Happy Monday, you pluffnuggets. Welcome home to our second subscriber submission. This one’s from
.Before we get into the Muse’s loathing, a bit of genuine praise and thanks. The Misbehaved Muse is one of the first people on the ol’ Substack machine to advocate for this sick little project of mine. She has been very generous and encouraging, and this is me saying THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.
You can find the Misbehaved Muse’s Substack here. She writes with a bloody grace and precision that I’m consistently struck by. Whenever I’m reading one of her essays, I feel like one of those brain surgery patients that they don’t fully sedate to make sure they can still move their fingers. I feel vulnerable and cared for. I can feel someone up there moving my brains around, cutting out the bad bits, then reattaching my skull and sending me on my way.
That being said, when I started reading this submission, I wondered how in the hell is she going to pull off a traffic essay. Joke’s on my dumbass. The Misbehaved Muse Found Love in Traffic.
Buckle up.
Does gritting teeth while driving make me clenched? Probably. This is the old me. The me who drives round a self-satisfied northern California town (Berkeley), excoriating other drivers for their hippy dippy driving style.
From my high horse, I hand down parking tickets to the indecorous, the distracted, the mannerless and the just plain tacky. These tickets say:
“Would it kill you to signal? Universal ESP hasn’t landed yet.”
“While it is pitiful that your mother never taught you manners, it’s not too late to learn the basic wave.”
“Regardless of my own political affiliation, I have no desire to know yours! Take them off. Except for the one that says Visualize Whirled Peas.”
“God in Heaven, you’d die if you behaved that way on a London roundabout.”
I have a favorite bumper sticker. I saw it but once. “Where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?” A plaintive query, transposition of a grandmother’s habitual phrase. She utters it with a sigh, and a little moue. I’ll tell you the phrase if you don’t know it.
Gone are these halcyon days. Gone, the horse. I live in a different city. And our world has changed.
I make room for the nearness of death whenever I enter my car.
To the gaslighter of the road who cut me off, my fast reflexes alone preventing accident, whose rude gestures and peevish honking followed me when I passed him…
To the boys on drugs, swerving across all the lanes, narrowly missing my car as I pull over to the shoulder…
To the countless drivers who speed past me from the rear, chicken-daring the oncoming lane, when, old-fashioned me, I come to a stop at the stop sign…
To the freeway drag racer pulled out from the rear, crossed in front of me from the left, catapulting into the right-hand exit where I myself, signaling, am headed…
To the casual gunman: your bullet hit my car while I was driving in residential traffic.
To the neighborhood terrorist who sped up and tried to hit my son when he was coming home from school, and ran me into the gulley when I was on a walk…
To the damaged, the insane who shoot on the freeway by my house, hitting the son of a friend’s friend leaving him paraplegic at 8 years old…
The truth is, ESP has landed. Without it, I’d have died a million times.
Believe me, I used to rage in the car. Swearing in a way I never swear. Pride of place, the C word, appended with -ing. Long, British diatribes, heavy treacle sarcasm accompanied by maniacal laughter and furious saccharine waving despite that I hate this clever hiding behind sarcastic words, the “I was only joking” bollocks innate to the parochial confines of England. Here in my car, the darkest tar rises from my gullet. I could eat my hat yet digest my socks instead. Impotent arrows fly as I revert to type.
Anger is energizing/exhausting. Feed it constantly lest it go out. Our litmus freeways, our engine of wrath cars. If you’re a person made uncomfortable by vulnerability, you are likely a person whose grief looks like anger.
This is what war on the down low looks like.
The other day I am in the stem of a T junction waiting at a stop sign this is America so I’m driving on the right, no political commentary intended. To my left another car is stopped waiting for a pedestrian to cross the road. I am turning left, but the traffic to my right is flowing fast.
Here’s what it looks like:
While I’m waiting, the car behind commences an eternal honking. Stressed as hell, and counter to what I think I should do, I anxiously edge forward, hoping to cross as soon as possible, but now… I am on the crosswalk. The pedestrian who just crossed to my left now furiously commiserating with the honking driver as she crosses behind me.
The seductive energy of their anger enfolds me. The lust of it, the throbbing ego, the ragged empowerment in the honking, the shouting: the anonymously potent betrayal of the pedestrian who sides with the belligerent driver.
To all those who are compelled to announce their child’s accomplishments via yard sign and bumper sticker, I’d like you to write me a 1000-word essay on why you think it’s important for us to know that your child is an Honor Student.
“I’m sorry darling. No matter how proud I am of your accomplishments, I’m not putting a bumper sticker on my car about it.” Last week my son put this on my car, in the dead of night.
I love it
Do yourselves a favor, go get your skull opened up at:
themisebehavedmuse.substack.com
themisebehavedmuse.substack.com
themisebehavedmuse.substack.com
As always, send your love bits and chaos to daisycashin@gmail.com. Fill me up!
Thank you thank you! Daisy thanks so much for posting this and for the fantastic introduction. No one’s ever compared my work to brain surgery. Only you would
come up with that.
Poetry.