The first time I slept in my car
This isn’t a sob story. I had enough money in my bank account to get a hotel. But I didn’t have loads of money, so splurging on a hotel felt like a waste.
So I slept in my car. 3 different rest stops on the side of the highway on 3 different nights. Sometimes I sat sandwiched in between truckers. Sometimes I spotted other car sleepers, attempting to be discrete.
I never told a single person that I slept in my car. Partly for embarrassment that I did it. But also because of that look.
I was brushing my teeth, sitting with the driver’s seat door open, a Poland Spring bottle in my hand, and toothpaste, sans brush, on my index finger. Okay, maybe this is a sob story.
As I jammed my index finger into my mouth and caressed my teeth inside, I felt eyes on me.
Something you should know about me: I’m 6’1”. So I go through the world with a certain sense of “male privilege,” so to speak, even being a cis woman. Being stronger and taller than most men on this planet helps keep me calmer than other women when walking home alone at night. Or camping out on the side of the highway.
But these weren’t eyes of the cat calling variety. They were eyes of pity. Belonging to a 70 year old white man taking his granddaughter to the restroom. He looked at me with so much sadness I almost choked on my toothpaste.
As his granddaughter tugged on his arm, he watched as I guzzled from the water bottle and spit out the bubbling white mix of toothpaste and water onto the street. I wanted to scream and tell him to stop staring. But I also had this inkling that he wasn’t staring solely for pity’s sake; he was staring because he knew what it felt like to sleep in one’s car.
“I went to college!”
“I come from a good family!”
“I promise I can afford a toothbrush!”
The second I sensed him trying to bond over a kinship with me, my mind raced to prove my worth. But instead I said nothing at all. Instead we stayed locked in each other’s stares. Instead he gripped his granddaughter’s hand tighter. The second he disappeared into the rest stop, I stuck my key into the ignition and slammed my foot on the gas. And no one ever knew except him and I. And now you.