Text Me When You Get There: A Billet-Doux for Jersey, New
I love driving to the same extent that I suck at it. My dad has spent the past three years teaching me how to drive a manual, but it’s stuck like under-done spaghetti. Somehow, though, I have a viable New Jersey license peeking out from the window of my wallet. And, if I’m lucky, my mom tosses me the keys to her beat-up SUV so that I can take it up 208, then 4, then I-95, to Marcia’s and Hannah’s apartment building. Yes, I can make it to there sans GPS, thank you very much.
That last part of the highway, though, the I-95 part, is the inter-state. The thing about interstates is that they go into… other… states… On 95, if you go north from anywhere in New Jersey, you will, in fact, end up on the George Washington Bridge. Once you pass through the E-Z Pass booths, there’s no way to turn around. Typically, the only exit on a bridge is veering into the crash barriers right on into the water. Personally, not my cup of tea.
Marcia and Hannah, my friends from high school, live in a high rise on the Palisades though, overlooking the Hudson. The only route I know to theirs involves taking the very last exit in New Jersey before the GWB: Lemoine Avenue. Missing that exit is a tragedy on par with the Ancient Greeks: as I sail past, I can’t help but look back at the slight right I should’ve made. I am Orpheus, and New Jersey is Euripedes. Once I’ve got the withal to glance astern, she’s already gone. I don’t recall Orpheus having to pay a bridge toll of $16, though.
There is no turning back; I’m forced to continue onto the bridge. The lower level, at that. Swimming with a school of mismatched fish in the air above the water. Me, in my mom’s silver ’08 Highlander; what looks to be a day trader in the white Gran Coupe to my left (what he’s doing taking the bridge instead of the tunnel is anyone’s guess); and someone’s grandmother in a blue Jetta to my right. If I knew I’d be sitting in-between two strangers on my way into the city, I’d have just taken the train.
Glimpsing the city from this perspective is like looking at it through the grate of an electric fan, its blades sprinting past my vision. Parts of the substructure — steel beams and girders and hangers — whip past; I can only see the skyline between them. Seeing the city like this, my view tripped up in a compulsory double-take… I begin to understand why delusions of grandeur are always accompanied by skyscrapers and the long-exposure of city lights.
I take the nearest exit that will allow me back onto the bridge going back east. I pay the $16 again (within 20 minutes of having paid that same toll to get into the city), just to re-enter my home state. It’s strange to trade currency for the sake of returning where I came from; I was born in New Jersey and I’m made of the same stuff as cream cheese in an everything bagel, as the potholes that will never be filled, as a vaguely soggy and overzealously salted mall pretzel, as the Six Flags in Jackson, as the Jersey Devil himself. Yet here I am, rolling through a toll booth at 15 mph while it scans my E-Z Pass.
There is something to be said for the sentiment that American neighborhoods were built for cars, not people. New York City is no different, and neither is all of New Jersey. In fact, Jersey is the most densely populated of all fifty states; it’s basically just a state-shaped nest of highways. Objectively, this is not a good thing — it’s bad for the environment, it’s bad for those below the poverty line, it’s bad for urban and suburban infrastructure. When I think of home, though, I don’t think of the house that I grew up in. I don’t think of my elementary school, nor the town wherein I’ve spent 20 summers down the shore. I see home as the roads to my house. Home is the network of distinct routes that I’ve been able to memorize. It’s the barely-legal shortcuts that my best friend used at 7 am to get us to high school, always arriving late to Statistics no matter how little traffic there had been that morning — we never considered foregoing obligatory bagel and coffee stops on the way. It’s the tortuous back roads I took to get to the mall before I was confident enough to accelerate onto the highway. It’s the roads I take to my grandmother’s apartment building, to the best pizza place in Bergen County, to the cafe that sits on the Hudson and serves matcha lattes that are just-this-side of too milky. Admittedly, the routes I’ve managed to sear into my brain are few and far between. I’ve got a terrible sense of direction.
By the time I was born in 1999, Mom was too exhausted to constantly dote on me. I’m the youngest of three children, and my brother is less than two years my senior; he’s always been a bit of a handful. Instead, Dad took the reins when it came to my more difficult behaviors. If I fussed too much at bedtime, he’d strap me into my car seat that was situated in the green Jeep we would keep for the next seven years. Then, Dad would drive a miles-long, circular route with the windows down, playing Prince or REM on the tape deck. You would’ve thought I’d gotten in some kind of toddler fight given how quickly I completely KO’d. If the car ride ended too quickly, though, I was known to wake up just as the Jeep crawled over the lip of the driveway.
