A technical version of the earlier Camaro post

I'm going to be submitting the following blog post for a Camaro club newsletter, so I figured I'd post up the tweaked version. Don't feel bad if you don't understand some of the terms, just google that sh*t!

In January of this year, I became part of an impossibly small percentage of people under the age of 40 to lose the ability to walk due to Idiopathic Polyneuropathy. For all non-medical types, this diagnosis basically translates to "for an unknown reason the nerves in the arms and legs are either fatally damaged or misinterpreting every sensation as pain". The torment variates between a chemical burn sensation, pins and needles, and feeling as though I'm being stabbed. This has made leaving my apartment on my own impossible, forcing me to drop out of school and maintain my longest streak of unemployment since I was 13.

During a recent psychological evaluation for pain management hypnotherapy, the doctor asked me to name the one place where I felt safe. Normally, I maintain a carefully crafted, easy going and careless persona in the presence of doctors. I don't trust anyone who thinks of themselves as a notch under God. With this question, though, my persona began to fall apart. I rallied in an effort to think of an answer other than what had naturally yet painfully come to mind.

A gun metal gray 1984 Camaro Z28 with t-tops, 700R4 transmission, LG4 engine with a vacuum advance 4bbl Edelbrock 650 cfm performer series carb. Worn and tattered interior, rock solid weather stripping, blown out speakers, flaking window tint, and my very first true love.

As pathetic, materialistic, obscene or ridiculous as it may sound, my infatuation with American cars is what I live for. Though this illness took away my ability to walk, the loss that weighed most on my mind was being unable to press pedals and shift gears. While shoes have never done anything for me, the smell of racing fuel makes me shiver. Driving fast and aggressively, or being a passenger when someone I trust drives that way, makes me laugh like a diabolical mad woman. The only time I have forgotten about the pain, which has elevated my average at-rest heart rate from 70 to 110 bpm, was at Firebird International Raceway in Arizona during Friday night drag races. Watching everything from the ever sinister Grand Nationals launch hard enough to prevent their front wheels from touching the pavement for 400 feet, all the way to the ridiculous little CRXs with enough nitrous and boost to make them fly away if they had wings.

Other than that, I have been in floating in a black hole of automotive interest. Not only have I driven less than six times in the last year, the two cars involved in those circumstances were 1) a battered and beaten Honda Civic and 2) my little brother's 2000 Buick Century. I used to joke that I was suffering from car withdrawal, shaking my hand mockingly and feigning a sweaty brow, but the humor served as a bandage to hide an untreatable and profound wound.

Just as I remember greeting my baby brother, sister, and nephew for the first time, I vividly recall the first moment I saw my Camaro. Its silver/gray paint glistened in the mid afternoon sun as the we came around the bend. My nails dug into the seat beneath me, and like a child I shouted to my now ex-boyfriend, "There it is! Is that it? Does it have a for sale sign? That's it! Are those guys looking at it!? Hey ---holes, that's my car!"

Though the exterior and frame were perfect, the engine compartment was a disaster. Vacuum lines wound in bizarre, unfamiliar routes as the engine sputtered in disdain. A mechanical engine fan that looked better suited for a tow truck heaved up clouds of dirt from the dusty street below. I was so jittery and meek in my infatuation, I asked my boyfriend to do the test drive while I sat in the back. Behind the seat headrest and underneath a cleverly placed hand, I hid an enormous, insane grin. The interior smelled like lung cancer, there was no stereo, but the air conditioning was ice cold and... it was a carbureted Z28! With t-tops! I always had an admiration for the mystical carburetor, part of a fuel delivery system that to this day I can't say I fully understand. I knew my older brother, Tim, a mechanic and owner of a black 1986 IROC Camaro, would be disappointed in his baby sister's trashed, non-TPI selection, but it was too late. I was hopelessly, eternally in love.

I can still see the smile the motherly former owner gave me as she handed me the keys. I tried to not cry while I started it for the first time, and I failed. As soon as I pulled away, I screamed with an excitement I have not since felt. I cried and laughed as I made my first left turn, holding the billet style Grant steering wheel with an iron grip, in case the car tried to escape. At the first red light, I quickly rummaged through each nook and cranny, finding a "Camaro" flash light and the original owners manual jammed under the seat, as well as a receipt for $.89/gallon gasoline. Along with these items, I found the original purchase receipt; my Camaro was manufactured in mid-November of 1983, the same week I was conceived. Quickly brushing off the grossness of that thought, I proceeded to drive for 45 minutes with no radio, and no need for one, as I was busy singing to myself with a vigor and disregard for appearance normally reserved for drug addicts. I promised myself, then and there, that I would take care of this car, make it into the beautiful, fast, efficient, clean Z28 it had been before the world had torn it apart.

Almost every weekend and vacation was spent working on my Camaro with my brother Tim. He re-taught me the basics of automotive repair while we brought my car back to its former glory. Though we were close before I bought my Z28, he became the only person I believed loved me, because he loved my car. All of my spare money funneled into the Camaro, while I continued to wear to work worn clothing from my junior high school years. Though I loved the idea of racing, and each green light saw me gun it through the intersection, I never took my Camaro to the drag strip. I refused to shame her by getting timed before she was complete. I was a few minor engine modifications away from completion, making lists upon lists of various combinations I could attempt to install. I aimed for the first week of April of 2006.

