Flashbulb Memories

I have a terrible driving record. I have gotten 8 speeding tickets, 2 careless driving, and 1 reckless driving. The two careless driving tickets were also for speeding but I was going so much faster than the speed limit that a speeding ticket wouldn’t have been appropriate. The reckless driving was for 96 in a 55 (the fastest I was ever caught driving.) But that’s not the fastest I’ve gone. The highways in the midwest were designed to have long stretches of straight road so that in the event of an emergency a plane can use them as landing strips. This means that kids with nothing else to do and the license to drive alone at 14 use the interstates as racetracks.

Every time I would go over 110mph, wind resistance on the left side of the car was so severe I would have to keep the steering wheel turned at least 30 degrees to the right to stay on the road. This never scared me but it did my friends so I would only hit those speeds on my way home after I’d dropped them off. One particularly manic night I dared myself to reach 140mph. This was the highest my speedometer would record. I didn’t quite make it. At 135mph the car began to shake so bad that I had to back off. I never tried this again. I don’t know why. Maybe I realized that not fearing death and actively pursuing it were two different things.

I am a chronic insomniac. I have been all my life. For the first couple years I would fight my parents when they would try to put me in my crib. When my brother and sister were born I had to give up. I began to read around the time I turned 3 and found a way to pass the time.

I would only sleep from around 3am to 6am so I had a good 8 hours each night to lay in bed and read. The major problem with this was my lack of reading materials. I would read the same books over and over. The libraries at the rural elementary schools I attended were no help. They never held much variety and would only let me take out one book a week. My solution came when my mom asked me why I hadn’t read any of the books she had bought me a few days before. The stack of paperbacks looked brand new. 

See, I have a reverence for books. I don’t break their spines or crease their pages. They look as though they’ve never been touched. This allowed my mother and me to start making weekly trips to local bookstores to exchange the read for unread. Going to bed stopped being as torturous and but sleep continued to be an enemy. It still is. I take medications to sleep now but some days it works better than others. Most nights I still lie awake for a couple hours before slipping into unconsciousness. I’m often tempted to go off the medications and use all that extra time to get things done. But I know I wouldn’t use that time to work. Or to read. I’m afraid of how I would spend those hours. I don’t trust myself.

On Halloween night, 1997, I went to the movies. A large group of us left a party to go see Scream 2. We all knew it would be terrible but in South Dakota there’s not much to do other than drinking, sex, and going to the movies. We were good kids so we chose the last option.

I intentionally sat between two boys who had I knew were interested in me. I wanted to see who would reach for my hand first. As the movie progressed both boys began to move their hands closer and closer to mine, one on each arm rest. I kept mine in my lap. I relished the tension.

Both boys, each named Andy, would kill themselves within the next year. One a couple months later and the other about eight months after that. I was intimately involved in the first Andy’s death (something I will discuss at some point.) The other Andy drank and doused himself in gasoline, then set himself on fire. He did this during the night and wasn’t found until the next morning, charred and cold, by his father who had come out to retrieve the paper. 

I’m always a little bit suicidal. I would be more so but I’ve become pretty talented with compartmentalization. I can almost always push the thoughts back into their little brain boxes. Driving is the only time I can’t distract myself from death daydreams. Every time I drive down a lonely stretch of highway I imagine accelerating then suddenly turning the wheel of my shitty old SUV sharply to the left. It would be so easy to flip and roll. Fords are pieces of shit so I sincerely doubt I would make it.

I made the mistake of doing something like this in a Subaru when I was 16, hitting a cement highway divider at 65mph. My car was crushed but I was unscathed. My survival was so miraculous that it was covered by the local news… “Local teen’s quick thinking averts tragedy.” The police that were interviewed said I handled the car incredibly well for someone so young (which, of course, was bullshit.) Quality Japanese auto manufacturing saved me. The cops said that in almost any other car I would have died. I know now that if I do decide to go out in a blaze of flaming vehicular glory, I can’t be behind the wheel of a Subaru. Which makes me kind of sad. I love Subarus.

