Writing by Amanda Marbais
Pictured: Aden Lovelace, standing in for his dad, Sean Lovelace
Lucas and Jill had been set up but were unsure about the conversation they would have on the drive. Their date destination was a campground-cookout with mutual college friends. Jill had nothing else going on. Lucas thought she was hot. He picked her up at seven, and launched into the strained conversation typical of both new love and transgressive roadside meetings. Jill tried to break the tension with the introduction of a new pack of Altoids.
They drove fast and she expected talk of cars, raucous beer bashes, and guns. Weren’t down-home men a little bad ass and sweet? She was sort of embarrassed she thought this. Absently, she remembered her DVD of True Blood and her couch.
An hour into the drive, she said, “Beards feel nice.” And she felt weird for saying it. She was thinking of beards, down-home, pancakes, plaid blankets, and rugs by the fire. Perhaps the potential sexiness of wild—untamed wilderness was in her head.
Lucas touched his beard, but did not comment. Instead, he said, “Do you like Fraggles?” The reference seemed to come out of nowhere, but still it put her at ease.
She leaned back, feeling a speed of eighty miles an hour in a Lynchian light. She said “Mmmhhmm”, in a slow way, as if enjoying something like a Golden Delicious Apple. Then she realized her sultriness and felt more awkward. “Fraggles are great,” she said.
He said nothing and the loud car suddenly seemed crowded and pinto-like, the road similar to a blue-screen in a B-movie. She resisted their sexual tension and got lost in cheesy puffs, Grandma’s rocker and its ugly billow of boat-patterned upholstry, the way Nips-the-Dog barked in happiness when she carried Beggin’ Strips. She thought of Fraggles—and the innocuous nature of animals and puppets. Their creepiness. Their autonomy. She struggled for something to preserve the conversation. And, she stopped repeating the mantra—I will not be setup again.
He asked her if she would drive. She realized she had nothing else to say, and she settled into the murkiness of her Cincinnati-childhood and floated there thinking of leap years and her Mom’s delivery of her brother. He offered her gum, turned on Sufjan Stevens, hummed and at times he pointed out the beauty of the highway drive.
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