Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

Car Lust

I’m on the verge of something new, something bold. A ground-breaking new sub-genre of romance. Performance car porn. Where the story’s not about the sex you have IN the car, but about the car itself.

I’m going to posit that you haven’t truly lived until you’ve driven a car that prompted a mini-orgasm purely by the force of the sensual cushion of leather on the seat, the slide of the steering wheel under your fingers, the roar of the engine surrounding you, the vibrations of the mother road humming through you as you push the pedal to the floor in a car built by angels on earth: German engineers.

My dh is spoiled and now I am, too. He’s owned BMWs for years since the day he and a semi “shook hands,” so to speak, on an icy stretch of I-84 and he walked away from his crumpled Bimmer without a scratch. He’s a believer and I’ll happily indulge any little quirk that keeps him in one piece.

But he’d been a Car Guy for years before that. His thing is performance sports cars, but not the flashy kind. It’s exactly the sort of bent that appeals to me.

We call them stealthy.

The kind of cars that, when you see them pull up next to you at the stop light, just look like nice cars, but you’re missing the point. Yeah, there are some people who drive my favorite stealth cars for the cachet. Posers.

But then there are those of us with wild hearts beating beneath our ordinary clothes. Those of us who casually check for cops before we peel out from that stop light screaming in delight, leaving everyone gasping in our efficient emissions. Those of us who would move to the top of the mountain for the sheer pleasure of driving the twists and turns every day. Those of us who yearn for the Autobahn, who ignore the faint peal of a warning bell telling us that we’ve surpassed 80mph.

There used to be this road from my house to the AF base in England that offered the most glorious ride. See, it had this bump. Not the kind that yanks your axle out from under you. It was, if you hit it just right, more of a gentle ramp. If there was no traffic and if you remembered in time just where to speed up, you could catch the faintest bit of air under your tires and come down soft as a feather.

I lived for those days. None of our other cars could do it. Unfortunately, I live in the 7th circle of hell now: Midwestern Suburbia. Tough to find those good roads close by. And there’s too much traffic to build up to a really satisfying car-gasm. Someone always ends up poking along in front of me, harshing my thrill.

I had this story idea (still in its infancy, don’t hold your breath) about a smart-mouthed damsel in distress and her cold-eyed knight in a shining car. A stealth car. The kind that you might not notice as it drives next to you, at least until it blows your doors off.

It’s provided the perfect excuse for us to talk cars at home. Dh has delighted in pointing out the various cars that would qualify and it’s tougher than you think. Most performance cars, because their very nature, don’t really look like Toyota Corollas. They’re distinctive, if only by a sense of standing too close to the tiger’s cage.

I’ve had to lay down parameters for our search. If the hero painted it all black, or if he took all the badges off, would the average Joe on the street be able to say, “I saw a BMW 6-series” or “It was an Audi RS-4” or even, “A black Dodge Charger.”

And I’m having a hard time holding myself back from indulging in the sleek, distinctive lines I love. I want him to have a car that inspires a sexual response just from looking at it, understanding that it’s not just about the appearance, but the power under the hood.

Whew. I think I’ll ask dh to take me on a drive today. Somewhere far away from the ‘burbs. Where there’s nothing but a clean stretch of winding road.