Sex and the Single Spider

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@domain.elided>]

Simon Favre writes in AD V7 #965:

> Excellent story, Wille R.

I heartily concur.  

> I guess the moral of that story is, there's
> never a blonde Scandinavian girl or a red Duetto around when you need
> one. ;=) 

I've told this story to a couple of folks here, but, well, with an intro
like that I can't *not* tell it.

My first drive in an Alfa Romeo Spider took place in the early 1980s. 
My father's lawyer owned one, and I was always intrigued by it for the
obvious reasons.

My father and his lawyer both went through mid-life crises at about the
same time, not long after I'd become married to my Lovely and Adorable
Wife Kim, with the result that both my dad and his lawyer divorced and
acquired girlfriends (though I don't think it was in quite that order,
which is what the divorces were about, but that's another story).  The
six of us -- my dad and his girlfriend, Dad's lawyer and *his*
girlfriend, and my wife and I -- were all going out to dinner in West
L.A.  I'd driven my wife, father, and father's GF out to the lawyer's
house, where we were then going to take two cars to the restaurant.

"Why don't you drive the Alfa, Scott?" said the lawyer, and tossed me
the keys.  

The top was down, it was a soft summer night in southern California, and
for the first time in my life I was at the wheel of an Alfa Romeo
Spider.  But not just *any* Alfa Romeo Spider.  For starters, it
belonged to my father's lawyer, which meant I was almost certainly not
going to try any hero-driving moves, late-apexing the parking lot entry
at the restaurant or seeing whether holding it to 7000 RPM and then
speed-shifting it into third would break the rear tires loose.

The second problem, of course, was that said lawyer (the party of the...
you get the idea) was sitting in the passenger's seat at the time.  I
pretty much gave up any hope of getting a feel for what it'd be like to
drift this car through the Parabolica or how it might feel powering out
of Eau Rouge or nipping past a competitor on late braking into Ste.
Devote, and decided I'd enjoy the wind through my hair and the exhaust
note at a sedate 2500 RPM or so.  I wasn't destined to get a performance
assessment of the car that night.

But the third strike against my ability to lovingly soak up every detail
of this fine Milanese thoroughbred that evening was, and this is why I
had to retell the story, a blonde Scandinavian girl -- in this case, the
newly acquired girlfriend of my father's lawyer.  Inge (not her real
name) wanted to ride with her newly acquired boyfriend, so she snuggled
on the transmission tunnel between us.  

In a very, very short denim miniskirt.

With very, very long tan Scandinavian legs, her feet in the passenger's
footwell but her knees biased just slightly to the driver's side of the
tunnel, her thighs lightly dusted in the pearlescent streetlights with
fine wisps of blonde Scandinavian hair that vanished into the shadows of
the miniskirt, where all my consciousness wanted desperately to follow.

About the only thing I remember about driving the car was that I really
would have preferred the shifter to be about six to ten inches farther
back than it was, and that it didn't take nearly enough time to shift
into second and fourth gear.  That, and the steering was sort of darty
- -- I mean, if you took your eyes off the road for an instant, you'd have
to jerk the wheel back to make a correction.  At least, it *seemed* like
an instant.

Oh, the Spider?  I think it was silver.

- --Scott Fisher
  1974 Alfa Spider
  1967 Alfa GT 1300 Junior

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