Car smells like hot gatorade By Phoenix Alaska

Eric Sonstroem CC



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Car smells like hot gatorade


Lately, I have this dream where a friend in a trenchcoat is telling someone in a Jason mask --

 "Not her." 

I can make out his leg bouncing under a wooden picnic table and a bag of white wine, sliding into my lap.

It's Halloween, and the waitress is so pissed she isn't even mean to us like usual. We always tip her at least 20 percent, except recently we found out Sarah has been totally stiffing her, which is why Halloween this year is very controversial. Our friend group waddled down to seven, with the other five leaving the group chat.

Whether or not our waitress deserved an extra two bucks, who can say? 

I can't say much. I used to like to steal strawberry jam packets from here, but someone noticed once and decided to fall in love, so I had to stop. Tonight, I told myself I was going to get a grilled cheese and tip five dollars. Instead, I got an omelette I couldn't finish, so I had to leave it in Sam's car alongside her mountains of receipts and pop bottles. 

Sam and I aren't very close, but she thinks it's really funny when I tell her --

"We're moving to Michigan because everyone is so nice here."

Earlier today, I was working this job where all I do is float between two entrances and tell strangers --

"Hi, Here is your gallery ticket, madam." 

Then she usually says how she's so excited to come in and has been waiting all her life to come. You can tell by her face she isn't lying, sadly. Most of them coming in feel the same to me. Nice new car, big tires, choose your plates: California, Texas, Florida, Conneticut, New York, whatever. I also work at a chain furniture store on the weekends, and I see a lot of license plates from California, there too, actually.

Someone once told me Michigan has the highest # of vanity plates in the country. 

His 2014 Honda has new plates, someone told me. His plates say ILOVEDOU. There used to be a blue car that passed by my aunt's house late at night and the plates said --

"IM SORRY FOR 
 FALLING IN LOVE." 

But like, ISF FILV. 

Sometimes, they also said other things, she said to me.
         
She went to Haven View after, for a few weeks. I used to go to therapy twice a week there, when I was a kid. When I visited her last week, her body looked tired, still, against the grey office chairs. She said,
     
"Angelina, you need to be safe this Halloween."

I know. 
I know that the world isn't about me now.

A full moon hangs out above all of us as we walk to the next bar. There is a very beautiful woman dressed like a chandelier spinning to D12 in someone else's front yard. I don't think she's a chandelier. Neither does Aubrey, our only real DD. I'm already spinning myself, and Katie and I are talking about ancient dinosaurs with an older man smoking a cigarette. 

"I only know one dinosaur, the pterodactyl,"

I say this too loud and then I bump into some guy at the entrance, who then buys Katie a ten dollar sour at a dive bar. Damien finally shows up, and the first thing he says is --
     
"Angie, I hate to break this to you, but they aren't technically dinosaurs."

Patrick's friends I don't know hit on us, telling us more facts about dinosaurs, and we tell them Wrong Girls and they smile. We let them sit with us, though. One of them buys Aubrey a song on TouchTunes instead of a drink. I get nothing! I don't need anything. There are already three Rum and Ginger Beers in my stomach, and one I forgot in a gas station cup in his car. They are disgusting. 

Everyone keeps asking me why I didn't just get a normal rum and coke. Anthony says I should have gotten a dark and stormy. I don't know what that means. But I do know everyone is also saying this Halloween is colder than last year, which is weird because it was almost 70 last week, I swear, but none of us are wearing coats, except for Jamie, because it's part of his costume.

Jamie is three years older than me, but I'm the youngest in the group, still, after two years. He has been known to scare other people. Not because he's scary, but because he can get very loud. Whenever I call him about my aunt late at night, I instead picture his hands in my hair. I'm surprised he went out with us tonight. He's been hungover all week.

Earlier today, when someone tried to cut in front of Anthony, who was holding a spot for us in the line at the JoAnn's earlier, he started talking really loudly about how we should all start exercising our Second Amendment rights more. I then blurted out how I used to go deer hunting because I did not pick up on the social cue that he was threatening the couple in front of us. 

Later, when we got back into Samantha's car, heading to Ypsilanti, he played this Pity Sex song I showed him. I played Aaliyah after, and someone in the backseat said 
     
"Guys, neither of these are Halloween songs." 
 
Then everyone else got out of the car and he said, 

"I gotta show you something later tonight." 
        
I said -- 

"I'm freezing."

He said --

"Angelina, I know it's chilly. But if we walk twenty minutes with everyone, then we can drive forty minutes in my car to Detroit instead of making Sam drive all the way to Belleville and back. It just makes more sense this way."

"Can I play the Drive soundtrack again?"

He smiles.
   
I have never owned a car in Michigan. Everyone asks me how I get anywhere. Once or twice, I got very sad, and I had to walk on the side of the road for hours where the sidewalk became just patches of tired brown grass littered with whippet containers, and once some guy rolled his window down and asked me if I was okay, did I need a ride? No, I said. I saw him at the grocery store a few months later with his wife and I realized some people are just good people, still. I really do know that the world isn't about me now.
  
But I still don't want to own a car. 

But if I did own one, it would probably smell like hot gatorade.
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Phoenix Alaska is a writer and musician from Michigan. Their work has appeared in Misery Tourism, Michigan City Review of Books, and notably in this year's celebration of PoetTreeTown in Washtenaw County. You can find more of their work at phoenixalaska.com. If you like this story, please buy them a Ko-fi, they don't drink much Gatorade.
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