Fortunately, car rides no longer trigger personal bouts of narcolepsy, and I’ve never fallen asleep behind the wheel. Unfortunately, I’m not confident I’d be worse at driving unconscious. Over the past four years since I stood in line at the DMV for my lackluster photoshoot and autograph-signing experience, I’ve managed to dent my mom’s car, my dad’s, my sister’s, and my brother’s. In fact, I dented my brother’s car by backing into it with my mom’s car, and my dad’s by rear-ending it with my sister’s… and my dad’s car again through a side impact when I was driving my brother’s. When I was 19, I somehow rear-ended someone on the Garden State Parkway. Do you know how difficult it is to get in a car accident on a road wherein everyone is going in the same direction at the same speed, that speed being 5 mph? Thankfully, none of these, hmmm, complications have resulted in any injuries, nor ridiculous charges to my bank account (though they each did result in months of disappointed looks from my father).
Yes, I have also been pulled over for speeding. Twice. Either I’ve truly mastered a clueless demeanor, or cops just assume women can’t drive; not a single ticket has been bestowed upon me despite my best efforts. Make the patriarchy work in your favor, ladies. In all fairness, in New Jersey, speed limits are more like speed suggestions. If the number on your dashboard matches the one on the signs you pass, then you will be tailgated, no matter how high that number is. What do you expect? We’ve got places to be. This isn’t the Guggenheim: there’s nothing to stand around and look at. Let’s get going. There are a million gas stations and restaurants and mini-malls to pull into if you can’t keep up. Out here, the American gothic isn’t some guy standing with a pitchfork next to his sister, it’s the ubiquitous landscape of fissured asphalt, half-lit neon drive-thru signs, and the scent of gasoline tinged with restlessness.
It’s characteristic of someone with a very northeastern brand of neuroticism to never go places. We don’t do that. We stop places. In California — an imaginary place where free time exists — people might go to a cafe for a cup of coffee. In the New York metropolitan area, we stop and grab a coffee. Such an excursion is taken on the way to work; which is an eight-hour pit-stop on the way to the grocery store; which is a place that we go where produce and cereal boxes flash before our eyes as we think of whether a home workout is best, or if we can squeeze in an hour-long detour to the gym. Somewhere in the mix, we realize we’ve got less than a quarter-tank of gas, and will have to work in a quick pit stop at the station. And, wait, did we remember to pick up the dog’s antibiotics from the vet? My people are like sharks: if we stop moving, we die.
Maybe the reason New Yorkers are always characterized as being so mean is that they’re just in a rush, and maybe it’s actually your fault for being in the damn way.
What is more, the text message I receive the most from my friends when they feel like getting together is standard: Free for a drive? If it’s a nice day, that text may vary slightly: Free for a walk? Occasionally, a bike ride may be in the cards. Even if I say no, my phone vibrates with a new text: I’m already out front. That text always stays the same. As soon as I jump into someone’s vehicle, we’re backing out of the driveway. I buckle myself in as we’re already rolling down my street. Socializing, too, is pursued by this need to stay on the move, this desire to retrace familiar roads with the risk of getting slightly lost before ending up back on a recognizable avenue. Usually, someone else is driving, and I choose the music; my friends know better than to get in the car if my keys are in the ignition. Regardless, we only spend the barest of moments at a standstill, picking at fries and sipping Coke in some fast food parking lot while draining the car battery to keep the heat on.
Standing still just isn’t in my DNA. Along with the benzene and formaldehyde that pollute the nebula of air surrounding the city, I must’ve also been breathing in whatever chemical gives you restless leg syndrome for the past 21 years — whatever makes you check your phone too often and swallow down bitter Venlafaxine tablets, too. Living in the moment is for smokers and climate-deniers, of which I’m neither. In New Jersey, it’s actually illegal to pump your own gas. I don’t know why. But staying in the car while an attendant refuels it is another way to keep yourself in motion. Even though the car has paused its motions, my foot is hovering over the gas pedal, my right hand rests on the gear shift, and my gaze can’t help but be focused on whatever may lay beyond the front windshield.
When I was taking driving lessons (which evidently did me little to no good), my instructor told me not to look at what’s just in front of me, but to focus further down the road toward where I wanted the car to go. That’s how my whole life feels — like I’m drawn to whatever lays just beyond my reach in the future. My existence is a road map, one of those paper ones that fold out, with red lines and pen marks where I’ve outlined the routes of my mind. When I get to my final destination, will my ride have been a slow one, wherein I crawled through exhausting traffic whilst some asshole with custom rims rode my bumper? Will it have been fleeting, the windows down and someone I love in the passenger seat always fiddling with the radio dial? Or, will I have missed some crucial exit, straining my neck to glance at the turn that slipped past my notice?
