The Commuting
Look at this shit. Come on. Move, goddamn it. Just move.
When he gets behind the wheel the questions start tumbling. How long is this going to take? What kind of delays can you sustain without having to arrive at your lecture huffing and sweat stained? Do you really want to calculate the ratio of time-spent-in-car to time-spent-in-classroom? Every minute that slides past his scheduled arrival time means that Spenser has to recalculate parking costs for the day. If he’s on time he can park off-campus and walk it in. It’s Tuesday, so up to 30 minutes late means he will have to park in a visitors’ lot for $3.25 per hour. The margins are tight. Anything beyond 30 minutes means he has to nestle in with the Audis and BMWs in the multi-level campus parkade, $6 per hour. He had to park there last Tuesday, cost him 18 bucks. If he has to do that all month, goddamn it.
It’s just so fucking boring. The same turns, the same passive-aggressive assholes, the same choke points in the traffic flow, the same songs on the radio, the same inane banter on the sports talk station. So much time that simply evaporates from his life. Spenser feels inert and shapeless. Hands at ten and two. Sunk deep in the life gelatinous.
The hate pangs, the bursts of casual vitriol. The sweet tang of curses dripping from his tongue. The ill wishes that cross his mind surprise even him at times, and he takes strange, grim satisfaction when his legal maneuvers infuriate complete strangers. Doing the speed limit in the fast lane is Spenser’s personal favourite.
The utter predictability of every vehicle that he sees. Rusted van of the itinerant day labourer. Glossy sportscar of the greasy salesman. Hand-me-down family sedan of the bright-skinned teenager. Over and over. Minivan, minivan. He wonders how they see him through the rain spots and windowglare. Bleary-eyed commuter sipping coffee from a mottled travel mug, its logo long since bleached away by the dishwasher. So fucking boring.
Much of Spenser’s frustration, the bitter slime at the back of his throat, is anticipatory, lurking in the foreknowledge that with all of the hours and miles that he logs, it is only a matter of time before an accident happens. The only question is what kind of accident will it be? A minor fender bender revealing to all passersby the shocking plasticity of the modern motor vehicle? No metal here, nothing but crumpled bumpers, polymer headlight casings, shivered dashboards of some unknown composite. We travel these streets in glorified ice cream buckets. Perhaps a heavy-duty sideswipe with serious whiplash and painful rehab, a textbook mid-intersection t-bone? Or maybe something more hideous. A full on wreck. Tires screeching. Bodies through windshields. Broken glass. Emergency vehicles screaming to the scene. Engine coolants and hot blood leaking on the pavement. Only a matter of time.
After Spenser parks (23 minutes late, $9.75 for three hours, no possibility of reimbursement), the engine ticks away into the dead air like an infernal metronome. He scurries away, the sound of the engine needling up and down the slouch of his back.
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