by Tyler Oakley
Well, now I’m officially going to be late.
My body was fine, but my spirit was shattered. I stepped out of the car in full Arby’s garb, as the population of my entire high school inched around the collision to get a better view. The driver of the SUV hopped down from her car and stomped over to yell at me, but I paid her no attention. With her screams in the background, I stood next to what looked like a Mothers Against Drunk Driving demonstration. As my classmates drove by, I made eye contact with all of them, one by one. Me, my totaled car, and my grease-stained Arby’s uniform were on full display.
Just when I thought my lowest point had been reached, my high school crush, Nick, pulled toward the collision. As I realized it was him approaching, my heart leaped into my throat. Lifehouse continued to play as he drove by, seemingly in slow motion. A single tear of shame rolled down my cheek, but it was effortlessly repelled by my polyester Arby’s uniform. Maybe it was this shameful event that led Nick to go along with my yearbook picture imposition years later.
Soon after, a cop showed up to file a police report, but when she saw the damage done to my dignity, she let me go without writing me a ticket. The car was towed away. I walked home to use the landline to call work and explain the situation, as well as to deliver the bad news to my sister about her car. Not my best moment.
After that car was totaled, it was back to being dropped off at work by my parents. This made getting shifts increasingly difficult, which made saving up money even more impossible. When I was finally able to afford my own car, I talked to my parents about the options listed in the local newspaper. Although almost everything was out of my price range, one car in particular stood out, and not just because of the low price. Its appearance was a bit uncanny, but beggars can’t be choosers. We made plans to go see it that Sunday morning.
In the meantime, my friends and I were planning to head an hour southeast to the neighboring college town of Ann Arbor for a Saturday night out. A few of our friends who were now freshmen in college invited us to come visit, and we’d been counting down for the several weeks leading up to our excursion. Although I had plans to check out the car the very next morning, nothing was getting between me and our night of scheduled debauchery.
We made our way down to Ann Arbor and arrived in time for pregaming in our friends’ small dorm room. Back then, budgets were tight, alcohol was bottom shelf, and our bodies were far from ready for the abuse we were about to inflict on them. After a night of way too much cheap cherry vodka, I awoke to my flip phone’s alarm, and my eyes shot open. What. Happened. Last. Night? I looked at the clock and bolted upright as soon as I realized what time it was. I shook my groaning friends out of their slumber and struggled to get everyone shuffled back into the car for the ride home. I was in such a frenzied hustle that I barely realized how hungover I was myself—that is, until we started the car and pulled out of the driveway.
While my friend drove us back toward our hometown, I attempted to focus on not dying. Window completely down while driving seventy on the highway, face covered with a coat, head angled just so to minimize the spinning . . . I was a hot mess. Maybe this is why teenagers aren’t allowed to drink in America. I managed to hold down the remaining vodka in my stomach as it nostalgically tried to revisit my mouth that morning. Suddenly, I felt the car come to a full stop. I removed the coat from my head and saw my home. As I climbed out of the backseat, my mom emerged from the front door.
“Well, look who it is!” she declared, as I trudged up the driveway, stifling my groans of agony. “Just in time to help clean up dog poop in the backyard!” My parents knew when I was suffering from a night too fun and a morning too rough, and they found pleasure in subsequently pushing me to the edge. “I can literally smell the vodka on you from here,” my mom said, side-eyeing me as she handed me a shovel. I made my way painfully into the backyard. “Hurry up, we’ve got to go look at that car as soon as you’re done.”
Our dogs loved to shit. It was their medium of self-expression, and during the summer months, their art took on new levels of sensory complexity. We had a garbage can that we piled their poop into, and in the heat of the sun it was probably the least pleasant experience this side of ever. Imagine a shit casserole, cooked overnight on low in the Crock-Pot of a giant. Now imagine that experience combined with the worst hangover of your life, and you’ve got yourself the perfect storm to induce projectile vomiting all over your backyard. Which is exactly what happened.
My mom clapped and cheered as I sprayed down the lawn, and she cackled as she closed the sliding glass door. What a peach. I picked up the last of the dog poop and made my way inside to attempt to shower and then go check out that damn car.
My second drive of the day was far better than the first, but still a struggle. Take all of the elements of the first, and add a lecture from my stepdad (a substance-abuse therapist). I held my vomit behind gritted teeth, and we finally made it to the seller’s house. And there was the car, in the driveway, exactly as advertised.
It was in my price range for a reason. That reason stuck out like a big, red sore thumb. The car, a blue Oldsmobile, looked to be in pretty good condition, but when you circled to its other side, you saw the extent of its . . . character. The driver’s side front door was bright red, making it perhaps the most patriotic car in the city. I began to feel myself getting woozy again.
I continued to inspect the car as my stepdad made his way to the front door of the house and rang the doorbell. Out stepped a little old woman, who stayed up on the porch talking to my stepdad. They chatted a bit, and he pointed over his shoulder back at my mom and me. We waved and made our way up to the porch.
“That car has pizzazz!” the lady yelled, as if we all were hard of hearing. My head throbbed. “Let me go find the paperwork inside.”
