Shifting Gears By Clay Taylor

It was late at night and there was only the road. We were somewhere just north of Dallas on some two-lane truck route gunning towards Amarillo and then onwards to I-40 West. My two companions had been asleep for hours, and I was the only one awake. Tweaked on Adderall, coffee, and cigarettes, I needed something to keep me grounded. But there was nothing. My mind was racing out of control, and I was alone with my truck.

It was a terrible solitude. Flat, desolate blackness extended in every direction as far as the eye could not see. Without even the faintest light from the moon, there was no way to know what I was missing. In my head, I pictured an alien dreamscape more bizarre than Dalí had ever dared to paint. I knew reality was probably far less glamorous, but I needed a fantasy to keep me entertained and focused. The road was starting to get to me. As time dragged on, the dotted yellow lines began to look like bullets. I felt a strong urge to dodge them. But there was no way of escaping this terrible onslaught. My palms started to sweat. I longed more than anything for a turn. A dip. Hell I’d even settle for a bump. But nothing changed. Endless monotony. I started to wonder if we would ever reach civilization at all. Never before in my life had I been so far out in the middle of nowhere. And never in my life had I been so far from the cops.

I was totally free. There were no speed limits. There were no traffic lights. There weren’t any signs at all. Just an endless stream of passing telephone poles, giving the road the appearance of a runway. I decided to take off. I nudged the accelerator just a little at first and then rammed it to the floor. I was all in. I held the wheel tightly and leaned forward to watch the road more carefully. The speedometer began to climb. Eighty-five. Ninety. Ninety-five. Ninety-seven. Ninety-nine. And then a roar. The transmission downshifted and the engine revved high. Just shy of a hundred miles per hour, and I could go no faster. But it wasn’t because my engine lacked the power. There were plenty of horses to do the job. Something was holding me back. And I was furious. It was the goddamned computer. My transmission was being controlled by a machine. Just like the bell that sounds when your seatbelt isn’t buckled, this onboard policeman was installed by the good people at Chevy to keep me safely under control. I could do nothing about it, so I let off the accelerator, eased down to eighty, and lit another cigarette. I would have to learn to limit my romantic expectations. Jack Kerouac is dead. A tank of gas costs over fifty bucks. And the days of joyriding are over.

I was disappointed. But my disappointment in circumstances such as these is constant and to some degree expected. In this age of modern material comfort, society has lost its appetite for raw physical danger. Everything has been wrapped in bubble wrap to protect us from ourselves. Even our cars. What’s worse, we’ve substituted the actual thrill of exhilarating experiences for the vicarious experiences of others. We stare at the screens of our computers, of our televisions, and of our cell phones and suck down Huxley’s soma and forget what it feels like to take risks. And the youth are the ones who suffer most. No longer can we push the limits of our world to find our place and discover our character.

Freedom in modern America, it seems, is shrinking faster than Bush’s approval rating. Take two steps out of line and there are satellites relaying your exact location to the nearest authorities, who are perched, waiting to run you down like dogs. Even out in the middle of fucking nowhere, you aren’t free. If it’s not the cops, it’s something else. But I won’t stand for it. I refuse to give in so easily. Right then and there, I vowed that my next car would be a stick shift.