After I graduated college, I lingered around for a while. I rented a two car garage in a house known as the "Witch House", which was a house occupied by five young witches. I guess they would be more accurately described as "wiccans" or "pagans", but owing to their penchant for performing elaborate rituals involving fire and costumes and whatnot, the house could not have been more descriptively named by the locals. Shortly after moving to the Witch House, I developed a crush on the girl next door. Well, it was actually three houses down, but close enough to stretch for the cliche, eh? As I have said before, I was rather freaky in my daily attire, and this girl could not have been more the opposite. Clearly an athlete, she looked more like a sorority sister than anything else. Also, the house she lived in was nice. Really nice. There was nothing burning in the backyard, and no one lived in the garage. Everyone knows the freaks can often turn the normal chicks, but my crush lay idle. I mean what was I going to do? Invite her back to my cement floor repository of bones, art and laundry?
That all changed one evening when I ran into her at a party and she bummed a cigarette from me. We got to talking, and I had to pretend to be surprised to find out we were neighbors. We walked around and talked and she turned out to only be half of what she appeared. She was from a wealthy-ish LA family, the only daughter with three older brothers. She did dress normal on the outside, but on the inside, there was definite strangeness. That strangeness appealed to me greatly. We ended up kissing a little and setting up what we would consider our second date for later that week. For the sake of the story, I will call her Zulu, in honor of her strange side, as here real name definitely reflects the normality she projected at that time.
The second date day arrived, and seeing as I had yet to own a car, we took her truck. We headed up into the beautiful Santa Barbara hills to a place called the Vedanta Temple. Vedanta is kind of like the Unitarian Universalist of the East in that they accept everything, but have way groovier bric-a-brac and architecture. Its like this big garden with little nooks and stuff to meditate. Strolling around was very nice, as we got to know each other better. After aligning our meridians for the afternoon, we decided to go out to dinner. So back down the hill we went, to some little bistro in Santa Barbara. We had a lovely dinner over a bottle of wine, and played with the two black cats that appeared to live on the patio.
Ah. Those black cats. I must say at this point that I am a fairly superstitious guy, but my superstitions are rarely of the cliché variety. I have a whole host of totally specific, unbelievably obtuse, and highly irrational cause and effects running around in my brain, but I dont think they affect anyone but myself, so I mostly keep them to myself. That said, to this day whenever a black cat crosses my path, I flinch a little and put my guard up. Sad, eh? But here's why.
The day, the meal, the wine - it was all overwhelming. We got caught up in the moment and didn't want it to end. So we decided to go "driving in the Santa Barbara hills", which may as well be a euphemism, so thinly veiled are its truths. There is nothing in the hills to do at night. Nothing. There are barely even any houses. There *are*, however plenty of little out of the way places to park and have a little lovin in the back of a truck with a camper shell. So me, Zulu, and her neurotic black dog got in the light blue toyota and headed up into the hills drenched in Santa Barbara night.
To be perfectly honest, I thought she was driving a little fast. It was almost as we were in a movie, and she was trying to give a thrilling experience up the curvy, desolate hillside roads. She must have sensed my unease, and actually explained to me that she had grown up driving fast in the canyons of LA, and that I shouldn't worry. Besides, its not like there are any other cars up there at that hour. I tried to relax, but I didn't really even find the time, as we went into a turn a little bit fast, hit a patch of gravel that had slipped into the road and began to skid.
Now this wasn't a fast skid. Or perhaps, as we discussed later, the whole thing seemed to be happening in slow motion. I watched the front left tire, with the car at a jaunty angle, slowly approach the edge of the embankment. I had absolutely no doubt in my mind that the car would stop in time, I mean, life is charmed right? Things like that don't happen in real life right? And then things started happening fast again, as the nose of the car went over into empty space.
Now growing up having a family car that has barely functioning seat belts ('65 VW microbus), my family had developed an odd habit for abrupt traffic situations. My parents would always lunge on arm across the passenger compartment, and attempt to prevent the passenger from, oh i don't know what, defying the laws of physics i guess. This was the move that I attempted out of instinct as the car went airborne nose first. I leaned over and put my arm out to prevent Zulu from hitting the dash. I was a little late and my arm arrived just after the first impact. Funny thing was, neither her nor her dog were there, by which I mean that they had been tossed out the shattered windshield. This left me laying across the bench seat of the truck, a position as it turns out, that would save my life. So down down down I went, 250 feet or so, in a flurry of noise metal and glass. I remember very little save for the gearshift hitting me periodically in the torso on some of the five or so impacts on my log ride of the damned. I was knocked out as the car finally came to rest.
