Car Sessions

And We are Both Naked

I call them sessions because that’s what they feel like. They feel like therapy sessions. Both of us revealing way too much, falling too deep way too fast. Sitting in that car on that spring /summer night trumps all. I mean, it is so good. Orgasmic good. It is better, in the sense of falling into the pits of intimacy hell, than any date in the best low lit perfect ambiance restaurant that Atlanta, DC, NY, Cali can offer.

I have engaged in these multiple times. I am a car session junkie. The cars change. The men change from bad to worst but the feeling remains the same. Typically it begins right as the real date ends. I guess I should have run like hell in the house, in the apartment, wherever but run as fast as I could just to avoid these sessions of nudity. All I know is that when I lay my head on my pillow in the wee hours of that morning all I can remember is the car session. I remember nothing else about that night. I smile and drift off to sleep and am full of hope. I mean, hell, that session is probably the most intimacy I’ve had in months at that point. Windows rolled down whispering in the smell of a warm night, me comfortable in the passenger’s seat, talking and him listening, him talking and me listening. And as soon as I get out of the car the spell is broken and I think “gosh I revealed way too much” and the truth is I probably did, but it’s the nature of car sessions.

Never and I do mean never have I ever gotten honesty from men to match the honesty that I get during car sessions. For every man that I have ever felt any real connection with I can point to when it happened what prompted this completely over the top in sync feeling. Every time a car was involved, stars overhead. If I were asked to surmise the reason why, I would say the answer lives in the nocturnal.

At night, defenses are lowered, maybe even non-existent. As fetuses we took comfort in the dark wombs of our mothers. As adults we curl up in that same fetal position turn out the lights and are able to coax ourselves into a deep sleep. All in the dark. We feel safe. As children we play peek-a-boo. Someone covers our eyes and we think we can’t be seen, that we’ve disappeared. Maybe that’s what takes place in our romantic lives during adulthood. Are we playing grown up peek-a-boo? It’s dark and therefore safe to be honest, safe to share our innermost thoughts, aspirations and fears. For we can’t be seen. It's dark and the street is still (the kind of still that only the night brings) and it feels like the two of us are the only ones in the world. For the duration of that car session we both forget that we are batting for different teams. The presupposed expectations of male/female disappear. He does not have to make sure he is saying everything right in the hopes of, at the least, sex by the end of the week and I don’t have to be skeptical of his every word. We are just two people, both with emotions, insecurities and fears. It’s dark and gothic and we sit in our respective booths and “Bless me Father, for I have sinned…” isn’t what we say but we confess. And here, in that moment, is the only time I truly begin to see the potential of who we could be together. Who me and this man could be, having more moments just like this in and out of said car.

And at the end of the relationship between him and I--(which if there was a car session is probably messy, emotional and unnecessarily painful) I might think that he is the biggest liar, mass manipulator, miserable excuse of a human being but that car session is untouched. I either will not allow myself to believe or that moment much too real for even me to tamper with in anger and disgust but I cannot question what took place during our car sessions. There is something that happens in those minutes sometimes hours that regardless of all the dysfunction we later create, in the midst of lies and broken promises it still doesn’t disrupt what we created in those sessions. I guess it’s just the magic of car sessions. At the end of a very interesting affair, I looked at a young man and then at his car and I couldn’t say I loved him because I wasn’t sure but what I did know I said. “Gosh, I loved that car,” I whispered. He didn’t understand. That’s where the magic happened.

Have any of you experienced the magic of car sessions? Is there a place where this kind of magic happens for you?