Now I sit in the darkness, my mind long since tired of going over what I should or should not have replaced, removed, or done. In a freak accident and cruel twist of Fate, gasoline pooled in the charcoal canister ignited by an electrical short in the headlight. What had taken my brother and me 3 years to create was gone in ten minutes. Though I had never had any desire to gamble, I had risked my happiness on my own mechanical decision making ability, and for that, I lost everything. My skin goes white at the thought of the stiff heat emanating from the flames that cool evening two days before Saint Patrick's day. I still hear the noise of the melting of the engine fans my brother and I so happily installed months earlier, and I smell burning paint and oil as the black smoke enclosed me. The event was a display of the best part of me dying, a part I had relied on and took shelter behind for many years. When friends were unavailable, when confidants were uninterested, when support through dark times was no where to be found, I relied on my Camaro.

The most painful moment of that evening was my phone call to Tim. With no one else to turn to, I begging him to drive 40 miles in the middle of the night to help me. The first car he ever loved, a green 1972 Chevelle he built from the ground up, was rear ended by a drunk driver and was subsequently written off as totaled by the insurance company. It was the first time I had ever seen my big brother cry, and as the fire fighters tore through the hood with an axe, I knew he was the only person who would understand. His voice cracked slightly as I told him what happened, and I knew I had let him down.

By the next week, I had hastily and thoughtlessly bought a 2004 Pontiac GTO, which I sold within 6 months. While I was exhilarated by the GTO, its Tremec manual transmission, impeccably designed interior and LS1 engine, it was like proposing to the "hot but uninspiring rebound" after losing true love. I yearned for my Camaro every day, every night, and the sorrow of it tore me apart. I lost 20 pounds in the week and a half after the accident, this after I had already lost over 20 pounds in the three weeks prior due to a digestive illness. I threw out every picture I could find of the Camaro, digital or film, from pure self-hatred. I have only two pictures and a bit of video left to supplement my memory, as well as the original owner's manual, a GM key from the locks I had replaced three days before the fire, and the license plate.

Two years later, each 3rd generation F-body that I see makes me yearn for a time machine and break up songs bring to mind the car rather than any relationships lost. None of my friendships, and indeed none of my previous boyfriends, were as valuable to me as that car. I loved that car more than I loved my cat. (I'm a dog person!)

The question asked by the hypnotist doctor earlier this month brought to mind my hospitalization in January, while the nurses buzzed around me in their attempt to run an IV line into my hand during the worst pain I have ever experienced, I escaped to thoughts of the Camaro. The duel snorkel air-cleaner Tim had given me for Christmas just a few months before the fire, the Sirius satellite radio I installed that glowed bright blue in the darkness, the double needle speedometer that I couldn't be bothered to fix, the way the wind felt through my hair when I drove with the t-tops out, the misaligned shifter letters, the special overhead console that never worked, the thunderous roar of the 3" Edelbrock exhaust that set off car alarms in every parking garage, and how I couldn't walk away from my Camaro without turning around for one last look. I began to sob harder and blasphemed, forgetting the physical torture of my veins bursting in my hand and focusing instead on the life I lost.

The car assimilated my identity. Its accomplishments, such as 32 mpg city and half values on all emissions tests, were my accomplishments. Its intimidating stance, ferocious sound, elegance in simplicity, lack of ECU or emissions equipment, and its breath taking beauty made me feel strong, fierce, and gorgeous. My Camaro became all these things to me after being neglected for 18 years, assailed upon by half-wit mechanics, and having serious issues ignored or covered up. We had both started existence in the same week, had been treated the same by the world, and I thought we would be inseparable. Now, being without it has made me regress back into high school awkwardness and self-loathing; I am re-experiencing the feeling of being unarmed, forgettable, and directionless.

Early in June, an hour into waiting for my nighttime pain medications to kick in, I stumbled on 5thgen.org. Seeing spy pictures, reading discussions, and watching video of the 5th-generation Camaro woke up a part of me that has been dormant since that evening in March. Comparing photographs of my Camaro to the new Camaro took my breath away. The thought of a high performance engine, a stick shift, nice upholstery, and an actual trunk made me grin. My mind rationalized it as a perfect middle ground between the far too perfect GTO and my soulful yet simplistic Camaro.

For the first time in two years, I feel almost like myself again. I knew that night that I had found my goal; I want to be alive and in normal health by the time that Camaro is released. Slowly, with the aide of forearm crutches and frequent trips to a physical therapist, I have been learned how to walk all over again. The desire I feel now stems from the memory of who I once was. Deep inside, I feel a craving to grip a steering wheel as I break the speed limit, to get marriage proposals at red lights again, to drive for no reason other than to clear my head on a barren freeway as the sun rises. I want to have police officers ask me to race them, to tell off Corolla drivers when they sneer at my V-8 muscle car, and to have people stare at my car as I drive past. I need to sit in a car of my very own, a place where I can feel safe, a place where I can focus on modifications to further personalize the car, rather than any troubles at hand. I want to be proud of myself again; I want to be free.


Check out my twitter, my Photoshop pictars, oh, and of course my Justin.tv channel