Nevertheless, at my parents’ insistence, I looked up driving schools in the Yellow Pages and signed up for a course near my house that consisted of one two-hour lesson a week, for six weeks. My instructor was a skinny guy in his midtwenties who had a shaved head that was always peeling from sunburns and who could only have smelled more like marijuana if he’d been made of it. The training vehicle was a mid-’80s tan Nissan that had working brakes on the passenger side; he often got his jollies slamming them on for no reason and then between wheezing laughs saying, “You were all like ‘I’m in control of the car’ and then I hit the brakes and shit and you were all like ‘Whaaaat?’ ” During one lesson, he had me drive him to “a buddy’s house,” then disappeared inside for half an hour; when he emerged he was so high he couldn’t remember the way back to the driving school. We ended up driving around aimlessly for forty minutes while he told me about his life’s goal, which was to prove that humans and sea lions could coexist on the beach. His plan centered on “eating a bunch of fish in front of them, so that, you know, they can see that we like fish, too.”
Still, I managed to glean some driving knowledge from the course. So, one overcast Saturday morning in early October, I hopped into the passenger seat of my dad’s silver 1986 Oldsmobile Brougham and we headed for the Clairemont Mesa DMV to take my driver’s test.
“You excited?” my dad asked.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess? This is your independence right here. You get a license, you can take this car and never come back if you wanted.”
“I could do that without a license,” I said.
“No you couldn’t, because it’d be illegal.”
“Well, technically, so would taking your car and never coming back. That’s grand theft auto,” I said.
“Okay, let’s just both shut up until we get to the DMV.”
A few minutes later we pulled up to the tan one-story government building, which looked like the place where happiness went to die. Like most sensible Americans, my dad hates the DMV, and when we entered the lobby to find it packed to the gills with sweaty, tired, impatient people, he started nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot and biting his fingernails.
“Look at this fucking place. Everyone smells like dog shit, standing around like they’re in Russia waiting for a loaf of fucking bread. Why the fuck am I here? You’re the one taking the test.” A minute later: “That’s it. I can’t do this. You’re on your own,” and just like that he took off for the exit. Before I could even respond he was sitting on a bench outside, reading the paper.
After a few minutes in line, I was handed a number by a morbidly obese receptionist. I sat down in the waiting area, which was filled with teenagers and the oldest people I had ever seen in my life. Thirty minutes later my number was called.
When I returned to the administration desk, I was greeted by a tan Korean man in his late forties wearing a white lab coat.
“Halpern, Justin?” he said, reading off a chart.
“I prefer to go by Justin Halpern,” I joked.
He stared at me silently for a couple seconds. “This way,” he said, then walked out a set of double doors and into the parking lot.
When we got into the car I tensed up. I hadn’t been nervous before, but sitting in the driver’s seat of my dad’s Oldsmobile, without him in it, made me think for the first time about how exciting it would be if I were actually able to drive somewhere on my own. I could drive to movies, or school, or even on a date . . . and dates were where hand jobs happened. The array of opportunities flooded my mind, and I couldn’t focus on the DMV examiner’s nasal voice as he barked directions at me. I was gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles cramped, and every time he’d give me a direction, I repeated it back to him like we were doing an Abbott and Costello routine.
“Left here,” he said.
“Left here?”
“Yes. Left here.”
“Left here.”
“Stop that,” he snapped.
The low point of the test came when I tried to merge onto the freeway. In a panic, I drifted onto the shoulder, doing twenty-five miles an hour. “SPEED UP AND MERGE!” the examiner shouted. “OH MY GOD, SPEED UP AND MERGE.” I had a feeling I’d failed—a feeling confirmed when I pulled back into the DMV parking lot and my administrator could only manage to spit, “YOU ARE . . . FAIL.”
He got out of the car and slammed the door. I was mortified; any excitement I had about getting my driver’s license evaporated immediately, and I decided once again that getting my license didn’t really mean anything. After all, you don’t need a license to eat pizza and watch old movies.
