Ain't Talkin' Bout Love

We reached the third day of our journey and, to be honest, things were not going well. The long stretches of Kansas farmlands revealed I would not be marrying the woman sitting next to me. Candy wanted to accompany me on this trip to Reno to attend a buddy's wedding. Why did I think this would be okay? My decision became clear in my mind to break off any further interactions as soon as we got back home to New York.

We started with disagreements over music. She insisted Sammy Hagar was a better frontman for Van Halen than David Lee Roth. As petty as that may sound, we debated this for over half an hour.

"Come on, really, "Ain't Talkin Bout Love" against any Hagar sung tune," I firmly stated.

Candy shook her head,

"Yeah, a good tune, no doubt, but let's be honest, I can't understand most of the lyrics he is singing. It is not only that song either. Words matter, Jim. Words matter."

"If we are truthful, Candace, Eddie Van Halen matters, and everything else is secondary, but David Lee Roth brings the vibe and energy. Sammy Hagar was just a stand-in."

The great Van Halen debate became a small piece of the puzzle that I constructed in my mind.

On day one, I tried to stop myself from picking at her. When she put her whole hand in our McDonald's sack and started eating the fries before our selections got properly divided, I turned a blind eye. I always cringed when people place their hands on others' food without asking. Am I nitpicky? At least she didn't sample my shake and burger before I did.

For most of day one, we played roadside scavenger hunt. The game Candy introduced involved spotting discarded items alongside the road. Each item had a point total. A bucket was worth 5000 points, rope for 10,000, clothing 15,000, and furniture 50,000 with numerous other things with values. She started adding new ones throughout the day, and to say the least, she wiped me out.

We got embroiled in another lengthy debate about whether an inflatable pool raft is furniture. I insisted it is, and she wasn't budging that it was a toy worth only 20,000 points. The 50,000 for furniture would have put me in a tie. I lost interest after this negotiation, but she kept at it for hours. Her competitive nature was in full view for me to absorb, more potent than I would ever want in a relationship.

We slept in the same bed on day one, but on day two the next motel only had a room with two beds. I grabbed one of them and dozed off into a deep slumber. Not to say I did not want to lay with her, which would have led to more sex, but my legs and back ached. She acted perturbed. I assured her I would be a new man in the morning. Before this trip, we slept together a few times, and I found her to be sexual napalm. She brought the house down in the sack, which sent me searching at the bookstore on how to handle this kind of unbridled passion.

I am an early riser and looked over at Candy rolled on her side facing the opposite direction. She let out voracious snores with intermittent log sawing lip flapping out-breaths. I couldn't interrupt that cycle. She might be a victim of undetected sleep apnea, and I might mess her up and throw her off her game. But if I woke her up early, she would need a nap later in the day. I could relax in a blissful moment of peace, a driving trance.

When we made it to the Nevada state line, we were cruising at eighty-five miles an hour on Highway 50, "the loneliest road." The stereo was blasting out a 90s musical extravaganza with the likes of Alice in Chains which for some reason made me depressed. The nineties happened so long ago when times appeared simpler. I asked Candy to put on country music but not any of the stuff that sounds like bad rock and roll. Bands that wear cowboy hats but try to play a watered-down version of the Eagles or Lynyrd Skynyrd are despicable. I would prefer some simple-minded guitar plucking as we rolled down the long ass straightaway through the Nevada desert.

Candy turned on the satellite radio and found some chick wailing about how an old song reminded her of her ex. She remembered how her man almost ruined her. Ugh. After a minute, I stopped paying attention to the ditty and gazed off into the abyss, the endless nothingness of this road.

I opened the sunroof to feel the air. It blazed outside, feeling like a hairdryer on high. The noise of the wind drowned out the music, so I turned it off completely. I enjoyed the heat over the frigidness of the AC. When I finished sipping at my fountain drink which turned into ice water, I splashed some onto my face.

I drove in silence for what seemed like an hour while Candy finally napped. I cruised in a meditative state I had not experienced in a long time. When she woke up, she acted groggily and reached up and closed the sunroof. Then she made sure the AC got cranked down to 58 degrees.

"How long did I sleep?"

"Oh...at least an hour?"

"Damn...where are we?"

"About 75 miles outside of Reno?"

"I have to go to the bathroom," she whined.

"Can you hold it?"

"I don't think so," she said, looking at me directly.

I glanced at the rear-view mirror and saw nobody behind us, so I pulled over.

"What are you doing?"

"Go pee, here's a napkin."

"I'm not going here."

"Suit yourself, I am."

I proceeded to show her how it is done. Open the back door for privacy and just let it happen. When I finished and got back in, she grabbed the napkin and went outside.

"At a girl."

We were getting close to Reno when I looked over at her because she fixated on a large hawk soaring in the distance.

"I love observing those big birds float through the sky. I wish I was one, maybe in another lifetime. Do you ever wish you could be an animal?" she asked.

"I went whale watching once and experienced how majestic and beautiful they swam," I replied.

"I'd rather be a bird than a fish," she mumbled.

"It ain't a fish Candace, a whale is a mammal, same as you."

Our exit came up, and I put my turn blinker on. Candy glared back at me and said,

"I rather be a bird than a fish."