Vehicular Voyeurism

Cars do funny things to the human psyche.

Most people, especially Americans, consider a car a necessity. The majority of us have one, and we use it as our primary mode of transportation. We have a car that we drive everyday to work, to the grocery store, to the movies, to a restaurant. Many of us spend more time in our car than in our homes, and it becomes rather important to us. We simultaneously consider it vital to our existence, and often take for granted its everyday use.

Spending so much time in a vehicle causes us to think of the car as an extension of our bodies. Maneuvering through high-traffic situations means communicating via the “body language” of our driving technique. (And in case you were wondering, tailgating the person in front of you will not cause him/her to go faster so GET OFF MY ASS ALREADY. My car is old enough that I don’t mind slamming on the brakes just to give my insurance company something to do.) When I first got my VW Jetta, I remember thinking the car had a cute ass, and so, by extension, did I. It made me happy. When we start to think of our cars as part of our bodies, it’s easy to imagine that nobody really sees the little human body inside. We relate to other people in terms of their vehicle: “Did you see that SUV just cut off that Camaro?” as if the cars were driving themselves. We sing, we laugh, we talk, and we pretend that our vehicle is one giant poker face.

I have news for you. I watch everyone.

My rearview mirror is my best friend at stoplights. I love to watch the person behind me when they don’t know I’m watching. I always have a pair of sunglasses on hand to disguise my gaze. Is the person watching other people? Does he look happy, sad, confused, stupid? Is he picking his nose? Is he singing at the top of his lungs? I take special pleasure in trying to figure out if he’s listening to the same radio station I am.

Today, as I was driving to work, there was a young man sitting alone in a red car behind me at the light. He reminded me of a young Dr. House: long face, nice eyes, scruffy pseudo-beard, and he looked pissed. He was staring at the back of my head, as most drivers tend to do, but I couldn’t tell if his anger was focused outside his car or inside. He did not move his mouth at all, but every ten seconds or so he would roll his eyes, exasperatedly. It cracked me up every time. I have no idea what he was listening to, or whether or not he just really hated my Alien Fish, but I started to imagine all the things that could possibly cause that awesome House-ian eye roll.

This voyeuristic impulse of mine also causes an inverse reaction, where I assume everyone else is looking at me, too. This is what causes me to sing unabashedly until someone pulls up next to me, whereupon I immediately start humming so it doesn’t look like I was singing. It’s what makes me hesitant to use a hands-free cell phone device so that I don’t look like I just left a nurse lying unconscious in the middle of the hallway at Belleview. It’s what makes me nervous to accidentally lock gazes with another driver, because I don’t want them to think I was staring, even though I totally was.

One evening, as I was driving home to my apartment after a particularly exhausting day, I stopped at a stoplight and noticed a beautiful full moon off to my right. It was amazing: huge, low on the horizon, and bright orange. I leaned forward in my seat to get a better view of it through the windows of the car parked next to me. I was so taken with the sight that I didn’t even notice that the driver of the car whose windows I was looking through was looking sideways at me, confused. To him, it looked as though I were staring very intently at him, with a faint smile on my face. Of course, the driver was a teenage boy, with lots of teenage boy friends in the car with him, and by the time I turned my gaze back to the stoplight in front of me, they were all quite interested in getting my attention again. At first I was confused about why they were honking and waving at me, until I realized that I inadvertently started the whole thing. Luckily, it was dark, so they didn’t see that my face had turned beet red as I stared straight ahead and peeled off when the light finally turned green. I wish I had the courage to do something very clever and sexy before I drove off, but then I would have been paranoid that they would follow me home. I’m gutless.

Anyway, the next time you are sitting at a stoplight, picking your nose, take a look at the rearview mirror of the car in front you. The girl in the sunglasses? That’s me, and I saw that.