Hometown Hunger

 

 

My sleep schedule is fucked from last night

but it was worth it.

Tonight, at last, I fulfilled my fantasy of Xavi and I washing our cars from neighboring stalls at the car wash.  Unsurprisingly, we both smuggled rags and our own preference of car wash into the florescent-lit stalls clearly marked with signs prohibiting the action. 

Afterward, we got Taco Bell, went back to his place and talked about everything from Mormonism and parenthood to the phenomenon of white people finding random Black people to momentarily pose with and capture for their Instagram accounts. 

While standing out on his balcony together, he announces that he suspected a long time friend of mine who moved away a few years ago had a crush on me. This is one of the things that I love about Xavi: Apropos to nothing, he will tell you a thought he had years prior but decided, at last, it was the moment to tell you. I don't know why I love this quality. It may be because it causes me to travel back in my mind to particular moments he's referring to and superimpose the new insight or opinion onto what was transpiring. Most of the time, I don't remember exact moments he'll be referring to. And that, too, is something I love about him:  It means that he, too, is a bizarrely acute observer of his friends. 

As we stood out there on his balcony- me closing the bottle of my favorite hot sauce I had brought with me for the Taco Bell (I always hate their sauces), and him blowing cigarette smoke away from me- he points out a black limited edition Ford Mustang in the parking lot below us. Since it's nighttime, the car just looks like a darker shadow underneath a tree, but there's no mistaking the silver Mustang logo on the back of the car. I demand a closer inspection. He stamps his cigarette out.

Below, in the darkened parking lot lit temporarily with the flashing lights on the flying planes above our heads, I peered into around what may be one of the most beautiful cars I've seen in years. Xavi tells me he friends with the owner, an 80-something car enthusiast with too much pocket change. I insist he introduce me to him in the near future. My hands are aching to feel the gear shift. Xavi then confides that once, when he was driving the car back to the man's house for him, he drove the car full throttle over the bridge connecting the East and West sides of the city. His description of the smell of the the clutch, alone, had my heart racing. It's not often that I feel envy but, peering into the window of the car while being able to hear the far off, rain-like sound of freeway traffic at night, I sure did. 

I told him the story of my older, teenage, twin girl cousins who had Mustangs growing up. I told him of how they eventually sold them because they got sick of coming out of the A&P* to realize that their car had gotten hot-wired and stolen every other week.

 but somehow standing there, in the middle of that apartment parking lot on this still-summer evening, I was right back under those Michigan summer night skies of blacktop, car grease and the quickened pulse of sitting on the leather bench seat in a car built to rumble. 

be well; be loved,

k.

 

*= A grocery store in the Detroit area

(image via calaxenicove tumblr)