Homeless people make Solomon uncomfortable, a sentiment which also unsettles him. He deeply wishes he was compassionate and able to see these individuals as no different than anyone else. He has entertained the idea of devoting his life to supporting this population, and he has readily shared this charitable thought of his to others. He is less likely to admit the thought of doing such work will nearly induce a panic attack for him. As fortune would have it, no one else is comfortable enough with the topic of homelessness to question how he would ever address the problem.
Panhandlers remind Solomon of his privileged inner conflicts, and no commute is complete without at least one. Occasionally, Solomon will have a few dollars to give out. More frequently, he will offer a pained smile because he was once told doing so recognizes a panhandler’s humanity. Most often, however, he will hope his car frame aligns in just the right place to entirely block the panhandler from his vision. With this barrier, he can white-knuckle his steering wheel and pretend to think about other things. Out of sight, out of culpability.
Music roars from his speakers. With the car volume set at “5” and his iPod at max, the intensity is just enough to smother most of his inner monologue. He imagines the surrounding cars and pedestrians can hear his shitty music, so by extension, he wonders if the panhandlers mind having an intermittent, muffled soundtrack throughout their day. With his mind back on homelessness, Solomon’s thoughts cascade through his other stressors. He attends to each one as an obsessive gardener does to his plants which have long since dried up.
Solomon hisses under his breath and reaches for a fidget spinner on the shelf of his car door. Several other fidget toys will find their way into his car, but each eventually passes onto his office after a few car trips. Only the fidget spinner—a knock-off bought in an art-and-crafts store—has remained, and although it can occupy Solomon’s mind briefly, its calming effect has long since diminished. Frustratingly, the spinner reminds him that he gave into a fad, one which is particularly frowned upon by his friends. Pride hasn’t made him throw away the toy yet, and he has developed a few ironic jokes in case anyone confronts him on his ownership.
Despite how the spinner may tarnish his hipster sensibilities, Solomon keeps it because it does provide distraction, however fleeting. Distraction is his precious resource, and even penny diversions have their value. Comparatively, video games and music are gold mines, and Solomon would pierce an aux cable through his ear drum or swallow an HDMI cable if they would replace thoughts with frivolous stimuli. Knowing such an intervention is not reality, he instead plays out this written melodrama he takes seriously.
The internal monologue is not all frightening. In a 45-minute commute, he will enjoy pockets of his namesake musing. Highways offer blank canvases through which he thinks of his writing. Traffic acts as his writer’s block, an obstacle which lulls him to sleep more frequently than he will admit to his family. One car ride can produce an opening to a review pretty reliably, and when his music is instrumental, he narrates his reviews to himself, fumbling through words normally only included in his written vocabulary. He experiments with believing that talking will shut up his inner chatter, and preliminary tests have proved fruitful.
When the traffic light flashes green, relief washes through him like a IV drip. He fixates on the car ahead of him, allowing his glasses frames to obscure his periphery and the passing panhandler. His vehicle caresses up the final leg of his trip, and if time allows, he will move at the speed limit to prolong his drive. His watch is a minute slow, his car’s clock three minutes fast, and his GPS timed to the second. He does not like being late, yet being early to work is equally unappealing, so he monitors his various devices to arrive exactly on-time. Some call him “punctual;” he prefers “strategically lazy.”
When he pulls into his work’s parking spot, he shuffles into his routine. Engine killed, aux cord out; iPod turned off; seatbelt released; iPod latched onto pocket; headphones inserted; door released with hand and pushed open with foot. The fidget spinner falls into a cup holder or his car door, its exact location irrelevant to his neuroticism. He sticks the end of his car key into his mouth once he removes it from the ignition. Although he readily admits to having an oral fixation, he bites his keys to ensure he doesn’t lock them in his car, and empirical evidence thus far has shown his method to be effective. Once halfway across the parking lot, he drops the keys from his mouth and into his hand, beeping the locks shut.
Inside the car, two plushie kodamas keep watch, one stationed on the passenger’s side door, the other on the driver’s side. An air freshener in the shape of an item box from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe dangles from his rearview mirror, its fragrance barely detectable. A roll of paper towels lays clumped in the passenger side’s foot space and has for over two years, only used for the occasional spills and in desperate times without tissues. The car’s interior is better described as empty rather than clean, with the only real clutter being a smattering of papers and folders between his back seats’ headrests and the rear window.
Solomon routinely toys with depicting his car as a symbol of his own personality. It is only fitting, then, that in his car’s center console, he hordes his spare change, all collected under the illusion that he will use such change for charity. Not a single cent has made it into the hands of a panhandler.