Three Days of the Porsche

How a sports car turned me into an asshole

Hey everyone, welcome to all you new subscribers, and thanks for following along. I will admit that recent posts have been archival, and you’re probably thinking, why is this guy trying to milk a few more bucks out of something he typed up while hungover back in 1996? Is it that obvious? I promise, new interviews and stories are in the pipeline, so stay tuned!

This edition is a story-behind-the-story, and illustrates the flipside of “media perks.” Journalism is a grossly underpaid way to make a living, and anyone who’s done it soon learns to master the game of receiving crap for free. It’s far easier to rationalize the shite compensation if you’re also getting comped travel or meals or tickets. In this case, I was able to finagle the use of a Porsche 911 Turbo for three days. Oh, it sounded fun, but ending up taking me to a fairly dark place and showed me, as Ingmar Bergman used to say, the “twilight room of the soul.” I’ve performed variations of this at readings and storytelling events, but it’s never appeared in print until now.

Some years ago a major New York magazine asked me to write a short piece about Ferdinand “Ferry” Porsche, father of the modern sports car. As I was writing, I thought wouldn’t it be great if they let me test-drive a car? I called the Porsche company, and they said, sure, would three days be enough? In the meantime I researched the story, wrote it up and turned it in.

The next day, around mid-morning a man rings the doorbell of my apartment building. He’s from a Porsche dealership in the East Bay. He smells of strong cologne. In front of my house is parked a brand-new burgundy Porsche 911 Turbo, worth $70,000. I answer the door, and we chat a bit. He apologizes for not having it earlier—the previous journalist popped a tire on a test drive, and they had to special order another one. I’m barefoot, in a t-shirt and shorts. We are standing in front of my crummy building in the Western Addition. I could be anybody. So I’ve got to be professional here.

I ask him, “Where’s the best place to really get it up to speed, see what she does?” Without missing a beat, Mr. Cologne says, “Highway 580, out towards Stockton.” I sign a piece of paper, and he walks off. It actually worked. He has no idea the article’s already filed. None of this is necessary. I look at the keys in my hand, and immediately blow off the rest of the day.

I haven’t owned a car in ten years. The last one was called the Green Latrine, a ’72 Mercury Monterey with no brakes and a piston rattling in the cylinder. One mechanic looked under the hood and turned to me and said, “This is a goddamn fire hazard!” I rode the bus to work one morning, and watched out the window as the police towed it away.

And now I’ve got a Porsche. I grab some CDs, call my buddy Tom, and hit the streets. The first thing you notice about a Porsche is that the cockpit is designed to be as effortless as possible. I plop into the seat, let my hands fall where they may, and everything is ergonomically perfect. My right hand is already resting on the gear shift, inches away from the parking brake. My left is already on the wheel. It’s almost creepy how convenient everything is. How come other cars don’t feel like this? I’m Infant-Man, floating in the womb of a very organized German mother.

I pick up Tom and we roar off to Stinson Beach for lunch, whipping across the Golden Gate Bridge like a couple of bastards from Hollywood, scouting locations for a movie that will never be made. We park in front of a beach bar, and absorb the admiring glances from locals. After a few beers, we fill up the 6-CD changer, and find the road winding up Mount Tamalpais. In a Porsche, a good general rule of thumb is if there is any speed limit posted, double it. The hairpin curves are suggested at 15 mph, we take them at 30. If a freeway ramp is posted 30, 60 is fine. We stop at the top of the mountain and take photos of ourselves, leaning smugly against the fender.

At the end of the night, I park the Porsche in the open air parking space next to my building. I look out the window at its gleaming shape, begging for vandalism. Since I don’t own a car, my parking space is empty, and hookers often use it to turn tricks in the Western Addition. When they’re done with the john, they whip the soiled rubbers out the window. I think, because my parking spot is taken, a prostitute and her customer are forced to move operations down the block, and grapple in a driveway of the Ida B. Wells High School. And it makes me sad. But not that sad. I have a Porsche.

