Surface phenomena don’t count. Liberal, musician, college professor, Buddhist: the image is of wasp-slim herb-tea-swilling natural-fiber-clad chap with silver gray hair in a Prius (or maybe on a bicycle.) Well, that’s not me. My liberal, musical, professorial, and Buddhist self is a happily boozing zaftig guy with a beach-ball middle and short blondish hair. I look way younger than my calendar age of 60.
Back when I committed to a life in music I signed on to the artist’s vow of poverty. Back then has become, half a century later, right now and I’m not poor. Income isn’t outrageous but it’s just fine and dandy, thank you very much. That siren call of the comfortable American bourgeoisie has beckoned me into its arms, with all its privilege and its comfort and its sense of entitlement. Perhaps I’m mis-stating the situation. The bourgeoisie hasn’t so much swept me into its featherbed as I have swan-dived directly into its welcoming embrace. I’m sixty, I’m professionally secure, I’m economically comfortable, and I’m not the slightest bit embarrassed about one jot of it. If you’re looking for an intense, beetle-browed protester, look elsewhere.
Well, I’ve earned it, dammit, and I continue to earn it. I examine my forthcoming teaching schedule and I wonder how in the blazes I’m going to be able to do it all. Nonetheless, the schedule always looks like that and I always manage to get it all done, and not just on a wing and a prayer, either. I’m long past the time of life when just getting by will suffice. At 60 I have standards for personal accomplishment, and they’re high. I’ll meet it all with style and panache, and without any stress to speak of. I have met all such challenges before, many times, and successfully. Nothing reassures like familiarity: been there, done that, can do again.
What has brought me to the realization that I have cast off any last remaining striving-starving-artist identity? (Not that anybody looking at me would ever use the word “starving” except satirically.) It is this: I traded in my practical and economical 2003 Honda Civic—in excellent shape, to be sure—for a brand-new Toyota Camry XLE, the model with every bell and whistle Toyota has in its corporate carpetbag. Top of the line; no compromises. To drive such a fully-loaded Camry is to enter into a willingly subservient partnership with a breathtakingly competent manager that swaddles one in a cocoon of cuddly stewardship. Hard-core car types will kvetch that a Camry doesn’t give you much feel for the road. They’re right. It doesn’t. Maybe when I was 25 I itched for a feel for the road. But I don’t want it now. Roads are crackly hard strips of vile-smelling asphalt. I’d much rather be sheltered from all that, and the Camry sees to it that my nose needn’t wrinkle nor my tuckus be jarred. That isn’t to say that the Camry is absolutely divorced from reality, à la the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado. Nope. This particular model sports a beefy engine that can produce some downright thrilling Gs upon a solid thwack on the pedal. Well, thrilling to a card-carrying member of the zaftig bourgeoisie. Acceleration aside, the overall experience is of being in a soft-gray-and-white, polished wood, and carpeted room. It rolls. Oh, so smoothly it rolls.
Whatever mid-life crises I had are past and it’s clean sailing from this point on until the endgame hospital years. Ergo, comfort is the name of the game now. Safety, too. And reliability. Thus I lay my hand on the door handle: the car beeps softly, the fog lights flash and the locks pop open. It knows who Daddy is. (Daddy is the one with the electronic smart key in his pocket.) The Camry tries to protect me from my own inattentiveness: it puts up a warning on the side-view mirrors if there’s a car in my blindspot and beeps piteously if I’m backing up into something passing by. When I’m backing up it shows me the scene behind me on a lovely, crystal-clear screen. It plays music for me from any number of sources. It has established a partnership with my iPhone that enables it to make and receive calls hands-free, play music, and do a lot of other cool things. I can talk to it: “Go Home,” I can say, and it will most solicitously direct me along the proper path to my comfy bourgeois house. My seats are heated should my fanny feel a chill, while the cabin proper is temperature-controlled to my liking without any further fiddling or tweaking. It will scope out the best prices for gas within a reasonable distance. It learned my garage-door opener code. It locks itself automatically and unlocks itself and watches over both of our security with quiet competence.
In short, it’s not so much a car as it is a bodyguard and sidekick. Like any good bodyguard, it manages to look and feel bigger than it really is. Its solidity and competence are not illusions, however: it’s really everything it claims to be.
The bourgeois vehicle of choice, the Toyota Camry. As an acknowledged, card-carrying member of the American bourgeoisie, I can well understand why.