Strangely Naked

Buying a car sucks. No one likes it. That’s why large swarms of people congregate in cities with excellent mass transit systems. There is nothing pleasant about buying a car.

Research? Yeah, research is fun, that’s why we’re all scientists (please put the previous in the sarcasm font).

Going on the lot? Like walking into a supermarket and there are 300 types of the same cereal that all taste vaguely similar except some of them will make you constipated, others will immediately give you diarrhea, while others will give you diabetes and others will cause so much damage to your innards that you’ll be paying for doctors visits one per week for three years and your insurance won’t cover any of it.

Meeting new people in the industry, conversing with auto-experts about your pending purchase? That’s like expecting the cashier at the gas station to know the chemical composition of diesel fuel, I know because I was said cashier for years as a teenager (like how I had to qualify that statement?). Talking to a car/used car salesman is like trying to have a human interaction with a personified bottle of Axe Body Spray (NOT an endorsement). It’s like being trapped in a basement with a magician without any light. It’s like being forced to talk politics with one of those “pick-up artists” (using art in the same way guys who take really big craps consider that art. Gross, I know, but so are pick-up jerks). Car sales-people are capable of as much sincerity as James Franco is capable of growing non-embarrassing facial hair.

Maybe you enjoy the test drive? Let’s assume your mind isn’t all consumed by anxiety due to the stress of a major purchase or that you’re maybe buying a car with major mechanical issues, and you’re able to enjoy the test drive as an amusement park ride, that’s like riding a roller coaster with a pushy salesman behind you trying to dirty talk you into buying a yearly pass or having sex with a prostitute while the pimp is encouraging you to put $1,000 down to get married (better analogy).

Is it perhaps driving off the lot deluding yourself into forgetting the crazy APR on the doomed death trap you just committed to, or the euphoria of pulling off your masterful illusion of trading in your 98 Isuzu Trooper for the price of a hand-job from a crackhead, you master negotiator? There is not one person I have met who doesn’t think that they pulled off a deal akin to England’s purchase of Australia when the truth is that everyone purchasing a car is the aborigine side of that purchase. Everyone thinks they are a master negotiator, but no one leaves a car lot without a measure of unwelcome anal intrusion.

If I had a choice of going through the car buying process or having to daily lactate angry fire ants out of my tender nipples, I’m buying a breast pump. If it were a choice of buying a car or going drinking with Bill Cosby, pull up that bowl of puddin’ because at least with the Cos I’ll be asleep while being violated. I’m saying I don’t like the car buying process.

Good luck out there, anyone not living in a walkable community or without suitable mass transit.