TRUCK PROBLEMS

The first full day of driving saw a flat tire and two accidents.  All three while Lasky was driving.  We were somewhere in Ohio at about 4 a.m. when the truck started shaking violently.  I don’t know much about cars and Lasky doesn’t know much about anything so we were able to convince each other that the road had ridges in the pavement and that was causing the shaking. 

We drove for over forty miles cursing the state of Ohio for allowing the highways to be ridged in such a hazardous way.  What could the point or cause of these ridges even be, we wondered?  We agreed that Ohio sucked at maintaining it’s infrastructure before we pulled over and saw that one of the four rear tires was completely destroyed. We sat on the side of route 80 for three hours waiting for the repair truck.  Lasky talked about things.  I thought about different things. 

The first accident came three hours later about twenty miles from the Indiana border.  Fuck Face was pulling out of a gas station and tried to squeeze our 16-foot truck between two cars that were stopped at a red light.  A skilled driver in a Smart Car would have struggled to pull off what Lasky was trying to do.  As he inched toward the crevasse of space the bumper-to-bumper cars were creating, he asked me if I thought he “had it.”  I told him I believed in him.  He immediately hit one of the cars. 

The driver of the car was a toothless redneck in the Ohio tradition.  He stuck his head out of the window and yelled, “You stupid motherfucker!  You hit my car!”  He was right about everything. 

We pulled over behind him and the redneck shot out of his car and charged toward us, out of control like a bear running down hill.  Lasky got out to talk to him.  I stayed in the car to make sure that if anything bad happened, it didn’t happen to me. 

I wasn’t sure if the redneck was on crystal meth, but if he wasn’t, there was a clearly a time when crystal meth was an important part of his life.  Listening to him shout at Lasky with the window cracked and the doors locked, I could tell his brain was completely fried.  He could barely put a sentence together and he picked his nose seven times during the argument that I counted. 

The man’s mental disadvantages aside, he was still equipped to handle Lasky in a debate about his car.  “You know ha mut this gunta cos me?”  The hillbilly riddled.  “Least fo hunnit!”  Lasky’s response to this was tremendous.  “No way.  I know a guy who could buff that scratch out for fifty bucks.”  The backwoods junky thought about Lasky’s approach to the argument for half a second before figuring out a way to side step it.  “Well, I DON”T know that guy!”  The inbred Neanderthal reasoned deftly.  Lasky tried to think of response, but couldn’t.  He nodded to the man, acquiescing defeat.  If only his old classmate from The Dalton School on the upper east side could see him now. 

Lasky got back into the car after giving the man his insurance information.  That was when he told me he had declined the insurance through Penske and was using his own insurance.  He told me he doesn’t have collision so damaged he does to other cars is covered, but he’s liable for any damage he does to the $90,000 truck we were driving.  He asked me if I thought that was bad. 

If he saw me smile, he acted like he didn’t.

cross country

He was on his way from Boston to New Jersey to pick me up.   He had just sent me a text asking for the “addy” at my parents house.  We weren’t even on the road yet and Lasky was already making me furious.  I wouldn’t use the abbreviation “addy” if someone had a rifle pointed at my foot.  But that’s just what make’s Lasky and me different.  I’m perfect, and he’s a complete ape.

 I watched the moving truck bounce down the street I grew up on from my old bedroom window.  The truck was much too big.  I didn’t even have to see what was in the back to know it was too big.  Only an idiot would have rented a truck that size.

 Lasky got out of the truck and pointed at my neighbor’s bigger, nicer house and said, “Why couldn’t you live there?”  I hadn’t seen him in six days.  He seemed balder than I remembered.

“Come on let’s get out of here, these people are making me crazy!”  I said, hoping I wouldn’t have to introduce Lasky to my skittish mother.  “No way.”  Lasky said.  “I have to grab a quick shower.”  It was worse than I had feared.  My borderline agoraphobic mother would have Lasky parading around her sanctuary in a towel asking her if she thought he would be more attractive to women if he shaved his stomach.

I was about to introduce the two most annoying people in my life to one another.  “Mom, this is Lasky.  Lasky, this is my mom.”  I said, hating them both.  They feigned normalcy.  “Nice to meet you.” They may have said.  But it was all bullshit.  These were two wild animals, bent on saying stupid things and misreading social situations.  Watching them perform for one another sent my blood pressure through the roof.  “Lasky wants to use the shower, mom.”  I said, inflecting helplessness.  “That’s fine.” She lied.  I could see it in her face.  If a glass of poison had been nearby she would have drank it.  Lasky didn’t pick up on it because Lasky picks up on nothing. 

This was how the cross-country trip began.  With these two baboons acting like they were “meeting.”  They weren’t meeting.  Not even close.  Take my word for it.  Apes, I tell you.  Complete apes.