Day Two

I call up my pal Silke and ask her to lunch. When you drive a Porsche, going out to lunch seems very important. She slides into the passenger seat, looks at the streamlined cockpit and exclaims, “Wow, it’s so sexy!” We burn through Golden Gate Park, have lunch at the beach, and go for a cruise out by the ocean, blasting Iggy Pop. Life is good, even if it’s only for three days.

As I tool around the city, the Porsche and I start to become one. In most cars, the response is so bad, you can wiggle the steering wheel and it won’t affect the car at all. The slightest nudge of the Porsche wheel could send you into the ditch. To accelerate through a turn, all the driver needs to do is simply curl the toes of his right foot, and the Turbo scoots through the turn like a slot car on a grooved track. You’re lucky because you have the steering wheel to hold onto. Passengers are flung against the back of their seat. The Porsche 911 Turbo is really only meant for one person. It’s all about you. The person beside you can only strap in and hang on.

People who never gave me the time of day are suddenly very interested. Guys in other sports cars slow down and admire my vehicle, as if they’re mentally adding up price and performance statistics. If another Porsche driver catches my eye, he nods. I nod back. We are simpatico, members of the club. Rich California girls with Prada handbags and newscaster hair check me out. In their eyes, I was captain of the rowing team. I’ve got a job that flies me around the world. I’ve got a garage full of professional fun toys like kayaks and snowboards, and I’ve got friends in the Hamptons with a speedboat that kicks ass. I’m that guy. We’ll breed our perfect genes together and have perfect entitled children with high cheekbones and the latest clothes, and they’ll grow up to be just as perfect as mom and dad. Except with less ambition.

I hate to admit it, but it’s true. To most people, you’re as cool as the car you drive. Even if you don’t believe the hype, it’s easy to fall under the spell. I can feel my inner asshole starting to emerge. When you’re behind the wheel of a Porsche, your driving changes. I now deliberately cut off people and accelerate in front of them. I roar off from every stoplight like it’s a drag race. I always have to be in the lead of any pack of cars. I stop at a light, and know I’m on everyone’s mind. Sunglasses, even if they’re cheap, suddenly take on deeper meaning. I feel like chewing gum. And then I really start questioning my own values. I wonder, why is it so easy for me to act like a white-boy dickhead?

About 2 am, I head out towards Stockton. Highway 580 stretches for miles and miles, separated by a concrete divider. I see what Mr. Cologne was talking about. No cops can nail you from the opposite direction. You only have to worry about the potential cops in front of you.

The car cuts through the blackness. It isn’t even designed to really get humming until you’re doing over 100. It’s as if Porsche made a car that operates within most countries’ legal speed limits, but only under duress. It really wants to go 150 mph, really, really badly. So of course you want to oblige its needs.

I come up behind a clump of cars. For some reason, human beings tend to congregate in little micro-villages on the freeway. I weave my way through the pack, and once I see none of them are cops, I shift down to 4th gear, still keeping it around 80 or so. I look for an opening between the car directly in front of me, and the one abreast in the next lane. I punch the pedal. The car drills me into the seat. I whip into the next lane, cutting off the car, then hit the remaining gears and watch the pack disappear in the mirror. I can hit only about 125 before I have to slow down for the next clump of cars. Limited by my own species.

I discover little tricks on the freeway, which I’m sure every Porsche owner already knows. One fun maneuver is to come upon a clump of cars, then quickly slash across all the lanes to the lane furthest right, which will usually be open, then zoom past them, then slash back to the furthermost left lane and roar off into the darkness. I do this a few times, and it seems completely, absolutely German. I start talking to myself in a bad German accent: “You people bore me. I haff toyed vis you, and now I am tired of your ineffectual cars and zere puny performance. I leave you now.”

I get back to San Francisco about 4 am, still jacked up with adrenaline. Personal best: 145 miles an hour. After you’ve been driving that fast, the brain registers an extraordinarily high level of alertness. Even though you’re home and the car is in the driveway, your hands and feet are still tingling. You feel like having a drink of water, then dashing out to the car and doing it all over again.

