Everyone likes a fast car. Everyone is happier to see a BMW Uber pull up to take you to the airport instead of a Nissan Cube. Although typically car fanaticism is supposed to be more of a masculine obsession, the fairer sex does take kindly to pretty cars. If I had a penny for every time I have been asked, “So how many girls have you picked up using your car?”, I would rival some presidential candidates in net worth. However, to give you the same answer I’ve given everyone, it’s none. For the past two Annual Porsche Owner awards, I’ve bagged the Least Speeding Tickets per year (0) and Least Girls Picked Using a Car(also, 0) awards. A workman is only as good as his tools but the tools don’t matter if the workman is a tool. To give you a brief idea about my insufferable stupidity and unprejudiced intolerance, allow me to delight you with a few anecdotes.

Friday night, Bellevue downtown. I’m out to get some supplies for a house party. So I pull up at an intersection, right in front by the crosswalk. Bellevue downtown is no different from any other downtown on a Friday night. Plenty of very well dressed men and women drunk out of their minds, stumbling into cabs and Ubers. This night being the same, I put the car in neutral and stood there idling. Along cometh a bevy of beautiful ladies, supremely drunk and shouting and reveling across the crosswalk. One of them ambles closer to my car and proceeds to tap my right headlight. Thoroughly amused and grinning ear to ear, I gave a light prod on the accelerator, which I think the car would have wanted to do, to acknowledge the affection. After which she giggled and proceeded to pet the bonnet and wink at me. It has been 17 years since anyone has winked at me. And 26 since a girl has done it. For some godforsaken reason, I think to myself, how would the car wink? And then I did it. I flashed her with the high beams. Imagine being so inebriated that you can’t open your eyes and then someone decides to take a picture of you with one of those Men In Black memory flashing devices followed by a blinding freight train. No deer in headlights must know her pain.

Using the XKCD font for any graph makes it 147% more plausible.

Being such a smooth operator, I am always surrounded by a party of pretty girls all the time. Half the statement is untrue. Actually the other half isn’t really true either. But, not everything can be attributed to my lack of game. I was picking up a “very dear friend” from Seattle downtown for a coffee date of sorts. Anyone who has ever been to Seattle knows that downtown is basically a hill that drains into the ocean. The roads are so irrationally inclined, Tom Cruise is shooting Mission Impossible 6 at the corner of Spring and 3rd where he’s rock climbing while chased by an angry mackerel. So I pull up to a light on a 45 degree incline and I put the clutch half down, car in 1st and pull up the handbrake and hold it so that I don’t roll onto the pickup truck behind me. (Why is there a pickup truck behind me all the time?) At this point, the girl visibly clenches and grabs on to the sides of the seat, palpitating. I’m assuming vertigo, so I inquire patiently. “What? I don’t want to fly out when you release the nitrous boost!!”. If I had any more arms, I would have facepalm-ed myself into the ocean. How one lives to be 25 and not know what a handbrake is, is beyond me.

And now, the best for the last. Since I’m a vintage old school “nice guy”, I always finish last. So when a extremely hot friend of a friend calls me asking if I want to pick her up after work for dinner, I seldom refuse. I diligently reach and pick her up. Obviously she’s celebrated “Beer Friday” with much gusto. But I’m still optimistic. Until. “Hey, you wanna see my pedicure?” Best. Opening Line. Ever. And I go, “Sure why not?”. And she takes her sneakers off and puts her feet on my pristine, immaculate dashboard.

The horror.

The white rage.

The feeling that I might spontaneously combust.

I have never been a guy who asks for much but I was praying that there be an ejector button under the gear knob. Flush with disdain and wrath, I replied, “Cute butterflies. And is that a deer?” WHO DRAWS A DEER ON THEIR TOE NAILS!!!

If wishes had wings

Thankfully, I distracted myself by driving sharply. And she started asking me about the car. Ah, I can do this. I calm myself down and start talking about the stiffened suspension, low center of gravity and rear wheel drive. And my favorite bit of road around the city comes around, the usually empty entrance to the freeway where I can really give it the beans. And I gladly do. There is a splitting silence in the car overwhelmed by the bellowing twin exhausts. And then she goes, “Omg. I’m so turned on right now!!”.

Momentary pause…

“So as I was saying, the drive-train delivers the power to the rear wheels leaving the front wheels to do all the steering. This helps to…”

You may call me a intolerant imbecile. Someone with no flair for the opposite sex. And you would be right. I don’t know how to pick a girl at a traffic intersection (clearly). I’m not swinging my car keys at bars. And according to a NYC cab driver, I look less Indian and more Mediterranean, which in hindsight, possibly wasn’t a compliment as I had imagined it to be. Point is, just like the German engineers who made it, the Porsche never fails to deliver and impress. But, if you think I can comprehend why someone paints their feet full of wildlife, you are thoroughly mistaken.

Customary pretty photo

<This is part of a small series of posts I’ve been meaning to write about my (mis)adventures with my car. It is not in any way supposed to be pompous, grandiose and other synonyms. It’s something unique and I get asked about the car more than I’m asked about myself, so I thought I’d make it a series.>