Fast Car, performed by Christian Kane

In 1985, I was cleaning rooms in a Ramada Inn, as I couldn’t get any other job with the skills I had.  I had dropped out of college, just quit a fun job with a horrible employer, and was given the ultimatum that two months was too long for my roommate to be covering rent.

So, there I was, going room to room, cleaning up after others who were travelling, living life.  At least that was the place I was at. In my head, folks that could afford to be in a hotel room anywhere were far better off than I was.  I spent every day cleaning toilets, sinks and bathtubs in a meticulous fashion, and living in a perpetual self-induced pity party.  Who had it worse than me?  No one, right?

EDITOR: Ignorant little fuck.  Plenty of folks did. Look around.

Anyway, as a habit, every time I cleaned a room, I turned on the radio in the room in an attempt to drown out my own thoughts about my poor, pathetic life.  It was during this time that Tracy Chapman hit the charts with “Fast Car” and I heard it every day, sometimes more than once, during my incarceration with the hotel cleaning staff.

Somewhere in there I found my self-worth (or some of it, anyway) and rose up against my oppressors (self-doubt, personal pity, ignorance and low self-image) and quit that job.  I just walked out.  I felt great.

I had another within a few days and started moving on.  In perspective, it was actually a worse job, but my head was in the right place and I had a blast with it. It was a turning point and hearing these lyrics were the catalyst.

But, from that day forward, I hated this song and wouldn’t listen to it.  I even tried to cover it in a band I was in and failed at it.  I couldn’t sing it, and I am not entirely certain it wasn’t on purpose.

It was a window into the weaker, pathetic me.  The one I didn’t want to return to, or remember.  I pushed it back to the recesses of my mind, as something unimportant and not worthy of remembering any longer.  I just didn’t want to remember that low point in my life.

A few years ago, after hearing Christian Kane sing on a Leverage episode, I began following his career.  During that process, I saw that he had covered this song.  I was intrigued, but didn’t really want to hear it.  I still couldn’t look at me that way.

And then, I met Rachael randomly in a bar and we immediately had the truest, most honest friendship I had ever known. There was literally nothing we couldn’t say to each other and she read me like a book.  A damn kid’s book, too.

See Chris.  See Chris talk.  See Chris bitch about his life. See Rachael.  See Rachael call his bullshit.  See Chris laugh instead of emotionally run away.  See Narrator look stunned.

Through her, I became unafraid of exploring myself and who I was again.  I don’t think she understands fully just how much I value her friendship, but I hope she does.

Thank you, doll.  I won’t ever forget what you have done for me, even though life won’t let us hang out as much right now.  You deserve all the good things in life.  

So, somewhere in that process, I listened to this version and it woke up all those feelings.  I was going through another low point, much lower than before.  I spent most of my time in bars at that time, so you might get an idea how low, but this time I had a legitimate reason.  I took it to Rachael and poured all of this out.  It was cathartic.

This time, I could hear the younger me talking to the current me, like Qui-Gon appearing to Yoda, and realized that I could learn from the younger me.  I was telling myself to get out of that damned hotel and get on with my life.   EDITOR:  The bar was in a hotel that used to be a Ramada, ironically.

This time, the student was the master, and the master listened. I told the pity party to get in that Fast Car and keep on driving.  I am fine right here.

Walking the path,

Chris