Everyday Stranger

Compromise, or COMPROMISE?

A relationship is about compromise. Buckets and buckets of it. And sometimes you have to compromise so much that you become compromised. When that happens, the best thing to do is just get drunk. Or pound out a blog. Or call a friend.

The worst thing you can do is get in a car together.

Partner Unit and I do not ride together to work, even though we work in the same building. This, since we take turns-one of us works late, the other leaves around four to take care of the dog. Due to my increased worries over the next redundancy process and absolutely inability to be focused and motivated (for God's sake, just tell me if I have a job or not! If I do, I will work it like a prostitute at a political convention! If not, I will take my slinky and go home!) , I have been the one taking care of the dog. But tonight Partner Unit has customers over from China and must take them out tonight for a posh meal to impress them. So he will be taking a taxi into town, and he did not drive to work.

He rode in with me.

It's like being in a small confined space with Satan.

He does not ride with me when I am driving. Ever. After many vicious rounds of fighting (we are talking relationship-ending fights, a few times) we simply decided that if we had to share a car, he would drive.

I hate the way he drives-80 year old grandmas whiz past us at 30 kmph and give us the finger when he drives. He hates the way I drive-I have already driven the 80 year old grandmas off the road and into a ditch in an effort to get them out of my way and am picking the bumper of their blue Volvo out of the grille of my VW.

So I knew it was going to go badly. And it did. Right off the bat, we got into the car and he turns to me and says: "God, I knew it was going to be a long day. And now I have to ride with you."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" I demand.
"Nothing. Your driving just scares me. I am scarified of your driving."
"Scarified is not a word, dear."
"It is when you drive."
"Look, I don't appreciate this. You need a ride, fine, but don't make fun of my driving, it just makes me angry."
"Fine, sorry. Just remember that the roads may be slippery this morning. That's all I will say."
"Fine."
"Oh, and keep your distance from the car in front of you."
"Fine. Now shut up."
"See? I can ride with you and not criticize your driving."
"Shut up."
"Love you."
"Shut up."

We start driving. He nervously tugs on his seatbelt repeatedly, making it lock and unlock. This annoys me no end, since it is 6:45 in the morning and the only other company out here are some constipated-looking cows in the fields. There is no one else out here.

"You're doing fine, honey. This is a good speed." he says, as though I am in danger of a cow running out in front of my car and killing us all. But unless the cow is wearing jet packs a la Wile E Coytoe and armed with an itty bitty pink umbrella, we are under no imediate threat.
"Patronize me at your peril, man. I am not kidding." I reply tersely.

We click on the radio, and it comes on talking about the news. Now, I generally hate Swedish radio, and I hate their DJs even more. One of them came up with the game "Scream and Be Rich." Listeners are asked to call in and scream in an effort to win money. By the time those of us driving in our cars to work have suffered through what we had hoped would be a calming ride into the office, we have to be scraped off the top of our cars with a putty knife and double our doses of thorazine.

We listen in silence, and I decide to try out my conversation skills. You know, in an effort to forgive and forget. Hey, I am nothing if not a big person. I am still ridiculously pissed off that we had to compromise and that he has spent the ride silently disapproving of my driving. It annoys me no end-I view my car as my personal space. Ordinarily, I would be singing my head off to a CD and fixing my lipstick, but now I am reduced to being nervous about super-speedy cows.

They are talking about a race on the radio, and it doesn't compute to me. It was a ten thousand meter race. Now, I am not a metrics girl, so I have no idea what ten thousand meters is. I know Partner Unit, just over six feet tall, is nearly two meters. So is that 5,000 of him? Laying head to head? I couldn't picture that. 5,000 of my Partner Unit, should I run on him like a race track (very, very tempting at the moment), would go how far? How far is 10,000 meters?

"Wow, ten thousand meters. I can't picture that." I say. "No seriously. That distance has no meaning to me. If I were to run 10,000 meters, where would that get me?"
He looks at me. "The emergency room, honey."

Fucking cheeky bastard. I look at him and fume. He grabs the dashboard nervously.

We don't say another word until we get to the office.

-H.

PS- If you are come here, silent and lurking, then please...sign my guest map! Just beneath my picture, over there on the right. Jim seems to think that my readers are not dedicated enough to want to take 30 seconds and sign my map. Well, I say to you, my darling readers, the kind that do like instant gratification (you go, baby!) and the kind that go for orgasms of the mind (Hats off to you, too, my darlings!), stand up for me! If you lurk here and take a peek at my site, without commenting, without telling me you are here, please sign my Map. Because if you do, then Jim will be terribly sad and humiliated. He will have to re-evaluate his blog and write more about love and relationships. This, in turn, will have him deeply analyze himself. He will realize he is, indeed, Gay. Or a Hare Krishna. Either way, I will triumph.

I am nothing if not vengeful.

Posted by Everydaystranger at September 30, 2003 09:33 AM | TrackBack