Dan's Papers - October 13, 2006

On Saturday I was driving along "the stretch" coming from Montauk on my way to Bridgehampton to an art gallery exhibit at the Silas Marder art gallery, which is an amazing space by the way. I was excited to go because Silas and his brothers Mica (who is an artist) and Dash were all friends of mine in high school. It will be good to catch up with them, I thought to myself as I cruised along. I was in a good mood.

But then, out of nowhere, the mood changed when a guy in a pick-up passed me. I can't even tell you how embarrassed I was with myself when this happened. I was driving at a steady 55 miles per hour with the cruise control set and I saw this guy come right up behind me in an old Ford pick-up. He was only two feet away from my bumper and it was really making me crazy. I was refusing to speed up, mainly because I didn't want to give this guy the satisfaction for making me drive faster, but also because you never know when a radar gun will smack your car.

There he was though, the big Ford logo in my rear view mirror and the driver with an expression on his face like I was this big loser who didn't know how to drive. I thought about slowing down to a ridiculously slow speed, just to be a jerk, but I didn't. I pretended that I didn't even see him and just kept driving. Then, on a double yellow, the jerk passed me, roaring his 6 miles per gallon engine.

I was fantasizing that my car had built in machine guns that I could unleash on this truck. I watched him pull ahead and as he passed me, look down at me and shake his head. The toxic fumes of his truck entered into my nostrils and that only seemed to further my rage. I let out a very quiet, "serenity now" comment and continued to drive, and prayed that a cop would pull him over.

It is difficult to describe how low a young man such as myself feels when a person passes you on the road. You feel like less of a man. It is even worse when somebody is actually in the car with you as they pass and thinks you should be driving faster and then gives you a look. I talked to my friend Mike Aliffi, who is the boyfriend of Nicole Caruso, a friend of mine that I work with here at Dan's Papers, about the subject. Mike furrowed his brow when I asked him how he feels when somebody passes him. "I become enraged."

I don't know what it is about somebody passing you that makes you feel so low. The funny thing is that nine times out of ten you'll catch up with the guy when you get to a 30 miles per hour zone. You would think that he feels like an idiot for wasting all of that gas to just get in front of you, but he doesn't. Even at a stoplight, as long as he is in front of you, he feels like the man and to him you are weak. Life is weird.

I'm over the guy passing me on the road, but I'm still not really over the Yankees falling apart. I mean, come on! You have got to be kidding me! I don't want to harp on the subject, but almost everyone I know was in this funk as they watched the Yanks plummet into this ridiculous end-of-the-season. It only made matters worse when you picked up the newspaper on Monday to find headlines that suggested Torre should be replaced by Lou Pinella. Seems like a slap in the face to me. If anything, get rid of some of these highly paid players that just aren't making the cut. I have always thought A-Rod wasn't a team player and I never liked him. He has no mental strength whatsoever during important games. Everybody knew that Randy Johnson wasn't a Yankee and his playing this year showed his head wasn't in the right place either.