How I Feel About Myself When Driving My Car

alt=hey, yeah, sorry the alt text is just squished on under each image, i have no idea how to format HTML, and this is my first time using this website, so please forgive how ugly the alt-text looks here

Before I really get into the meat of this, there's something I have to... admit. I've been feeling strange about myself since a bout with a stomach flu about 3 weeks ago. The 3 days i spent out of work, and the mood swings brought upon me by gastrointestinal distress had me reassessing certain thoughts, memories, and behaviors I have had for a long time, and, I'm starting to think those aren't the kinds of things that someone who confidently asserts themselves as a cisgender man would feel. It's hard to admit this, even knowing full well that anyone reading this is going to accept whatever pronouns I may come out of this with, because I'm unsure if I feel strongly enough about these to actually do anything about them. I probably would have already, if I did, but there's plenty of other coming-of-age goalposts that I haven't exactly crossed either, even now, as I see the age of 30 on my horizon. I mostly feel fine as is, but even though I publicly fit the shape of cis-het male well enough to not sand down the edges too much, there's an odd sort of comfort I feel in queer-friendly spaces that isn't present when I tie up and hide my long, well-groomed hair under the hat of my uniform at work and wear a tie. It's undeniable that there's some part of myself that's being subdued when I walk along the orange and white tiled floors of that Greek-owned New England grocery store for $18 an hour, holding back tears for an unclear reason in the early hours of weekday mornings this past month. Maybe at the root of it all, I'm aching for some kind of change in my life, but there must be a reason my mind wanders in this direction when most others don't even set foot over here.

alt='view from the driver's seat of my 2018 Subaru Impreza. Definitely not superimposed onto a screenshot from Need for Speed: Most Wanted with a crudely drawn speedometer needle and gear select display or anything...' />

They say, when you use a tool for a very long time, you gain a familiarity with it that rivals a part of your body. Professional tennis players, for example, act with such precision that their rackets are like an extension of their arm. I believe that the automobile, in encompassing ypur entire body, can do the same thing. Four years ago, my acquisition of this 2018 Subaru Impreza, with a 5 speed manual transmission, marks a turning point in my sense of agency in my young adulthood. But, in relation to the paragraph above, my anxieties and discomforts about, All That, melt away when i drive along empty, rural New England roads. My voice, despite the fact that I feel very comfortable with speaking in it, asserts certain assumptions from the gender identity that its somewhat deep timbre imposes. In this car, my voice is naught but the subdued growl of 4 horizontally opposed cylinders, nestled in the two halves of the block of the FB20D, its sixteen sequentially timed breaths producing a sound that doesn't engender any particular behavior of either potential sexual predation or victimhood. It merely exists, suggesting, only to a trained ear, that the owner is, perhaps, somewhere politically left of center. An american who's right-of-center, or further, would be too nationalist to drive anything so small and foreign, despite the fact that most USDM Subarus are assembled in a plant in Indiana, but I digress.



The styling of the Subaru Impreza doesn't engender itself either way. The Impreza is an economy-class sedan, after all. It needs to cast a wide net to compete with the used market, and anything that suggests the aggressiveness of masculinity or the maternal provision of femininity could alienate a buyer that's looking to spend a little extra on the assurance that no one else has mistreated such an expensive machine before they laid eyes on it. This ambiguity, though unintentional, played a part in making my choice that January evening in 2022, even if I wasn't consciously thinking of it. Otherwise, I would have made a more unwise decision men my age usually make, and finance a used Camaro or Mustang for a similar, or even a lower price. It's not like I lack the know-how of controlling something that applies 300 ft-lbs of torque to only two wheels in a civilized and polite way. The thought excites me, sure, and I know that feeling is something women my age feel just as often that men do, but there's a certain masculine bravado that the fake fiberglass musculature an American V8 coupe exudes that I don't believe would be representative of my Self on the road.



That's not to say I have felt uncomfortable in a vehicle that engenders masculinity. My Impreza was rear-ended in July of 2024, and while its trunk subframes were being bent back into a shape that could hold it closed, I was given a Toyota 4Runner as a rental; it was the only vehicle available at the time. The 4Runner is the SUV Toyota has built out of its truck platform, and, aside from a truck bed, has everything a truck would have: a large displacement engine, a gear selector with low mode for towing and 2-wheel drive mode for fuel efficiency, and body-on-frame construction that makes its large size easier to repair from hard, unrelenting labor that such a vehicle is designed to perform. In this behemoth, I listened to Depeche Mode's Violator and wore a cheap pair of aviator-style sunglasses I found in a gas station. The torque of its 2.7 liter inline 4, though pulling along a body that weighed 1,600 lbs. heavier than my humble Impreza, was an imposing beast that could swallow the pride of any obnoxious bastard who would try to cut me off on the highway. The large size of such an automobile radiates with machismo like the haunched shoulders of an angered forest mammal; you mess with me, and you won't leave unharmed. But when I climbed down from the boys' highchair that is its driver's seat, I no longer felt the intoxication of strength and size. I was myself again.



This dissonance was strong enough that, after a flat tire that I was luckily not charged for, I opted for a much smaller car; a Corolla of the same year. Its design philosophy was much the same as my Impreza, an economy sedan offering a neutrality in its exterior, and barebones practicality in its performance. Gas mileage and ease of maintenance above all else. No peacocking of blowoff valves on a turbo, or incongruous growling of the cross-plane crankshaft in an American V8. Just 1.8 subdued liters of air, filtered through 16 breaths every rotation, betwixt its 4 small cylinders, muffled and filtered as much as possible through its exhaust. What little personality it has is an open hand with unassuming proportions and the lightly moisturized skin of an office intern. Small, unassuming, soft, maybe even cute. A bodytype I was familiar with in my 2018 Impreza. A way I sometimes wish I could see myself, in other's eyes.