“It’s not a big deal,” I told my dad in the parking lot. “Honestly, I don’t really even care. I’ll just take it again sometime.”
“Son, you’re the only sixteen-year-old I’ve ever met who doesn’t give a shit that he failed his driver’s test. What do you think that says about you?”
“I’m levelheaded.”
“That ain’t what it says,” he said, shaking his head.
In the days that followed, I didn’t tell any of my friends that I’d failed my test; it was still too sore a subject.
That Friday, as I sat next to Aaron while we copied each other’s answers before our first-period English class, a shadow fell on my desk. I looked up to see a classmate named Eduardo standing over me. I could count on one hand the number of times Eduardo had spoken to me in my life, but he’d made quite an impression. He was tall and thick, with slicked-back black hair that always looked like he’d just gotten out of a pool. He was also the only kid in our entire eleventh grade who had a real mustache. Those of us who were developed enough to even have facial hair grew thin, wispy mustaches generally associated with child molesters. But Eduardo’s looked like a push broom, and it was terrifying. I only could assume he was there for one thing.
“Do you want to copy my homework?” I asked, handing him a piece of paper.
“What? Fuck nah. I do my homework on time. That’s racist, fool,” he said.
“Sorry, I was just trying to—”
“You know my cousin Jenny?” Eduardo interrupted.
“Jenny who?” I asked. There were lots of Jennys at our school, and I wanted to make sure I committed no further missteps in this conversation.
“Jenny Jiminez. She’s in your public speaking class, fool.”
“Jenny Jiminez is your cousin?” I was surprised. Jenny was sweet, and she had absolutely no facial hair.
“I’m Mexican. Everyone is my cousin.”
“Ha! Look who’s racist now . . .” I trailed off when Eduardo didn’t even crack a smile. “Yeah, I know her. She’s cool,” I added.
“She likes your gumpy ass,” he said.
And, with that, Eduardo retrieved from his pocket a small comb with a tiny wooden handle, ran it through his mustache exactly twice, then returned it to his pocket as he walked back to his seat.
“You should ask Jenny to homecoming,” Aaron said, once Eduardo was a safe distance away.
“Yeah, right. I’m not going to homecoming,” I said.
I hadn’t gone to one dance in my entire high school career. I was six foot tall and a hundred and twenty pounds. When I danced, I looked like a praying mantis on fire. And besides, I already had plans for the Friday night of homecoming weekend: I was going to have Aaron over to watch Predator and Predator 2.
“Well, if you ask her, you guys can come with me and my date,” Aaron said.
“What?” I said in disbelief. “You have a date for homecoming? When did you do that?”
“I asked Michelle Porter a couple days ago in math class. She said okay.”
“I didn’t even know you liked Michelle Porter.”
“I’ve told you before that I thought she was nice and she has big titties,” he said.
“Dude. There is a huge difference between saying someone is nice and that they have big titties, and asking them to a dance without t
elling me, okay?” I snapped back.
“What is your problem? Why aren’t you happy for me?” he asked.
Aaron was right. I should have been happy for him and I knew it, but I felt angry and betrayed. His burgeoning social life was putting me to shame. Now, the thought of staying home and watching movies on the night of the homecoming dance made me feel like a total loser. I had to make a move.
“Fine. Then I’ll ask Jenny to the dance,” I said, in maybe the least confident way I have ever said anything.
“Well, if she says yes, then you guys can ride with us,” Aaron replied.
“I don’t want to ride in the back of your mom’s minivan with my date, dude.”
“Two seconds ago you didn’t even want to go! I was just trying to be nice ’cause you don’t have a license, asshole.”
“I’ll get my license. Also, I failed my first driver’s test last week, and I’m telling you that now because I tell you things because we’re friends and I don’t just spring stuff on you,” I spluttered.
