In the US, the automobile as a place for sex is nothing new. From the 1950’s on, or earlier, kissing, petting, and snogging in the backseat at a drive-in movie theater was a rite of passage. Now we have the massive, tinted-windowed SUV’s with descriptive language about what sexual adventures may/could/do go on in their backseats.
However, there is also an extensive use of the car that I now only realize in a place where few people drive as often as in the US, and where people use public spaces for these same activities Americans may use a car for.
As soon as I was old enough to have friends who drove cars, it was very clear how the space was personal, completely separate from what was going on outside (only separated by thin plastic glass and fiberglass, but it FELT separate).
The freedom of screaming, playing whatever music, while watching things go by at whatever speed. The car also became, as I discovered I wanted space alone with boys, a place to secretly fondle and figure out if I liked someone “that way”. From my first boyfriends, one who was very respectful but randy, the other a true punk asshole who tried to get me to JUST go hop in the truck while my friends were eating at a diner after a Cure concert and have a quickie, I knew what possibilities existed (cars meant freedom, and also could be threatening… I had difficulty saying no… What, indeed, was a “good girl”?!)
Illicit relationships were possible in the back of the minivan I drove after graduating from Chicago, back in Memphis, and more or less feeling shiftless and without a clear path. The minivan’s size made many things possible, like full, exploratory sex. Cheating on my boyfriend at the time with a married man was the excitement I could handle, for a time, and this man and I managed to further the relationship in both his car and mine and, depending on the location where the car was parked, I became very aware of what in reality was rather quick or fleeting, mundane or unsatisfying.
I realized that often fantasy was better than me simply doing what I could in the car… Sometimes I should have let sleeping dogs lie… seat belts, material of the seats, the distance between the driver and passenger seats, the tint of the windows or lack thereof, and questions: Which places would have fewer pedestrians (many possibilities in a car-bound city like Memphis) and a view (when one wanted some romantic aspect)? Could we please have a NICE view?! Play music or were we environmentally aware and not wanting to leave the car battery running?
One can go so far in a car in a very short time…in terms of distance…around and around, south and north, blowing wind, over-air-conditioned or not, music blaring to cause/create a mood of wistfulness.
The wanderer in the American psyche, the American tradition of riding into the “unknown” and uncharted lands (of native peoples), the “road trip” odysseys of American youth… It was all possible in the car.
And whoever’s car it was had the upper-hand in deciding where to go, in theory. But, I never had the experience that anyone knew where they wanted to go. Just start driving, and we will think as we go. What freedom! And what gets done in the car does not seem to leave the car.
When one leaves the car, especially if it is someone else’s, one leaves the place of action; one can forget what really happened. A privilege, and a distancing element or method. What gets done IN MOTION of the moving automobile? Where was it done? Will one visit the place ever again?
How disjointed an automobile can make me feel now, after not driving for months on end.
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