May 31, 2004

My Visionary Indian friend parked his new car out front, and smiling childishly came inside.

“You room smells like ass,” he said grinning, and when I opened my window I saw his orange cat of a car on the street and smiled too. This is his first car.

“Let’s go for a ride,” he said, and because my room really did smell like ass, I quickly grabbed a pair of pants and two minutes later we were speeding across town. The roads were foggy and slick, and the car lunged forward awkwardly. I felt hellishly carsick as the orange hunchback jerked through tight corners.

But I liked the colour and the freshness. “Now all you need is to put an NDP sticker on it,” I said.

We drove through the fog all the way to Woolwich, trying to retrace Saturday’s trip. He got better at shifting gears as we went along and I no longer felt like puking on the orange upholstery.

“Now we have wheels,” he said smiling. “We’re going places!”

I noded, eager to see where his orange cat of a car will take us this summer.