I made my way down the steps and felt my damp forehead. Oh, no. Nauseated, I looked back at my mom. She gave me a look that said, I swear to God, Mathew Tyler Oakley, if you even dare . . . I replied with a look that said, Forgive me, Mother, for I am about to sin. I covered my mouth and scooted fast—past the red-doored, blue car, through the old woman’s bushes, and around the side of the house. When I couldn’t step any farther and my mouth couldn’t hold any more, my hand flung in a wide arc and my mouth opened and out came the rest of the shots from the night before. The splashing sound was disgusting enough to keep the vomit coming. Hands on my knees, I heaved until I was empty.
Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I slowly straightened up to standing, only to meet a pair of eyes in the window I had puked under. There, through the window screen, was the little old woman, paperwork in hand.
Needless to say, I didn’t attempt to haggle on the price. Instead, I drove home with a brand-new used, multicolored car, and a heart full of shame.
Over time, I came to love that car. Fifty percent of the time, it was the easiest car to spot in any parking lot. That car served me well for the year I had it, until I totaled it in another car accident.
From there, I bought my brother’s Jeep from him, which was way too big for me to handle, and it was way too bouncy for me to ever feel like I was in control. Once, while driving it, I was making my way around a corner during a thunderstorm, when all of a sudden I gasped from the thumps of running over something. I kept driving for a moment, replaying in my mind what I thought I’d seen, before I pulled over. No. There’s no way. I picked up my phone and called my mom.
“Hello?”
“I think I ran over a baby.”
“You what?!”
I explained what had happened, and she started screaming that if this was a prank, I would lose my two hours of Internet for that day. I assured her that I was, in fact, most likely a murderer, and that it wasn’t my fault, because who puts their baby in the street during a thunderstorm?
“Get out of the car, and go find that baby and make sure that it was not a baby.”
I stepped into the pouring rain and made my way back to the scene of th
e crime. I was going to be so annoyed if today I turned out to be a baby murderer, but I was going to be even more annoyed if today I found no dead baby in the road and got soaked for no reason. Thankfully, what I thought was a dead baby ended up being a plastic grocery bag full of leaves, and I was not a murderer. Yet.
Fast-forward a few months, and I totaled that car, too. It happened at just the right time, though. I was about to become a college freshman, and my first year on campus I wasn’t allowed to have a parking pass. Everything happens for a reason or something.
My sophomore year, when I was allowed a parking pass, I decided to go car shopping once again, but this time at a real used-car dealership. I missed my flashy red-doored blue car and wanted something that said Hello! just as much as it said I know you can see me and you should probably stay out of my way. When I saw what was going to be my next car, it was love at first sight.
If you listen to my podcast Psychobabble or watch my videos, you may know that I have a habit of naming colors. A color is never just gray . . . it’s more likely to be ashes-of-my-enemies gray, or maybe underbelly-of-a-happy-whale gray . . . but never just gray. This habit may have started when I bought my next car—a subtly ripe kiwi-green Ford Focus. It was visually loud, and I was obsessed. This car took a little longer for me to total, but when I did, it was my worst crash yet.
It was Christmas Eve, and I was home for the holiday. With nobody showing up anywhere close to me on Grindr (a gay dating app which I’ll tell you a horror story about later in the book), I decided to take matters into my own hands. As I was en route to Chicago to meet up with a boy I met online (sorry, Mom), blasting the Disney Princess: The Ultimate Song Collection CD, I hit a spot of black ice and went spiraling out of control. I didn’t hit any other cars, but running into the dividers on the highway was enough to squash my Ford Focus like a subtly ripe kiwi.
Stuck with my car facing backward on the highway divider, I arranged for a tow to the closest mechanic in Indiana, halfway between Michigan and Illinois. With dents on all sides of my car and my hood bent and unclosable, the mechanics strongly advised me not to finish the trip, as it was likely that something would go very wrong. Blinded by the prospect of literally getting dick for Christmas, I forged on. Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night was going to stand between me and a hookup.
With my hood held down by several bungee cords, I made my way to Chicago, clunked my wreck into a parking spot, and enjoyed Christmas and New Year’s exactly how I imagined I would. After that, I carefully made my way back home to Michigan for the rest of my winter break. Unfortunately, my thirst for hooking up got the better of me yet again, and after a brief Facebook conversation with an ex living on the other side of Michigan, I was lured into another booty-call road trip before school started back up. I was insatiable.
With so little time between my last hookup excursion and my next, I hadn’t yet gotten my car looked at properly by a mechanic. Grave mistake. I hit the road with the janky repairs made by the Indiana mechanic. I felt sure this was a safe way to travel.
In the dead of night, I was halfway across Michigan, singing along to Adele’s 19 album, preparing for a weekend of rekindled romance. Perhaps I hit the high note too well, because one of the bungee cords snapped. The rest of my cords began to snap, one by one, flinging into the darkness of the night. In a single moment, all were gone, and with a crash, my car’s hood flung up, smashing into my windshield, cracks spiderwebbing across the glass, and totally obstructing my view of the road. My singing pitch suddenly veered sharp.
I was driving full speed down the highway, blind. Adele’s lyrics seemed to address my situation: Should I give up? Or should I just keep chasin’ pavements?
