There’s a TV ad where Celine Dion is driving all night across some desolate portion of what looks to be the American Southwest. She’s singing “I drove all ni-i-i-iight” and she’s not singing it quietly. The lyrics suggest she’s driving all night because she can’t wait to see some guy, presumably that guy with the neatly trimmed white beard who’s her husband. Also, the ad implies, she’s got a cool car she loves to drive. I’m not buying it. A woman wouldn’t drive all night. She’d book a flight so she can arrive on her beloved’s doorstep looking washed and cheerful, as opposed to showing up with no sleep and no shower and that sour mouth taste caused by gas-station coffee and worn-out spearmint gum. No woman enjoys driving that much. This is the man’s deal: to shift gears while driving too fast on an open road. They live for this.
Alas, they are living a fantasy, for there is no more open road. The open road is a myth perpetrated by the car industry, which routinely goes around closing off highways and city streets in order to shoot ads featuring vast stretches of open road. These days, only people who drive in the wee hours of the morning, such as bread delivery van drivers and Celine Dion, can make use of five-speed overdrive and rack-and-pinion steering.
Reality does not deter the male driver. The male driver will pretend he is on the Bonneville Salt Flats or the northern reaches of the Kancamagus Highway when in fact he’s on the I-80 on-ramp.
My husband, Ed, routinely makes plans to drive to L.A. from San Francisco, simply because he loves to drive. In his mind, he’s the man in the Saab turbo ad. He pictures himself flying down the Coastal Highway with the top down and the music up, wearing those funny leather gloves with the holes cut out of the back. Somewhere around Milpitas, it dawns on him that a) taking the coast route will add four hours to his drive, b) we don’t own a convertible, and c) people are laughing at the gloves.
Now although the male professes to love driving—to the point where he will waste six hours on a drive that can be flown in one—he must always seek and pursue the shortest possible route to an across-town destination. I give you an actual, unretouched in-car exchange between Ed and our friend Dan:
“You know if you take Clipper Street,” Dan is saying, “you can shave six minutes off the drive.” These minutes go into a special account, where they can be redeemed for chest hair, leather gloves with holes cut out of the back, and other bonus masculinity awards.
“Not this time of day. That preschool lets out, and the whole right lane’s blocked.” Ed is making this up. A man will say anything to avoid being exposed as The Guy Who Doesn’t Know the Fastest Route. This is right up there, humiliation-wise, with being exposed as The Guy Who Asks for Directions. The deepest shame that can befall an American male is for a stranger in a gas station to find out that—Oh my God—you don’t know your way around a neighborhood you’ve never been to.
Meanwhile, Dan’s wife, Wendy, and I are across town in her car, trying to find our way back from a matinee. Viewed from above, our route resembles the adorable and random wanderings of a toddler’s Etch A Sketch drawings. It is not the most direct route to her house or my house or anything at all—save the mental breaking point of our husbands. But we’re fine with it. To a group of women, sitting in a car is little different from sitting in someone’s home, only with wheels and not enough closet space. We get caught up in the conversation and forget about the petty details of navigation, such as west vs. east and the like. Wendy crests a hill. “Is that the ocean? How’d we get here?”
So we park the car and go for a walk on the beach. Meanwhile, Dan and Ed have pulled over and come to blows, adding an extra four minutes and a side trip to St. Luke’s hospital to their drive time.