rubber-necking

Technically, it was real early Sunday morning. But, like most good Americans, I'm not too keen on technical details, and instead will simply refer to it as Saturday night to avoid unneccesary confusion. At 2:06 AM, heading south on Route One, aka Richmond Highway, we passed what I, at the time, thought was the most beautiful sight ever.

Sarah was driving us back from seeing The Panic Room at Hoyts Potomac Yard. I saw the roadside spectacle first, and astonished, said something like, "Whoa. Sarah look."

She turned her attention away from the road and the traffic ahead of us, risking her very own life, and possible costly damage to her motor vehicle, to see what I was talking about. And there, to our left, at a gas station on the other side of the street was the beautiful sight. Perhaps, the most beautiful one ever.

A big white, Oldsmobilish car was parked in front of one of the pumps, presumably filling up on gas. Now, the type of car is very important here to visualize this correctly. For a brief moment, we shall concern ourselves with the technical. Had it been one of those newer egg-shaped cars, it might not have been so cool a sight. But, this was an old-school car, back from the days when cars had edges and surfaces you could sit on when stuck somewhere. A huge flat trunk. And a huge flat front hood. Sometimes the term "low rider" is used to describe this particular style of motor vehicle.

Anyways, a woman was breaking it down on top of the trunk. And when I say breaking it down, I don't mean breifly standing on top of the car, shaking her ass for a few seconds, before losing her balance and jumping down. This woman was doing a pole dance without a pole. She was jamming out, oblivious to Route One traffic, to the bright lights of the gas station. She was just rocking and I was so amazed and in love with this sight, and I wanted my camera. She was dancing before we approached, and still dancing after we had passed, and she was no loner even visible in awed background glances. There is something so beautiful when someone dances and they just don't care what anyone thinks - dancing like no one in the world is watching. No one really dances that way, though. Everyone pretends that they don't care, but just about every one does, and here was one who didn't - someone special, having the time of her life on top of this big old car.

After passing the sight, I wanted to write down what time it was, so that I could remember this moment. Sarah thought that I was weird and did not share my opinion that that was the most beautiful sight in the world. After writing down the time, 2:06 on the back of the CityPaper, I thought I should write down some other details (type of car, name of gas station.) For the life of me, I could not remember the gas station. I asked Sarah, and she said it was a Hess. A Hess?, I said, like why-the-fuck-would-it-have-been-a-Hess,-those-things-don't-even-exist-anymore. Sarah said, "A Hess. Yes. It was a Hess. With the Green and the White. I know what a Hess is." I was sort of doubtful still, even after her bringing in the Green and White, but I wrote it down, and then said out loud the description of the car as I wrote it: "white boat pimpmobile".

"White?," Sarah said. "It was yellow or off-white. It definitly wasn't white."