Coming to. Noise. What is that noise? Is that yelling? What is that roar? Where am I? What an odd light? Ouch! And it all began to come back to me in an adrenaline fueled rampage. That roar is the engine with the throttle stuck open. That light is the one headlight pointing straight into the sky through the demolished windshield and dry swirling Santa Barbara dust. That yelling is Zulu coming down the hill telling me to shut the car off. I started to get myself together. I shut off the ignition. I drug myself up to a semi sitting position. Thats when I noticed that the roof of the cab had been crushed down to the seats. I was in the only possible angle that I could be in in the car that allowed my body to remain with its factory issued geometry. I crawled out of the drivers side gap in the windshield and got out of the car.
The swirly light and sudden silence were straight out of a movie as I staggered away from the vehicle. Now perhaps it was the cinematic quality of the ambiance, or perhaps a byproduct of an overly imaginative brain, but at that moment I remember having one of the most truly unusual thoughts I have ever had. One of those thoughts that leaps into one's head and really soaks in to the core. I had the sneaking suspicion that when I turned around I was going to see my body in the car, all, well, deceased. It is truly hard to explain what it feels like to be utterly convinced that you are already dead. I turned slowly and was greatly relieved, yet slightly confused to find I, or rather my remains, were not there. I was startled out of my confused revery as Zulu arrived at the bottom of the embankment.
Now telling me to shut off the car was sound logical advice, but what followed from her mouth presently was absolutely incomprehensible. She was panicked, saying things like "They can't find out it was me!" and "I have shoplifting on my record, I will go to jail". Before I could even process what this all meant she took off running into the maze of manzanita at the bottom of this valley. Not just running, but rather more like fleeing in terror. As I have said, I live my daily life in a superstition induced personal maze of specific yet irrational fears. There is only one good thing about this fact, although I would be hard pressed to explain why it is true. When the shit actually does hit the fan in real life, I am not panicked at all. So, even though I had just done the ultimate barrel roll, and knowing how easy it is for one to get lost in manzanita scrub, I chased her down the valley and eventually caught up with her. I talked her down, telling her that it was her car, with her name attached to the plate and that there was nowhere to run. Besides, we had had an accident, we had done nothing wrong. Slowly I brought her back to both reality and the accident site. And slowly we began our long climb up the ravine.
Upon reaching the top, we found the body of her dog, which switched her last remaining traces of panic to absolute grief. I sat with her on the side of the road, consoling her as best I could while staring down at the single cyclopic headlight beaming up from the depths below. The adrenaline was wearing off and I was beginning to hurt bad. I heard sirens in the distance. A car pulled up before the firetruck, and said that she lived up the hill always and had heard/seen the accident and dialed 911. Good thing too, as this was a time before cell phones. Once again, things began to to happen really fast. The silence and darkness of the night hills was broken by a flurry of activity, lights and shouting. Firemen. Police. Paramedics. Onlookers. The police, no doubt judging my freaky book cover to Zulu's normal one, were absolutely convinced that 1) I was driving and 2) that I was on drugs of some sort. Despite our unified protestation to the contrary, they were very nasty in their disbelief. Finally, we were left to the paramedics who, in a much more friendly tone, let me know that they needed to know what I was on before they could treat me. God damnit. I'm not 'on' anything!
Finally convinced they prepared us for the ambulance ride. Zulu, still not making much sense, started going on about how much an ambulance ride would cost, especially for me since I had no insurance. I don't know why, perhaps it was a final relenting to the absurdity of fear, or perhaps my brain had been finally rattled sufficiently and all sense was left down in the ditch, but I agreed to forego the ambulance ride. I hadn't even considered how we might actually get to the hospital or home or whatever hell was next in this calvalcade of hellish confusion, when a kindly old grandmother right out of central casting stepped up and offered us a ride.
So now my second date found me in the back of an old Nova sedan, rolling down the 101, my body's natural painkillers wearing off fast. The thing I remember about this ride was how long it took to get to the hospital. I don't know if it was because this woman was a senior, or whether she was trying not to stress us out by going too fast in a car, but she was driving So. Slow. We eventually arrived at the ER, where I was checked out and miraculously hadn't broken a single thing. Friends came and picked us up. I spent the next four days jacked out of my gourd on pain killers and unable to move.
But on that ride with the old woman, I remember considering my life, the black cats, the silent crazy of the person sitting next to me. It was just one of those take stock moments that arrive every now and then. Unfortunately, the only stock I got out of that moment was that at least I would have a good story to tell, which was disappointing as I have always believed that a proper near death experience should be accompanied by some sort of life changing epiphany. Here I had gone to the trouble of nearly mangling mysel in 3000 pounds of glass steel and rubber and I hadn't changed at all. I mean, what was it gonna take? That was many years ago, and I still haven't had my epiphany. I wonder I ever will. Perhaps it is just not in the cards for me, or perhaps such does not exist. I wish I knew, though, and still feel it is something that I need. Perhaps that itself is the epiphany. Odd that.
No comments:
Post a Comment