As I walked home from school later that day, I realized I’d set myself two intimidating goals to accomplish in the next three weeks: asking a girl to a dance for the first time ever and passing my driver’s test. I decided to start with the less daunting of the two: getting my license. Unbeknownst to me, my dad had already put a lot of thought into the problem.
Around 3:30 that day, I walked in the door to find him home from work early, and in his “action” sweatpants, which he usually only breaks out when he’s trying to kill an animal in the backyard or perform some feat of strength around the house. They were grey, like most of his others, but they sported blue and yellow stripes down the sides and elastic around the ankles, presumably for aerodynamic purposes. As soon as I entered the living room, he stared me down.
“You, my friend, are going to learn how to drive because I am going to teach you how to drive,” he said, the veins in his neck already starting to bulge.
My dad approaches teaching like it’s a fight. He sees his students as opponents, and he pummels them with one piece of information after another until they’re thoroughly disoriented and confused. Once the fight starts, no tapping out is allowed. He ordered me to drop my backpack and follow him to my brother’s old GMC truck, parked in our driveway. He opened the passenger door for me like a very angry chauffeur, got behind the wheel himself, and nanoseconds later we were screeching up the street.
As he put the car into second gear, I made a troubling observation. “This is a stick shift,” I said.
“Well done.”
“But I don’t know how to drive a stick. I learned on an automatic,” I said, as he aggressively shifted gears.
“You remember when you were six or seven and we went to visit Aunt Naomi? We went to that pool with all the diving boards and you wanted to jump off of it, but you were too scared?”
“Yes.”
“You remember what I did?”
“Yes. You carried me to the highest diving board in the entire place, grabbed me by the back of my swim trunks, and hurled me into the water.”
“I tossed you off that thing like a sack of fuckin’ potatoes,” he chuckled as he stared out his window, reminiscing.
“What’s your point?” I said.
“After that you went apeshit, jumping off every board in the place. You learn stick shift with me, you won’t give two shits when you take the test in an automatic with some asshole in a lab coat. Make sense?”
“No.”
“Too fucking bad,” he said.
We drove to the parking lot of a nearby Circuit City, where he pulled the keys from the ignition and we switched seats. He gave me a quick overview of the gears and then spent the next hour screaming numbers at me, trying to train me to shift gears. “Three! Four! Six! There is no fucking six! Pay attention! Back to three!” I never even turned the car on.
Every day for the next two weeks, my dad went to work at six in the morning so he could leave early, come home, and give me a driving lesson before sunset. He began each lesson by announcing a theme for the day. Among them were “A car is a murder weapon,” “Announce your presence with fucking authority,” and my personal favorite: “Your mother is bleeding to death.”
He said this late one afternoon as I pulled the truck out of the driveway. “If the shit goes down and you need to be across town in ten minutes without breaking the law, can . . . you . . . do it?” he added, lifting his eyebrows.
“I would just call 911 if that happened.”
“Right. That’s a fair point. But just bear with me, okay?”
“Okay, but that’s not the kind of driving I’m going to have to do for the test.”
“No. But I’m not teaching you to pass the test. I’m teaching you how to drive. Driving is not always a stroll through the woods with your pants down. Now, I want you to get from here to Clairemont in less than ten minutes. No illegal shit.”
“Clairemont’s ten miles away. I don’t—”
“Clock starts in three, two, one!” he yelled, looking at his watch.
“Dad. This is not a helpful driving lesson.”
“Nine fifty-nine, nine fifty-eight, nine fifty-seven, CLOCK IS RUNNING GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO!” He kept screaming until finally I jammed the car into reverse, then back into first gear, and gave the gas pedal everything I had as we headed up the street.
I raced through the suburban streets of our neighborhood and toward the 5-North freeway that led to Clairemont. With the exactitude of the clown-faced, wheelchaired psychopath in the Saw movies, my dad explained the rules of the game: I wasn’t allowed to exceed the speed limit, so in order to reach our destination in time, whenever I encountered a yellow light I should gun it, and whenever I approached a red I should decide quickly whether to wait it out or turn and take another route. Periodically my dad would scream how much time I had left, along with a new imaginary scenario that might be responsible for my rush.
