction previews would take 20-25 minutes, ‘cause otherwise we were going to miss part of the show. And I hated missing the first five minutes of a movie.
    I arrived at Dawn’s dorm around 9:20pm. Without seeming like I was in too much of a rush I ran to her door. I could tell Dawn was upset I was late, so I blurted out a few sentence fragments about being “sorry” for my tardiness and wanting to “hustle” to make the show, then I whisked her back to the Dirty D. I recall preemptively apologizing for the car we would be using tonight and then emptively apologizing again when she finally saw the piece of shit. I jumped in the driver’s seat, pushed the start button, realized Dawn could not get in, reached across and opened her door from the inside (which was the only way it would open anyway, so I didn’t feel like a dick for not being a gentleman and opening her door for her from the outside) and we were off and running for the flick.
    I must have pulled out of that parking spot going 0-60 in about 6 seconds. I was trying to start up my witty banter by telling her exactly why I was late (my Lexus broke down and I had to borrow this piece of crap from some loser guy on my wrestling team) when the powers of the universe put a stop sign in the right place at the wrong time. Being the good driver I am I put on the brakes; being the bad, cursed person I am I forgot to tell Dawn to buckle-up or else the ejector seat was going to, well, eject her. Sure as shit, she went flying forward and rammed her forehead against the cracked vinyl of the dashboard.
    “Oh, shit! Are you okay,” I asked.
    “What the hell?” she responded in a dazed tone. I guess people are not used to seats flying forward when a car stops.
    “Yeah, I forgot to tell you to buckle up. Otherwise you might get hurt,” I sheepishly said. Dawn gave me a weird facial expression that seemed to say to me “You Jackass!”. And I responded, and I am not sure if it was out of nervousness or a tendency I have to pass the blame, but I responded with, “After all, it is the law.”
    She didn’t need to say anything. The look said it all.
    “We’re never going to go out again, are we?” I asked.
    “No,” she said.
    “You want me to take you home right now, don’t you?” I asked.
    “Yes,” she said.
    So, I turned around, dropped Dawn off at her dorm and went home with my gold-sparkling-handle-bar-grip stick shift between my legs, never seeing the movie we intended and never getting the hook-up. I returned the Dirty D to Bryan and never said a word to him about the takings place of that evening. I didn’t want to taint the positive energy of the car.
    I heard a few years later that Dawn went on to be a successful environmental lawyer. The Dirty D ended up getting sold for twice what it was bought for. Bryan moved away to Harvard, then England and now does well in London-town hooking up with models, beauty queens and women from exotic lands. I am single, haven’t had a good schtupping in two years, and drive a stereo-less car that isn’t even good enough for meth-heads to steal and then sell. If we do come back and act as our own guardian angels, why couldn’t I have helped myself not fuck up as bad as I did that night. Even in the after life I am a fuck-up.
    As for the Co-Stanza, at the end of the year my father came down to school and towed it back home. He fixed it and sold it to some dude for about the same amount he originally bought it for. So, everyone made out alright, including me. In hindsight I am not too upset about my date with a girl named Dawn, after all the movie we were supposed to go see that night was “Bio-Dome.” Thank god sometimes the forces of the universe join together and try their hardest to prevent you from doing something.



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