Cars & Hospital Beds
Last week I bought a car. I know, what a mundane way to start a story. Well how about this, I sold my body to pay for my first car. I was nineteen when I ‘volunteered’ myself for a cheque. I took part in the first human trial to test in combination, two drugs already on the market. The aim of the study was to see how long the drugs stayed in my blood and urine. I was administered as a healthy participant and remained ‘in-house’ under the harshness of bright white florescent hospital lights for three weeks. On day one, two participants withdrew. Upon the initial blood sampling round, two individuals had gone against the advice to “look away,” fainting at the sight of needles penetrating skin. Over the course of twenty-one days, I was poked and prodded more times than I care to remember. A week into the trial, midline catheters were inserted into each of us. A long, thin tube with a needle on the end, infixed into a vein of the cubital fossa (inner elbow), taped to the skin with a dressing, and secured with a clamp to control blood flow. These were implemented to streamline the blood sampling procedure, and minimise the amount of new needle entries. The downside to this was routinely flushing the tubes with saline to prevent blood coagulating and blocking the tube. I learnt to sleep with my arms out so the nurses wouldn’t have to wake me for the injections. This was all well and good until my vein stopped producing the goods they desired. It had dried out. They switched to the other arm but in the process of fitting me with a new catheter, the nurse missed and my arm pissed blood everywhere. It was like a scene out of Taratino's Kill Bill. It wasn’t long before they dried out that vein and had to resort to taking blood from the backs of my hands. In the words of my friend, it was “some real junkie shit.”
My days were managed under a strict routine. I ate, shat and pissed when I was told to. I couldn’t even walk in the hallway at my normal pace without being cautioned. Abstaining from exercise was a term I agreed to in signing my body away, and bed-rotting was enthusiastically encouraged. During my stay I made some friends, we entertained ourselves by making finger puppets and casting their shadows onto the privacy curtains that separated our beds. These friendships had the lifespan of a fruit fly, but I still cherish the memories I made with them dearly.
At the end of the trial, I was paid $4,300 for three weeks and the attendance of a follow-up appointment. With some quick math, that works out to be less than $200 per day. But hey, at that time I had never seen that much money before. This isn’t a time to segue into a woe is me, “my mother was a shit” side-story, but that’s where my brain is taking me, so away we go. I was still living with my mother at the time. I had started paying her weekly board. It wasn’t much, but when you’re employed under the rate of fifteen dollars per hour, it makes a difference. Years earlier I had lost a relative who was generous enough to leave me money. Being a literal child at that time, meant my parents were in charge of the funds. Upon my parent's separation there was a legal agreement made for my mother to deposit this inheritance into a high interest savings account. By the time I turned eighteen, the money would have accrued enough interest for me to make a down payment on a home. I was denied access to this. Instead, I received a small fraction later down the line, but only after begging. Imagine, being robbed by your own mother, maybe you don’t have to.
That $4,300 I earned went towards my key to freedom. My car. I was able to escape my own home thanks to it. It gave me a way out. At twenty-years-old I expressed interest in moving out, and was met with reluctance. I was told that I should start paying for everything as if I had already moved out, to learn the responsibility of paying for things. From childhood to adolescence, I was denied of personal space and freedom. So much so, that it became expected for me to act like I wasn’t entitled to it. She wasn’t ready for me to leave the nest. So, she tried to ensure that I wouldn’t. I had a house viewing booked for the day I got back from a holiday over East. Concurrently, my mother had decided to take a holiday with her boyfriend, leaving her car and creating a physical obstruction by blocking my car in. In case of emergencies, she always left the second set of her car keys in the lower drawer of the kitchen cabinets. Aware of my appointment to view a new living arrangement, she took them, both sets of keys. I called her on the phone for an explanation, there was none, no apology either. She was in good spirits sabotaging my escape plan. While I missed that house viewing, I did eventually end up getting out. However, as is the pattern of daughters of narcissistic parental figures, I escaped by running into the arms of a man who would end up abusing me, and in more ways than my mother did.
I’ve packed up my life into the boot of my car more times than years I’ve had it. I loved that shit-box so much, but I’m glad to see it go. The car I named Jimmy, my little dark purveyor, in reference to a vocalist who I never should have been exposed to at such a young age. Who would’ve thought, a man who paraded around in fairy wings, fishnets and Furby costumes would end up being accused of fiddling and diddling a minor. Before this news had been unveiled to the world, his music videos got me through my dreaded after-school shifts. Immersing myself in visuals of a warehouse employee, assaulting checkout customers in a slapstick fashion. It was therapeutic for me. It emotionally prepared my fourteen-year-old self, tasked with the responsibility of selling tobacco at the main checkout, to handle being yelled at by a grown man wanting to return a seven-dollar bottle of sunscreen.
Back to the new car. As soon as I saw the listing online, I knew it would be mine. Leather seats, sunroof, reverse camera, Bluetooth capability, and a safety rating that won’t guarantee my death upon impact. All my wants and needs were met in a pretty package. The dealer who showed me the car was a great salesman, total charmer and just as nice to look at as the shiny SUV. Before driving to see it, I ate a clove of raw garlic. A method of killing my hormonal acne through internally addressing the situation. Only downside to this other than the mild digestive discomfort, was my pungent breath. I brushed my teeth and scraped my tongue but it was no battle for the scent created by the volatile oils of Allium sativum (garlic). My breath reeked. I felt bad for him having to share my airspace while I test drove the vehicle, but not that bad. While he scanned my ID and ran a background check in another part of the building to ensure my history was clear of totaling every car I’ve ever been in, I sat in his office, trying not to kick my feet out of excitement. Less than a week later, it’s in my possession.
My hometown is small world. There’s only one degree of separation. This is something I’m constantly reminded of. A few days ago, I crossed paths with a man who works at the same dealership I bought my car from. As I do in situations where I feel forced to engage in conversation, I found a point of connection and ran with it. In talking about his job, he started telling me about the “hot gossip” of his workplace. His words not mine. I would never use such heinous vocabulary. He told me that being a car salesman is the best job he’s ever worked. He also told he doesn’t know anything about cars. “I see an old lady, and convince her she needs the $30,000 MG.” If you're not envisioning Danny DeVito in the 1996 film Matilda, I encourage you to do so Not because he looked anything like him, but because he had the same bravado. I wish the interaction had ended as quickly as it had begun, but he continued entrusting me with information I had no business knowing. Starting with the charming man who sold me my car. He had slept with six of the sales girls, three of which had boyfriends at the time. A seventy-year-old coworker with a wife and kids got caught cheating with a nineteen-year-old. A man in his fifties had a threesome with an eighteen-year-old and twenty-something sales assistant. The stories go on, but from everything I was told, I gathered two things:
If a man is married at that car yard, he’s clapping someone else's cheeks.
Men need to be shamed more.