FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 19, 2003, 11:30 a.m.

We Are American

BARNES PLACE (ATLANTA, GEORGIA) - We are American. We bought an S.U.V. yesterday. A midnight blue Ford Escape. My guilt is overcome by the excitement that riffles through my body as I inhale the new car smell, overcome by the thrill of power pulsing through me as I step down on the accelerator. The seats are leather, and I wonder how many baby pigs it took to provide for my comfort. I can hardly contain my joy - we now have intermittent wipers, cruise control, and rear window defrost - the niceties in life that remind we are American.

Tony thought we should get something a little larger, and really liked the leather seats. You know, he said, we have two dogs now. And, he insisted on the leather seat option, because, as he said, "With the dog hair..." You know the hair of a 10-pound dachshund is just a bitch to deal with. It also had a moon roof, which, I think, just says style and class and freedom to unleash while you're on the road.

I was really torn up over the leather seat option. The other Escape on the lot we looked at had an expandable luggage rack on the roof, which folds down over the tailgate and becomes a bike rack (!). I really liked that, but it didn't come with a moon roof, or the leather seats. "We never take our bikes anywhere," Tony said. "We don't have a bike rack," I pointed out. In the end, I succumbed to the leather seat/moon roof option. Besides, it was only $6 more a month for the next more-than-half-a-decade-when-I'm-almost-40.

So now we are poor, and I find a bit of sadomasochist comfort in knowing that if we loose the house over the car, we can at least live in the car. With our two ten-pound dogs. At the dealership, Tony got all dramatic, acting like we were making a big purchase or something. It was wearing on my nerves, and I had to point out, "We don't f*cking own it - we're just hanging ourselves out to dry for the next six years."

But it was time to join the rest of America and have a car payment once again. My lesbian mechanic, the bearded Margie (who worked on army tanks in Vietnam and now proudly calls herself Mrs. Goodwrench) said to me the last time I had it serviced, "Timothy, the Sexy Chevy is not looking so sexy." She reviewed my maintenance records - which are impeccable - and pointed out that I should not have to be spending that kind of money for the miles I had on my 1993 Chevy Corsica. "It's time, Timothy," she said. "It's time."

So there we were, in the North Georgia Mountains. The leaves were transforming before our eyes. There was a crispness in the air that feeling and smelling of fall. And on the Ford Dealership message board flashed, "0% Financing - 62 months" That's what sucked us in. And while we didn't get 0% financing (the rebate option was more beneficial), we decided, after rocking for a while in the Southern rockers sitting on the porch of the dealership, overlooking a harbor of new cars, that buying a car is painful. And it will be just as painful next spring when, if we don't bite the bullet now, we most definitely will be in a position where we need to buy a car. Rocking there, the fall breeze delivering us scents of the harvest, we decided to take the blow, not look back, and join the force of American Imperialism.

And so, I hope we can meet sometime soon - before the new car scent goes away - and you can ride with me as my passenger in my midnight blue Ford Escape with intermittent wipers. And together, with Tony in the back seat with the dogs, we can enjoy every penny that we put into this Atlanta necessity. Naked. Because we can no longer afford to buy clothes.

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