Fly

In the Summer 1998, I bought a Discman. You know, a Sony Discman, one of those portable CD players. It was a “car” model, for what it’s worth. It included a cassette tape adapter, and some strange shockproof mount that needed to be screwed into your car. The CD player boldly featured at “20 second anti-skip protection buffer”, so you could play a CD, and shake the player like a Polaroid picture for a full 20 seconds before it skipped.

I bought it because I was ready to go on a road trip with my girlfriend. Wait, was she my girlfriend? I don’t know for sure. Perhaps she felt like one back then, but looking back now, I could probably come up with a list of reasons why she was not my girlfriend. Maybe I wanted her to be my girlfriend? Of course, I did. I was in my 20s, I was brash and naive and just plain stupid, and I thought giving people things made them fall in love with you.

I don’t even know how I asked her, or what prompted me to ask her. I don’t even remember if I was going to go anyway, and somehow invited her along. All I know is, “Hey, let’s drive to New York City, and hang out there for a few days…” came out of my mouth…and she enthusiastically said “YES.”

She was from a small town in Ohio, Fremont. Man, I hated that town. It was one of those Ohio towns where everyone knew everyone else, and no one left, or if they did, they always came back for something. Like promise of employment at the brand new Lowe’s or K-Mart. She had never been anywhere in her life except Fremont. Her first big move was to Columbus, to go to Ohio State. We met in an art class, Art 381: Three Dimensional Art. She was an art education major at the time, and really loved photography.

“We could just spend a few days taking photos in the city,” I added. A part of me was saying “Will you just shut up?? Why are you telling her this stuff??” I knew the answer was, “Because I want her to be my girlfriend.” This is what guys do. We say things, we offer things, because we just want someone to like us. It’s ridiculous, it’s stupid, it bases relationships on a false sense of…going on trips, getting stuff…or something like that. I don’t know. Of course, she had kittens upon the mention of photographing New York City, and there was no turning back now.

We talked about the trip, calculated our drive time, where we would stop, what we would eat, etc. It would be about ten to twelve hours driving, depending on what kind of traffic we would hit. We would stay at my sister’s apartment in Manhattan. We had a plan. And we had a car, my 1991 Toyota Celica GT Liftback. She didn’t have a car. She couldn’t drive. Wait, yes she could. But she never wanted to drive, and she never wanted a car. I remember driving her everywhere: to class, to the store, to her parent’s house in Fremont. It was kind of pain in the ass. And now I’ve agreed to drive her to New York City. So she would like me.

The Celica had a cassette tape deck originally, but somehow the sound stopped working. I replaced it with a fancy Blaupunkt unit with a detachable face, the end-all-be-all of security features for in-car stereos at the time. There was a space right underneath the stereo where one could have put a factory CD player. My car didn’t have that, so in that space was a slot for…stuff, or the perfect place to put a portable CD player with 20 seconds of anti-skip protection. I bought that CD player at Best Buy, because I knew we would be driving for a really long time, and we need music. Good music, not the crap that we’d hear on the radio. And hearing stations fade in and out as you drive through cities is pretty damn annoying.

The morning of the drive, I put my small bag in the trunk of my car, and kept all my camera gear in the back seat, just in case I need to take some photos. I set the Discman in the slot-where-the-factory-CD-player-should-be, and hooked up an audio cable to the input of the Blaupunkt deck. That’s right, no need for crappy cassette adapters here! I had a variety of CDs shoved in my center console compartment: The Smiths, The Chemical Brothers, a New Order disc here and there, some Jobim, Depeche Mode…a nice mix of all things alternative-ish. I figured that should keep us occupied for the trip.

I drove to her apartment, and knocked on her door. “Hey! Can you take this bag for me?” Bag? That was a suitcase. Why you needed a suitcase for five days in New York city, I will never understand. Whatever. I had plenty of room in the Celica. She also had a camera bag that she took with her, along with a purse. And some other bag. Fine, it’s cool. As I loaded things into the car, I could hear that voice in my head again, “Why are you doing this? Do you even like her?” I wasn’t even sure if I liked her, but I wanted her to like me. And I don’t know why I wanted her to like me. This is what guys do.

As we left Columbus, I handed her the AAA Triptik that I decided to get, so we could figure out our route. This was how life was before GPS, or Google Maps. I christened her the navigator, and she had to tell me where I was going. “How do you read this thing?”, she said, as she frantically flipped through the booklet. “I told you this was a bad idea,” said that voice in my head. “It’s okay. This is fine. Things are fine. And when we get the New York City, she’ll like me, and everything will be awesome.”

“Oh, hey, I got this new Discman. There are some CDs in here, pick something.”

“Let’s just listen to the radio for now, until we can’t get any stations in anymore…”

She flipped through the presets on my radio. “OH, I LOVE THIS SONG!”

It was “Fly” by Sugar Ray. “Wait, what? You love this song? This song sucks. Maybe she’s just joking,” I said to myself. Then she started singing.

“IIIIIIIIII…JUST WANT TO FLY! PUT YOUR ARMS AROUND ME BABY PUT YOUR ARMS AROUND ME BABY…”

I turned to look at her, and it was like some scene out of a typical teen movie, where a girl is dancing in the passenger seat, and singing, and making motions like she’s being watched, as if a camera was on her, and she had to perform. I guess I was the camera. She was making these weird arm motions. Maybe they did that in the video? I don’t even know. I suppose in the the typical teen movie, this is when I would get into the song, too, and start singing and dancing along.

“And tell me again why you want this girl to like you?”, said the voice in my head. She was annoying as hell. She was an art education major who revealed to me that she didn’t even want to teach art, or anything at all. She was a photographer who didn’t even take good photos. She didn’t drive, mainly because she didn’t want to drive. She couldn’t read a map. She liked Sugar Ray. And I was taking her to New York City, the furthest place from home that she has ever been. Why was I with her? Why was I going on a trip with this girl? Because I was young, and brash, and naive, and stupid. This is what guys do.