If it hadn't happened to me I wouldn't believe it...or...Pondering a Bumper Sticker

Driving home tonight from the talk I found myself behind a creamy Cadillac, a full on pimpmobile with the spoked spare tire attached to the rear of the trunk. It wasn’t the car I noticed first though, not even the fully chromed spare tire assembly. What I noticed was the lips, full, red, and about 10 times actual size. Beneath a streetlamp I was able to read the words above the lips, “I like lipstick”.

In silhouette I could see that the car was full of young men, short hair, twitching around, and I thought of all of the possible endings, if, indeed, the sticker in their rear window, and the part that I could read, was part of a larger body of poetry. For a mile or so I was behind them, partly because it was on my way home, and partly because I was curious. I considered turning on my brights to bring their statement to the world into full view, but decided against. We finally hit a point in the road where our paths parted and, as I changed lanes, I slowed and was able to catch the remainder of their urban poetry, “Around my dipstick”.

Ah, a group of young mechanics who like to cover their dipsticks with wax based lipstick to provide color and prevent corrosion…do you think? I wonder if they, or, more properly, he, the owner of the car, imagines that someday, a beautiful woman, in a hot, candy apple red ‘66 Mustang convertible, will someday be driving behind him and view the sticker as an invitation.

They’ll be approaching an intersection on a slow road just past twilight, and she’ll pull up beside him, hair tossed, cleavage showing, and smile. “So, you like lipstick around your dipstick…”, she’ll say, smiling slowly. “You must be a mechanic.”

“No, I’m an engineering major, but I’m good with my hands.”

“Pull over.” She says this with some authority, and he obeys, nosing the pimpmobile onto the gravel at the side of the road. She pulls in behind him, and as he steps out of his car his eyes reflect light like those of a deer.

“Get back in the car,” she says, untying the silk scarf that is around her neck.

He complies, feeling fear and exhilaration, realizing that he loves being told what to do. He ponders for half a second whether that accounts for his popularity, and then returns to the moment, realizing that the woman is kneeling in the gravel beside his driver’s seat, and that his headlights are fading to nothing in the road before him, and that he has never, ever, been this excited before.

He prays that he won’t come when she touches him - anywhere, but he hopes for it, because if he can get past that first time he could do her for days, with gravel digging into his knees and headlights streaming past. He doesn’t know what he wishes for, but he thinks…hopes, that part of it may come true.