In Loving Memory of My Favorite Chore

Rational people consider it a chore. Which is why, given the option, they prefer to have it done by machines. 

Makes perfect sense, really. The stooping, the unpleasant discoveries, the cuts to the flesh, the lugging of water to and fro like a fifteenth-century peasant, the sweat.

Who needs it?

I do.

I attribute the fact that I can post about little else aside from Donald Trump, Jason Van Dyke and the NRA to the fact that I don't get to wash my car anymore. It is (or rather, was) therapy.

You see, I live in a development. The kind of place where appearances are carefully monitored and regulated. Everything is the correct shade of beige. I remain surprised we're allowed the unseemliness of setting out garbage cans each week.

With this kind of emphasis, who needs a late middle-aged male getting water and suds everywhere as he bends over to wash the door sills in pants which in all likelihood expose the uppermost portion of his posterior?

That's right—no one.

So I fester.

Robbed of the soapy caresses I delight in bestowing upon my four-wheeled love, I feel....unfulfilled. Less of a man. Something is plainly missing from this relationship.

As a result, I fantasize about the perfect car washing spot. One shielded from the direct rays of the sun by a tall, mature tree bereft of birds, where I can caress her flanks and run my hands over her soft curves and immerse myself in the luxuriant swell of her hindquarters.

A spot where I can longingly rinse away suds and revel in her perfect, shimmering form. A form stilled in eager anticipation of the languorous kisses only the gentlest, most-pliant chamois can provide.

Desiring not to veer into the sordidness of online pornography, I will state that when Ford Motor Co. was in the process of designing the eleventh-generation Thunderbird, it called upon its stylists to wash previous editions, specifically the first.

Ford understood that for their designers to truly grasp that car's lines and shapes and proportions, they had to feel them. Yep. As my corporate partner in car wash porn will freely admit, feeling the car was critical to understanding the design of the car.

As a would-be car designer who had his dreams cruelly snatched away when he couldn't master the complex mathematics required by the field, I want to understand my car.

I want to know its network of planes and surfaces and lines. How and where those features intersect. Where lines are introduced and where they disappear. How and where they curve.

Looking is not enough.

What madness it is to be denied this simple—but essential—pleasure.

And so I submit to the highly-unsatisfying act of having my car washed by a machine. Of having it dried when someone can get to it. Being a good sport, I hand over a tip and force a smile as I take in the smears and water spots which, by their very nature, don't require the attention of the attendant's rag.

I sigh.

It is true that in the context of the world's problems, mine is less than minor. If this is to be my greatest suffering, than I am fortunate, indeed.

And yet it is also true that this cannot continue. I know that somewhere out there is car wash nirvana. A place where me and my beloved can commune in automotive-hygiene bliss.

A place where her chrome can gleam and her paint can glow and the skies are not cloudy all day.