Day Three

The Porsche has now completely taken over my life. I blab about it to anyone who will listen. I invent meaningless errands just so I can drive it around the city. And today, I’m going to completely succumb to its power. I call up a girl I barely know, a former model who is now sporting the fashionable combination of tattoos-and-rehab. As I later discover, very light on the rehab part of the equation.

I suggest we go for a drive down the coast to Half Moon Bay, and she’s very excited. It’s as if we both know our roles, to revel in our shallowness and hit the road in a fancy car. We hop in, and she wants to stop in the Mission along the way. I pull up in front of a sleazy bar. She runs inside, and returns a few minutes later with an envelope of sickly yellow colored powder—allegedly cocaine. Here we go. Last night with the Porsche. When fate dangles the Hunter Thompson fantasy in front of you, might as well live it up. We do a few snorts. It’s bitter and chalky. I’m no connoisseur, but this stuff is cheap, cut with flour and baby laxative and Clorox and god knows what else. At this rate, we’ll both be shitting ourselves by midnight.

We crank up the music and cruise Highway 1 down the coast, jabbering over each other like a couple of kids at the food court. I take it a bit slower as the coke comes on, and keep the car close to the darkening cliffs, the Germanic Porsche blood flowing through my veins. Pure logic and control. I’m a Teutonic warrior, with my woman captured from a nearby village, driving through the mountains, beheading Prussians with my front bumper.

We hit Half Moon Bay, pull into a quiet residential neighborhood, and cut up the rest of the coke on the CD cover of the Rolling Stones’ Black and Blue. The haggard faces of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards scowl back at me. Even back in the ’70s, they looked like hell. I’m starting to feel like that myself. More coke, more bitter, more sniffling. What am I—nineteen?

Music is thumping from a roadhouse bar, so we grab a couple of beers and watch a townie blues band, sweating and grinding our teeth, just a couple of Americans in the land of the free, out for some kicks in the world’s most popular sports car. The band finishes, we move to the bar, and my companion begins an insanely fast one-sided conversation with the bartender—more of a monologue, really. No punctuation, just a firehose of words shooting out of her mouth, thoughts masquerading as social interaction. He nods. Nothing a bartender in Half Moon Bay hasn’t heard before.

After the bar closes, I have the bright idea to drive up to the hills of the Mavericks big-wave surfing spot. We hike down the cliff to the beach, and of course there is nothing to see, the ocean is pitch black and nobody is surfing. A brilliant choice. After some struggling with rocks and gravel, we get back to the car and drive back to the city. The previous night, the Porsche and my brain were functioning together in fluid harmony. Now, the car has the upper hand. My brain can’t possibly synchronize with the quick steering, the acceleration. We creep through the hairpin turns, the fog surrounding us, bathing us in a death-mist. I can’t fuck up. I try to focus. Okay, let’s think here. Watch the yellow dashes. I’m coked up and drunk. Talking nonstop to a girl I don’t even know. In a $70,000 car. For a story that’s already turned in.

I flash on James Dean. He was driving a Porsche when he died. How fast was he going? How fast am I going? Was he having fun when he cracked up? Will there be anything left of us? I just filled up the tank—does that mean when I roll it, the car will explode in a fireball, like the movies? What’s that news story going to say? “Area couple incinerated as car plunges off cliff. Although the driver claimed to be writing a magazine article about the car, no such evidence was found at the scene.”

Miraculously, nothing happens, either accident-wise or in the sexual department. Not that sex is even possible when you’re coked out of your mind. The next morning, Mr. Cologne drops by to pick up the car. I’m on two hours of sleep, and feel like a complete junkie, wearing sunglasses and sniffing and yawning every three seconds. He asks, “How did it work out for you?” I want to tell him, “Take this fucking thing away before it kills me.” But instead I say, “It was okay.” I thank him for the tip about 580. He nods and smiles. Our little secret.

I stumble back upstairs, completely exhausted, full of toxins, and don’t get out of bed until it’s dark. An email is waiting for me from the magazine. They’ve decided not to run the article after all.