Driving With a Drunk During the Apocalypse
There really is no panic quite like the panic of being belted into the backseat of a speeding, swerving car with a confident drunk at the wheel.
First, the sense of denial: “we’re not that far from home and we’ve made it there before.” Which works for about a quarter of the trip — until the car clips a mailbox.
Second, the listening. Whether to reality or an imagined one: The concussion of the minor crash, the hollow thump of the dented front quarter panel. These sounds work on the brainstem to load more adrenaline into the body. And that adrenaline, even as it focuses an alarmed brain, can become almost soothing in its predictability.
Eventually, you’ll make it home or something will happen to stop the forward movement of the car.
A cop, a bar ditch, a blackout.
The panic — for a while — is fun because it breaks up the monotony of being poor and sad and angry. It’s when everyone sobers up that the panic shapeshifts into dread.
Dread isn’t fun at all. Dread brings a different kind of certainty, a swelling awareness, like glimpsing the sign over Dante’s hell that it’s time to abandon all hope. That the car is about to flip over and indeed you and everyone you love is about to rocket head-first through the windshield while you’re the harnessed…
