fuzzbean.net

So today. Today.

I know I haven't been writing for a while. My life has been just nuts. Completely undealable with and unwriteable about. Today I have either resolved some part of that or just done something profoundly stupid.

Today I bought a car.

Let me repeat that. Today I bought a CAR. Today I spent half my annual salary. Today I bought a CAR.

A CAR.

I am praying that this is not another case of bicycle.

A year ago I bought a bicycle. It was a very nice bicycle, a reasonably expensive bicycle, a 21-speed Trek 3500 with Bontrager tires and speed shifters that let me change gears with only my thumbs. I bought it because I was living in Brookline, and school was in Boston, and it took me half an hour to walk there. A bike will be faster, I thought. It will be easier. I will ride it there and back every day and it will be good.

All well and good, except that what I was forgetting (or really trying not to think about) was the time I was ten and rode my bike to the library and fell off just in front of it where they were doing road work and scraped my knee up really badly. I finished getting my books (even though a woman stopped me as I was picking things out and asked if I thought I should maybe attend to the blood streaming down my leg) because when one is at a library, one gets books, scraped knee or no scraped knee. Then I rode back home and refused to let my mother clean it properly, so that a week later it was streaming green pus because a rock had gotten stuck in it. Then mom got out the tweezers. If you ever meet my mother, and she ever has tweezers in her hand, RUN.

And I hadn't been on a bike since then. And the first day I decided to try to ride it to school, I ran into two people, almost got run over by a car, and ran full speed into a gate. Then I left it in the hallway for a while, and then I sold it to my mom.

I really hope this is not another case of bicycle. Because a bicycle has two zeros involved, see, and a car has four zeros involved, and four zeros is a lot more than two zeros. I can absorb a loss of two zeros fairly easily. Four is not so good.

Yes. Today I spent four zeros (well, and some other numbers) and I bought a brand new titanium gray Mazda 3i with automatic transmission and power locks and windows and air conditioning and alloy wheels and anti-lock brakes and side curtain airbags.

I BOUGHT A CAR.

It looks like a dolphin. I am trying to decide what to name it.

I went in to the dealer basically knowing what they had on the lot and what they would sell it to me for. I had called a few places and said, "I'm looking to buy a Mazda 3i with ABS package and power package. Do you have one on the lot and how much is it?" At two places they told me. One said they did not have one with only those things, but they had one with that and a moonroof, and that was $17,809. At another, they said they had one with exactly those things and they would sell it to me for $16,676. At a third, I got to the "buy a Mazda 3i with" and the guy broke in and said, "Oh AAAARE you? Well, isn't that exciting?" and then he wouldn't tell me how much they were selling them for and then I hung up. Asshole.

See, the way things work nowadays, I look up things online and I know how much they should cost and I know what I want and then I call you and you tell me if you have one and how much you're willing to sell it for. Don't tell me you won't lose my business on price. You're right, you won't. You'll lose it because you're a condescending asshole who's going to try to screw me.

The dealer I bought it from got it. They told me prices up front, and told me estimated rates on loans, and answered my questions, and were not pushy or jerks. That's why I bought it from them. For those who live in the Boston area, the dealer in question is Quirk Mazda. J bought a car from them and they did not try to screw him, and I bought a car from them and they did not try to screw me. I am sure that they made some profit off the deal, because I did not push too hard on price, but I still got it for $350 under invoice and it was, as car buying experiences go, reasonably painless. I even asked for the vehicle identification number over the phone since I needed to know how much my insurance was going to cost, and they gave it to me after I explained and said that I understood that they do not hold cars and made no promises that the car in question would still be there. Places that you want to avoid include 128 Mazda or Mazda Gallery. I will also note that my boss (formerly known as the asshole but now being reasonably pleasant to work with) helps friends and relations buy cars on a fairly regular basis, and said that Boch Toyota (back when I was considering a Scion) are the worst dealers he has ever dealt with. Let these dealers be categorized as condescending mindfucks who do not deserve your business. So let it be written. So let it be done.

So I walked in to Quirk and said I had scheduled a test drive, and about five minutes later they had pulled the car, the very same car that I had asked about with the features I wanted AND NOTHING ELSE, up to the door. I drove it, and it was very nice and responsive--a little lighter-feeling than J's Mazda 6 (since it is) but definitely a well-suspended nice car. Then I said, "Okay. Let's buy this puppy."

And we sat down and started discussing rates and financing and extras, and I said I did not want any extended warranty superpaintprotective coating with powertrain coverage. And they said okay. And then they gave me a decent interest rate. And then I looked at the interest rate and J said, "You could probably get that lowered if you got your parents to co-sign." And then I called my parents and talked to my dad and the full import of the fact that I was spending HALF MY SALARY IN ONE GO struck me. And then I panicked for a while. Panic panic panic. Panic panic. Panic.

And then J said, "Well, you need a car, and this is a good car, and you are getting it for $350 under invoice, and it is a full-sized safe car, and you are going to have to buy one anyway." And then the salesman said that there was no prepayment penalty (and indeed when I read the contract there was not) so if I come into some large sum of money (hey God? That was something of an indirect request which is probably about as good as you're going to get, so listen up, bro.) and can pay it off in three months, it's mine. And then I did it.

I did it. I bought a car. I signed a multitude of papers (I think one of them said something about a first-born child) but made sure I checked the numbers and what they all said, and they all said what they were supposed to, so I signed them. Then the salesman left and went to run things through the system, and then I think I panicked some more. Did I mention that this is HALF MY SALARY IN ONE GO? Because it is.

So now I own a car. It is sleek and nice and HALF MY--chilling out. I'm okay. Really. It is still at the dealer because on Monday I need to call the insurance guy and get a policy, and then on Wednesday I get to go back to the dealership and pick up my car and drive it home. That will be the first time I am in a car by myself and it will be in my car and that is really fucking scary, people. I know I have insurance, and that is good, but oh my god.

I have a car.

Somebody shoot me.