As I fleetingly mentioned in the previous post -- after threatening to do it for weeks and wringing my hands like a neurotic grandmother about it for years -- I finally assumed the driver's seat on Saturday morning for the perilous drive out to Quogue, L.I. My wife and I had been talking about it so much that we were building it up to be this massive, seemingly impassible obstacle. We'd taken refresher courses in defensive driving to sharpen our skills and had reached a point where we'd run out of options. `Twas time to bite the bullet and just do it.
Having picked up our blue Volvo from a lot on Leroy Street (courtesy of the good folks at Zipcar), I sped back to our front door and I loaded it up with our stuff, two unwieldy child-safety seats, the wife, the kids and hit the road.
All told, it wasn't really all that big a deal. I mean, as I'd mentioned previously, I've done the trip a million times before, just never as the driver. It's pretty much a straight shot right down the Long Island Expressway until Exit 70, after which there's a quick hop onto the promisingly named Sunrise Highway and then you're pretty much there. All was going swimmingly until about Exit 50 when -- after a series of little warnings that we blithely managed not to heed -- little Charlotte got a bit car-sick and threw up a couple of times. We pulled off somewhere around Dix Hills, but couldn't find a gas station, let alone any semblance of civilization, so got back on the highway while my wife demonstrated some dexterous handi-wiping. Calm was restored. Mercifully, Charlotte's car seat suffered the brunt of the gastroenterological turmoil. Windows were rolled down with haste.
The weekend itself sprinted by like a young gazelle in flight from a pride of famished lions. Before we knew it, it was time to leave again. Well, that's not entirely true. We managed to catch up with some friends, spend a lovely afternoon by my sister's pool and Charlotte and Oliver got to play with their cousins. But within the blink of an eye, we were loading the car back up and heading back towards the city. The drive back was a little more intense -- although blissfully free of any vomiting. I found that the closer you got to Manhattan, the less considerate your fellow motorists become, frenziedly changing lanes without signaling as if executing complicated and highly dangerous chess moves. The ride had its tense moments, but I managed to deliver my family back to our home without a scratch to either ourselves or the car. We celebrated last night with some frankly expensive sushi.
So while I'm proud that I finally achieved new autonomy (pardon the pun), I couldn't help but catch a glimpse of myself behind the wheel of that car. It had been a long time coming, but I finally completed the metamorphosis. Once I took my place behind that steering wheel (demanding that everyone be properly buckled-up, no less), I finished the transformation from a surly, beer-swiggin', leather-clad rock pig hell-bent on inebriated devastation into the stroller-pushing, diaper-changing, post-yuppie familial-minded whitey douche bag of the type that I'd venomously mocked for years.
Ten years ago, you were likely to find me staggering out of the men's room of the Continental on St. Mark's Place, needlessly picking a fight with a fellow patron after too many beers, while the Pleasure Fuckers or Nashville Pussy were busily blasting away onstage, giving me the shrill case of Tinnitus I grapple with today. Suddenly, I've become that prototypical dad, vainly attempting to distract my toddlers in the back seat from whiney hysterics with rousing renditions of the "ABC" song. In the past, I got blind drunk with members of Killing Joke and Firewater, spilled an entire pint of beer on J.G. "Foetus" Thirlwell (which I still haven't lived down) and dragged a friend home after he passed out at a Buzzcocks show at Irving Plaza (later to throw up in the cab ride home). But after this weekend, I feel like I've crossed the rubicon and become Clark Griswald. There's still spillage and puke in my life, but it's of a decidedly different variety.
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