So my friend Kathleen and I were talking the other day and she asked me if I could drive stick... I then told here this story and she said that it was interesting and I should write it down because as so often is the case... life truly is stranger than fiction.
New years weekend 1996. My friend Stacey and I were just sitting around bored off our asses. This is the dreaded Orange County where there is nothing to do but be harassed by republicans or stalked by Christians. Obviously neither sounded very appealing to either of us... me the gay boy and her the goth girl. I don't know how it got into our heads, but all of a sudden both of us desperately wanted to get the hell out of dodge.
Of course in my younger years I was quite lazy so I didn't really have a "job" to speak of, which meant very little money to spend. So, where do you go if you are kinda trashy with not much money??? VEGAS BABY!!! Yeah... I know, that could be construed as kind of insulting, but you know, I always thought of Vegas as a real white trash escape. A vacation spot for people who didn't know what a vacation was. But all that is beside the point of the story.
Stacey and I each pack a bag and get ready to go to Vegas for the weekend. I give my mom the 'ol puppy dog eyes and get a little money for the weekend and we are off and away!!! We ended up staying at Circus Circus and having a really good weekend, and even managed to not spend very much money. Stacey, anal as she is, thought she saw blood spots in the shower of our room and got us a weekend stay for free. Nice. Then she witnesses me kissing a boy for the first time at the Gypsy club. Ahh... Raphael, just out of the army. Jesus he was beautiful!
Well... none of this is the really interesting part. The most interesting thing happened on the way to Vegas. It is about a five hour drive on the 15 from where we lived in OC. And Stacey was determined to teach me how to drive a stick shift. She had this dark green truck that she was so proud of. And to be honest it was a pretty nice truck, even though we could only fit 3 people in it.
Stacey drove us through most of LA, she wanted the wide open road with no traffic to teach me on. So once we got to the desert outside LA she pulled over and we did a Chinese fire drill. I took the wheel and she buckled herself in for the ride of her life. It was pretty easy... I mean... You never really down shift or slow down on that freeway. So I drove most of the way to Vegas without incident. When we got to the California/Nevada border she told me to pull off the freeway so we could get gas. This was the scariest part of me driving stick... I had to learn to down-shift while driving off the freeway.
Yeah... it was a bit nerve racking. So I get off the freeway, and drive down what appears to be the main drag of this tiny little town. Stacey makes me drive past the first couple gas stations... grrrr... stupid stoplights and down-shifting. I finally pull into a gas station that she says is good enough for us. I pull up to the pump, pop the gas cap open turn the truck off and get out. Stacey gets out and puts her credit card into the pump and starts to pump gas. She then leans into the truck and grabs her purse, locks the door and shuts it.
She tries to walk away but the bottom of her jacket got stuck in the door when she shut it. She tries to open the door but it's locked. I am halfway to being inside when she calls out to me. I walk back over to her. She asks for the keys so she can get unstuck. I pat my front pockets. I pat my back pockets. I check the pockets on my jacket. No keys. At the same moment we both lean over and look inside the truck. There are the keys, hanging mockingly from the ignition. We look at each other and then look to the drivers door. Locked. Fan-fuckin-tastic.
We tried everything to get into the cab of the truck. We even broke open the little window on the back. Stacey tried squirming in that window far enough to either grab the keys or unlock a door, but no luck. So there we are...last week of December standing in the cold at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. The attendant at the gas station couldn't help us except to call a tow truck. Stacey left her jacket hanging out the door and waited inside, where there was heat, for the tow truck to arrive. Yeah... it took over an hour... damn podunk town.
The tow truck guy tried for an hour to slim-jim the door open with no luck. Finally when it was looking like we were going to have to get the truck towed thereby canceling out road trip to Vegas, this guy walks up and asks what is going on. Of course by this point Stacey and I were totally depressed about the way the weekend was getting off to its start. He walked over to the tow truck guy and asked if he could give the slim-jim a try. Now I had no idea who this random guy was, but he took the slim-jim and in less than five minutes he had the door open and Stacey in her jacket.
It was amazing. I don't know how he did it, but he did it. At that point the tow truck guy said that he wouldn't charge us for getting the door open, but that there was still the slight fee for him coming out... at that point the guy told him not to worry about the bill, he had AAA and we could use his card. This was really too much... I asked him who he was.
His answer makes this a story I will never forget. This is what he said:
He was a convict that had been on the run from the law for a couple years. He had warrants out for his arrest. He was involved in one of the biggest marijuana busts in US history and after it all went down he managed to get out of dodge just before the police came for him. He told us that he helped us because he needed all the good karma he could get where he was going.
I asked him, where he was going. San Diego, he said... to turn himself in, and do his time. It was a waste paying for AAA when he had never needed it, so he figured this way, at least the service got used. He told us not to get into drugs, then he turned and walked back to his car. He got in and drove off leaving us all a little bit speechless. I never even got his name. I do, from time to time wonder what happened to him.
It was one of the most surreal things I have ever witnessed.
Needless to say, we made it to Vegas and back. It was a great weekend. I got one of my first and best kisses from a boy. And Stacey never asked me to drive stick again.
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