“Six-thirty mark! Your buddy has kidney stones and he’s in incredible pain!” he yelled as I hit the gas to make it through a yellow light.
I could feel sweat beginning to build on my forehead and my heart was racing.
“Three minutes! Your wife’s car broke down in a bad neighborhood and she’s afraid she’s going to be sexually assaulted!”
“Stop! You’re not helping,” I yelled back as I weaved in and out of traffic toward the freeway exit for Clairemont. I gunned it past a semi in the exit lane and whizzed down the on-ramp. I just had to drive up hilly Balboa Avenue and I’d be in Clairemont. I figured I had about a minute left. There was one light halfway up the hill that stood between me and victory, and at the moment it was green, but I was still three hundred yards away. I kept waiting for it to turn yellow, but even a hundred yards away it remained green. Afraid it would turn yellow before I got close enough to race through, I started slowing down.
“What are you doing? It’s green,” my dad said, pointing at the light.
“I know, but I think it’s going to turn yellow,” I said, brushing sweat from my eyes.
“But it ain’t. You’re almost there. Come on now.”
I hit the gas, but just as I did the light finally turned yellow. I panicked, convinced I was still too far away to get through it safely, but driving too fast to stop in time. Paralyzed by indecision, I froze, my foot leaden on the gas pedal. As the light turned red, our truck raced into the intersection and toward an oncoming Nissan hatchback. My dad reached over, grabbed the wheel, and pulled it hard toward him, causing the truck to jerk right and narrowly miss a collision.
“I can’t believe you grabbed the wheel. I can’t believe you grabbed the wheel,” I said, mumbling like an insane person, once I’d hit the brakes and pulled over.
“You weren’t doing anything. I had to do something,” he said.
I wiped my face dry with my T-shirt. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry,” I said, feeling embarrassed at my incompetence.
“It’s all right,?
?? he said.
By the end of the second week of my dad’s driving school, I felt prepared to retake the state test, even if he wasn’t convinced that I’d be able to get my future four-year-old son to the emergency room before he hemorrhaged to death. I had scheduled a second test, and felt like I had a real shot at getting my license this time, but my dad had been working me so hard I’d mostly forgotten that the end goal was being able to drive to homecoming. With the dance now only a week away, I realized I had to start working on the second part of my plan: landing a date.
Eduardo had said his cousin Jenny liked me, but then Eduardo had also told me once that he was taking woodshop so that he could “build a wooden knife and stab you, fool.” I thought Jenny was cute, but I’d never asked a girl out before, and the thought of getting rejected—coupled with the threat of being stabbed with a shoddily made wooden knife for disrespecting Eduardo’s cousin—was concerning. I decided to talk it over with Aaron at lunch the Monday before the dance.
“He never ended up making that knife. He made a bird feeder for his abuela,” Aaron said as he wolfed down an avocado sandwich.
“Still, it doesn’t make me trust him,” I said.
“Just talk to Jenny. Wait for the right time, then ask.”
“But I don’t want to ask her if she doesn’t like me. What do you think I should look for? Just eye contact and stuff like that?”
“Dude. I eat lunch with you every day and masturbate like ten times a week. I have no fucking clue. Just ask her.”
Later that afternoon, I walked into my public speaking classroom, sat down behind Jenny, and waited for the right moment. I’m not sure how I thought the right moment would make itself known, but apparently it never did. In fact, I was so nervous at the prospect of asking her out that I couldn’t even talk to her about class-related things. At one point, we had to break into small groups to formulate our arguments for and against legalizing drugs. When Jenny asked me to contribute, I said, “I like drugs, but also I don’t like them,” then immediately got up and walked out of class to the bathroom, where I paced around for a couple minutes to make it seem like I’d actually left the room for a purpose.