I spent last New Year’s Eve alone drinking expensive champagne out of the bottle and snorting lines of coke off of an old cd case. At the moment the clock struck midnight I stood outside in the snow, shoeless, smoking a cigarette, holding my bottle of champagne, watching the reflection of fireworks over the East River in the glass of the project building opposite my apartment.

Nothing beats getting raped by a Hasidic jew. Trust me. I know. His sidecurls brushed against my face every time he thrusted in. The experience taught me to not walk alone in Brooklyn at night and not to carry too many business cards. Some fell out of my bag and were left on the dirty floor of the room he dragged me in. I thought I remembered this when wading back into the memory the next day. It was confirmed when I got an anonymously numbered phone call from a thick-accented man demanding to know if I were Jewish. I began to weep and said “no.” He asked me again and again I responded “no”. I guess it’s not a sin to rape a gentile. Lucky him. Lucky me.

I have only told my therapist and my business partner that it was a Hasid. I think it’s because I’m mortified that I could not fight off such a man. They always look so pitiful in those oversized suits. It’s almost funny. 

I’ve been seeing a writer. Well, I had been but then he left town on Monday. I had been holding off on reading any of his books. I was worried that I would read something that I didn’t want to know. I wanted to learn who he was by talking to him. But I don’t think he was ever really too interested in talking. There wasn’t anywhere we could begin. So I bought one of his books at Barnes and Noble on my way home the day after I last saw him. I made it about 6 pages before reading the first of what I’m sure will be many heart-sinking declarations he makes about relationships with women. Great. His writing is beautiful though. 

My mom didn’t want me to volunteer at Planned Parenthood. Not because she didn’t agree with the politics (I come from one of the only liberal families in SD,) she just didn’t want me to chance getting shot crossing the picket lines. But I was adamant and Planned Parenthood was desperate so I arranged a time to come in. That morning I parked my car in the supermarket parking lot down the street (to keep the crazies from defacing it,) navigated around the guy dressed as the grim reaper (complete with plastic fetus hanging from a sickle) and walked in. 

I thought I would be answering phones or something clerical but I was told by the nurse that I would be with the doctor all day. To keep from getting sued Planned Parenthood in South Dakota had a volunteer stand next to the doctor during all exams. I must have seen about 15 vaginas that day. And breast exams. Lots of breast exams.

Finally the doctor told me we were about to see the last patient of the day. I was getting a little grossed out (it’s not that I don’t love vaginas, I really do, I just can only handle so many a day.) The most tan woman I had ever seen lay before me. She was most likely in her 30’s be she could have passed for 55. The doctor started with a breast exam. The woman opened the front of her paper hospital robe and exposed her two enormous leathery breasts. I tried not to stare but they were incredible. So big, so brown, so textured… then the doctor squeezed the left breast and blood came out of the nipple. I don’t know what happened after that. I think I astrally projected myself out of the room. I believe he told her to stop tanning. I mean, he must have told her to stop tanning, right?

So that was the first and last time I volunteered at Planned Parenthood. Eventually the picketers and the politicians won so the clinic closed. But whenever I’m back and drive past what used to be the clinic (I think it’s a Burger King now,) I remember that awful breast and why I decided to forever stay out of the sun.

“L, hi… this is Crystal. From high school. I’m writing a book about Andy and interviewing the people that were closest to him. Everyone keeps telling me that I need to talk to you. They all want to know what you have to say.”

I only answered the call because I saw the South Dakota area code. I haven’t lived in South Dakota since 1999. No one knows me there anymore. I have a tendency to assume the worst so I answered the call believing someone would begin explaining how my father was in an accident or something equally horrible. But no, it was Crystal. I explained how busy I was and said maybe we could talk sometime next week. I added her number to my contacts to be sure that the next time I could avoid her.

I’m a 30 year old South Dakotan living in Brooklyn, NY. I don’t know why I feel “South Dakotan” is so essential in describing myself. I guess it’s because I’m so thoroughly Midwestern. I’m painfully polite and perpetually apologetic. I’m always complimented with the word “genuine.” But I’m hiding more than you’d imagine.