The Cars Who Lunch

I work in an area with lots of large office buildings. The economy being what is it (whatever that means) there are a lot of office buildings that are not filled and even more parking lots that remain empty.

Well mostly empty. From the periods of 8am to 12pm and again at 1pm and 5pm the parking lots look desolate and sad.

But when noon rolls around the parking lots look populated but no less sad. Noon is when the cubicle dwellers become the car dwellers, again, for an hour.

It's no different than the bench lunchers you find in more urban settings but we suburban/industrial-lites have taken the requisite twelve-inch-barrier minimum to the next level.

When we lunch we have to be at least one parking space and a few easy-listening stations away from eachother.

When I worked in New York you'd hit a deli or a street stand for your gastric monstrosities. (I particularly liked the grumpy italian sandwich man in SoHo because he loved pretty girls and hated pretty men. Which meant free italian cookies for me and sharp words for GQ grinding his crotch against my ass. The fact that grumpy italian sandwich guy was probably just jealous because he wanted to be the one grinding against the girls didn't escape me...but hey...free cookies!) After braving your mostly disgruntled lunchman you'd sit on a bench, either on a traffic island or in a park and stare straight ahead. Eat, wipe your mouth, throw your stuff away and go. And under no circumstances do you ever make eye contact. Sometimes you'd take a magazine, newspaper or book with you, to aide you in the anti-social thing.

It never did work for me. Even in other large cities. People always came up to me and talked. I supposed when you think of scary, potential serial-killer scenarios that arise from talking with complete stranger you don't picture me and my tuna fish sandwich on wheat.

But I bet you will from now on, won't you?

In anycase now that I work in a less walking-friendly area I take my precious lunch hours in my car. Along with 15 other people who share my particular favorite parking area. (A parking lot that is covered in a lot of trees and was built for a mostly-empty business park.) Today I spent my lunch hour cleaning out my car and managed to take a quick look around at all the people I was spending this hour with.

Three large trucks were parking in the lot. They each had two men in them and all looked severely ticked that they had to truck around the place in the rain. None of them were speaking to one another, but I think one was talking to his chicken sandwich.

Four little silver cars. All of them silver. My car is also silver. We could have been a school of fish. Two of them had their front drivers seats "missing" which means that the drivers had pushed them back in order to take a nice 60 minute nap before going back to their cubes. The other two were eating McDonalds and Taco Bell. The woman left her headlights on, both of them were getting steamy windows from the heat inside.

Then there was the ambulance that is always parked there. No one is ever in it. I like to think the EMT's are taking naps in the back too. At least they have comfy cots.

Lastly there is a black jeep that always pulls in around 12:45pm. He always has a girl with him, sometimes a few. The music is loud and the food always looks yummier in there.

That's 13-15 people I have lunch with every time I get out of the office. They're regulars. I recognize their cars and trucks. I could quote their license plates. But I am certain that if asked I could tell you what the drivers looked like.

The thing about the car lunchers is that we take that whole "no eye contact" thing to the extreme. We've created cubicles in our parking lots to mirror the ones in our offices. We all sit and look straight ahead at a windshield instead of a computer screen. We listen to the same crappy radio music that plays on our headphones in the office. We all just mindless eat whatever grey fast-food we found that day. And we never, ever need to acknowledge that outside those steel doors, someone else is there.

I have to admit, it feels safe. I like that I can get a cheeseburger and not worry that the other ladies at the office will comment on the fact I'm eating something with so much fat. The guy napping two cars down from me doesn't care if I eat something fattening. He would never say "I can't imagine how you keep your girlish figure with that food." He would never tell me about the latest article on Diabetes in the Washington Post. He doesn't bother me, I don't bother him.

And more importantly my car-cube allows me the chance to close a door. A real door. Heck I can lock it. No one can barge into my car the way they barge into my cubicle. No one can relax and rest their butt on my dashboard while they play with my air-freshner. Sure, my cellphone may ring, but I am not required to answer that one.

That's what the car lunch is, it's really true solitude in a box. I can imagine that those people who stretch out in their drivers seat can look up at the sky and actually, for one hour in the whole day, feel completely alone.

And somehow I think that this might not be such a bad thing.