This evening, my friend from school asked me to take him out for driving practice. He's an international student from somewhere far away, he's got a learner's permit and he plans to take his drive test and buy a car, but before he can do that he needed some practice.
So he tells me that he passed his driving test back home, but never had much real practice. I figured he'd be good enough to practice on some of the wider residential streets on a quieter side of town. We started off with left turns, making each successively so that we went by the same house with two college dudes sitting on easy chairs out on their front lawn every minute or so, by the end I was waving at them every time we passed. When we got sick of left turns, we started doing right turns, and that was when exciting things happened.
He wasn't very good at controlling the wheel after making the turn at all. Nowadays, advanced power steering technology has made easing the wheel back to a straight line easy -- one just has to let the wheel slide back. But he hadn't quite worked that out yet. So when we were making our eighth right turn, the car was veering too much to the right and heading straight for the car parked in front of us. As though fate had it in store for us, a cop car was heading for us on the left. My friend got terribly flustered, muttered a "Why does he have to come now?", but still he hadn't managed to steer the car back and was going to hit the car parked on the curb anytime now.
At this moment, my friend must have been thinking in his mind, "Shit! I'm driving so badly, the cop's gonna pull me over, handcuff me, throw me in jail, and sentence me to death by firing squad! What do I do? Oh hell! What do I do?" Perhaps he decided that it was best to steer away from the cop as far as possible -- instead of heading for the open space in between the cop car and the parked car, he was like "Maybe if I hide my car behind the car parked in front till the cop passes, he wouldn't catch me." Problem was, instead of hitting the brake, he decided to step harder on the accelerator.
Ok, so now we were really going to hit the parked car in front of us. My friend probably forgot the car had such a thing as a brake, so in order to avoid causing a huge accident with the parked car, he swerved to the right, and we went in between a "2 hour parking" sign and a little tree, up the sidewalk, KABOOM!, hit the grassy slope, saw a few stars...
It was really exciting! The cop came over, I was trying to explain things to him, he said, "Let the driver talk." Yeah, I was trying to help my friend, because I knew he must have been peeing in his pants already. It's my car, I'm going to be inconvenienced for the next two weeks, but I know he's a responsible guy, will definitely pay me for the costs, but it's going to hurt his pocket because he's saving up for his marriage with a girl in Dubai in December. He's also afraid of losing his permit, his ability to drive, get a car, so on and so forth, but most of all, he's never gotten into any trouble of this sort. My friend was terribly worried, and sorry that he got me into trouble too.
The tow truck came and with a great deal of effort, the car was finally towed away. The car was pretty badly misshapen -- it wasn't drivable anymore (no shit), the front left part of the car was smashed, parts of the car came off.
I got my roommate to drive us home. Told my friend it was going to be all right, I was going to take care of the stuff, asked him not to worry. But how could he not be worried? I was chatting with Mr. Policeman while the tow truck driver was sweating his head off trying to figure out a way to get the car out of its insalubrious position, and I was like:
"Pretty bad, huh?"
"Yep."
"So it's gonna be a thousand dollars or two for repairs, do you think?"
"Ummm, looks like it's gonna be more like three to five thousand."
My friend's going to be broke.
So my roommate was saying, "I'm surprised to see you so calm about the whole thing. If I were you, my hands would be around his neck already." Yeah, my roommate is singularly uncool when it comes to such things. I said, "I know he's gonna pay me for the damages, so I'm not worried. He's the one who seems calmer than he should be, he's really gotten himself into deep shit now."
I got my friend to take a picture of the car using his cellphone, but he couldn't download it yet, so no pictures for now.
At this point, I'm going to switch the story back to Dan again (yeah I know, everything's been about him recently -- what to do? I think about him all the time). So I was like, I had an urge to call and tell him (he was the first person I thought of that I wanted to tell the story to -- no surprise) the funny Memorial Day Weekend story. But of course I didn't. The slightly comforting thing was that he actually called me back on Wednesday (hmmm, I wonder if he wasn't going to say anything "nasty"). I didn't pick up, thankfully, I was in the shower. I'm not planning to talk to him for a long time. I need time, he and Jon -- they need time too.
These few days, I've been thinking a lot about this whole thing. Would it be better for me to forget everything? I'll lose this person completely, but I'll be able to move on, less painfully perhaps. But I'm thinking right now, I have this urge to talk to him like good friends would, even if he's married, fucking with another guy, and I'll never be able to touch him again (And can I be good friends without feeling like shit? Not right now). Provided he still likes me as a person, and is ok with everything and being friends, and his partner is as well (I've got to handle this smartly, carefully). After all, he never really did anything to hurt me, as we never had any "relationship"... it is so bizarre (I felt hurt nonetheless)!
I don't know, everyday my mind goes through different things, maybe tomorrow, my thoughts will be completely the opposite. It could be that being just friends would prove too difficult after all. The cruel thing is, even if I was willing, maybe he'll not want to see each other again, if that's the case, at this point, I'm still unable to handle that possibility. So I can't talk to him yet, not now, nor for a long time. But I think after tonight's incident, I'm beginning to feel I can just be great friends with him, because he's too cute to lose otherwise.