Timely question, Adele. Or perhaps I should make like Carrie Underwood and let Jesus take the wheel? But, no, I couldn’t trust anyone else to handle this kiwi beauty, not even the son of God. I put on my hazard lights, slowed down, and cautiously moved over to the right lane until I reached the road’s edge. Then I drove five miles per hour to the next exit, scooted into the closest gas station, and got my car repaired properly. No, I’m just messing with you. I bought more bungee cords and made my way to my hookup’s house via slower, more manageable back roads.
It was another fun weekend, but I’d say the most awkward part was having to ask his dad for car help. For some conservative dads, having a gay son can be challenging, but having to help your gay son’s booty call fix his car? This hookup was no strings attached, but had bungee cords galore. Oh, well, at least I got laid.
I drove home after that weekend, and my car was beat every which way, with dents, scrapes, cracks in the windshield, and a busted hood tied down haphazardly. My car literally couldn’t look worse—or so I thought. My low-fuel light came on midtrip, though I barely noticed due to the constellation of flashing alerts on my dashboard. It was like a Christmas display in Crackville.
I pulled off the highway at the next exit and turned into the nearest gas station. Unfortunately, my lack of depth perception got the best of me once again. After what I had endured that week, I couldn’t help but cackle as realized I was I scraping the entire side of my car against the bright yellow pole next to the gas pump. Strangers pumping gas watched with a look of terror, eyeing me as I laughed hysterically at my pump. I filled the car with just enough fuel to make it home, and not a drop more—Lord knows I’d never be driving this hunk of junk ever again.
Near the end of my college career, I came dangerously close to totaling my mom’s car. I had borrowed it to drive to a job interview at Google. During my drive, I spent the entire trip overthinking everything from my résumé to my memorized interview answers—so I decided to take my mind off my qualifications and focus on reasons why I would totally get the job. First, I looked adorable. As I flipped my visor down to look at my flawless hair in the mirror, out of nowhere a huge black spider fell onto my lap. Swatting every which way and yelping like a terrified schoolgirl, I swerved all over the road and across multiple lanes of traffic. I arrived safely, but my anxiety had been ratcheted to a new peak, which was not helpful in a job interview. I did not get that job, which I entirely blame on my mom. Who hides a live spider in her visor to purposely terrify her son? Monsters, that’s who.
Since graduating college and moving to Los Angeles, I’ve had only one accident, a fender bender. It happened while I was parking at the house of my good friend and fellow YouTuber-turned-cultural-icon Grace Helbig. Grace is a multi-talented media mogul, with her own book (Grace’s Guide, pick up a copy!) and TV show on E!, but back then, she was just a YouTuber who I thought was brilliant. We were getting together to film for the first time in person, and I was so nervous. She’s always seemed effortlessly hilarious, and I’ve always felt try-hard and unfunny in comparison. Having spent way too long getting lost in the Hollywood Hills trying to find her house, I was mortified when I parked and scraped the entire side of her car with mine. She laughed until she cried, then made me a cocktail. We toasted to the beautiful start of our new friendship and got so drunk that I had to spend the night. Bless her soul.
Nowadays, I opt to spend less time behind the wheel and more time in the passenger seat. Most of that experience is spent gasping at oncoming traffic, recoiling anytime I think we’re about to get in an accident, and slamming my foot into my invisible driver’s-education passenger-brake pedal. So I guess I have a second piece of advice to offer: don’t ride in a car with me while you’re driving, either.
a love lesson
EACH TIME HE KICKED ME, I SCREAMED. I cowered on the floor of Justin’s apartment, praying that his roommates would walk through the front door. Even if they were as blackout drunk as he was, or high out of their minds, or tripping on acid, they would know this was wrong, and they would stop him. I cried and groaned and pleaded between each blow, until he exhausted his rage and stomped off to his room. He locked his bedroom door, and I crawled over to his living-room couch, laid myself on it, and sobbed into the cushion, wondering how
I’d hide my bruises the next day. Why did I choose him?
When I first went on a date with Justin, I was still mourning my failed relationship with Adam, and I felt lonelier than ever before. I missed having a blanket, but Justin was woven from barbed wire. I tried to make do with a blanket that offered not warmth and comfort, but puncture wounds and tetanus.
Even after the night he beat me, I decided to give him another chance. I stayed with him because, in my head, his behavior felt like what I had chosen for myself. He didn’t seem like someone who would beat up his boyfriend. He did seem like someone who could possibly drink too much, and everyone knows what can happen when you drink too much, right? These are the doomed spirals of logic your mind will descend when you think being alone means being lonely, and that being lonely is worse than being mistreated.
Throughout my writing of this book, I wondered if I’d write about my experience with physical abuse. One of the biggest reasons I used to talk myself out of ever mentioning it publicly was that it only happened once. And who knew what my friends and family might think of me for having stayed with him after it happened?
The one thing that outweighed all my doubts was the consideration of you, dear reader. I wish I had read a book that told me what I shouldn’t be doing, as I was doing it. While I can’t tell you how to live your life, I can certainly suggest that you deserve love, and that love doesn’t abuse you.