Dual twin guitar attacks blast out of my stereo as I politely turn my blinker on to slowly switch lanes on the 405. “Today is a good night!”, I yell loudly at myself as I barrel down the highway at 5 miles per hour. The passenger in the front seat thinks I was talking to them, so be it.

“Dude, what are you on about”, they say.

I answer and tell them I can taste the adventure in the air is all. It’s a lie though because all I taste is the salty, wheaty remnants of the sesame sticks I was snacking on. I greedily thrust my fingers into small container that held them, finding none. As my fingers flail deeper into the container, they hit pay dirt. The accumulated loose grains of salt have all collected together forming a concentrated package of pure saltstruction that my mouth is ready to receive. An amateur would try to pinch the grains together but I, an intellectual, lick my fingers to make sure the moistness covers the maximum surface area for optimal salt delivery. I slide my fingers into my mouth and the familiar feeling of my tongue dehydrating is there to meet me.

“Awwww YEAAAAH”, I burst out like a salt shaker kool-aid man.

My passenger looks at me oddly never knowing the sheer ecstasy radiating from body.

My voice cracks as I say “So what did you do this summer?” As they start explaining the ins and outs of their job, I take a mental sigh of relief. Good I have them talking for a while, I immediately stop paying attention and let my social verbal cues manage the conversation. My mind has business to attend to.

I need to merge right now but the speed differential between the lanes is drastic. The cars to the right blend together into one color as they warp through the highway at unfathomable speeds. I do the mental calculations in my head, not only do I have to make sure I don’t get rammed by a car, but I need enough time to accelerate to their speed so the car behind doesn’t slam into me. I do some quick finger math and decide I’ll need approximately 2 years to perform the maneuver. It’s those 105 bastards with their dedicated lanes that have put me in this position. They think they’re above us for traveling through the parts of LA no one likes. We 405ers never catch a break, but I’ll have the last laugh yet. They’ll rue the day they underestimated the tenacity and patience of the 405er. The time for politeness is over, I don’t turn my blinker on because I’ve never met a 105er that would actually slow down to give me the chance needed to get over, I’m on to those conniving jerks, I see through their plans to speed up instead of giving me a shot. I stalk my side view mirror for the perfect gap as the cars zoom by. Like a predator cat I slow to a crawl, waiting…biding my time. I try to stop the larger trucks and trailers, they are slower and less quick to react leaving me ample time to cut in.  I spot a huge long distance bus and a smile curls around my face, I smell the kill. The gap in cars is approaching like an unsuspecting deer, and my hands on the steering wheel tense up ready to strike. Before the metallic taste of victory washes over me, I am rudely reminded of the laws of this concrete jungle. Another car somewhere behind me goes in for the kill and succeeds.

The gap is closed, the prey is lost and I silently mutter to myself the rule I forgot, “There’s always another car ready to merge”.

“What?” says my passenger.

“Never mind, uh, sounds rough”, I tell them hoping that the general feeling of struggle my subconscious picked up from the out of focus conversation was right.

“Yeah”, they say and continue.

Time is running out, if I don’t merge now I’ll be cast into the fiery pits of staying on the 405. I watch the lane I need to get on with renewed focus when I see another chance. I quickly turn on my blinker as a legal formality, never actually expecting that it would give anyone notice. My arms spin the steering wheel until I’m met with the haptic feedback of hitting the maximum turn radius and as I grit my teeth I push down on the accelerator. The leap forward startles me for a second, but I quickly have to negotiate settling into my lane so I don’t cut across the highway like a redirected missile. I let the wheel spin from under my hands as my car corrects it’s own course. Finally I’m reaching the dizzying speeds of the dedicated 105 lane. I watch my odometer climb to new heights…10 mph, 15 mph, and settling on 20 mph, the cars in the 405 lanes are now dashes of color. As I climb up the 105 ramp I look back at the 405ers. Bottom dwellers, the lot of them, tax them I say. Those 405ers think they’re better than us because they have the worst commute at any time of day. Weak. Deplorable. If I ever meet one in person I’ll have some choice words.

The conversation bubbles back up to my consciousnesses “…and that’s why you can’t feed dogs chocolate”, they finish saying.

“Yeah…CLASSIC DOGS”, I sputter.

“Yeah, I guess”, they say.

“So what about cats?” I say trying to incite a tangent. They take the bait just as I notice something.

There’s a truck next to me I thought I had left behind ages ago. How is this possible, I zoomed past it miles back and here it is again, in spite of me. I thought I made the smart choices, zigged when I had to, zagged when it was right. Even in traffic the gap between me and this god damned truck should have been ever widened. Did it take another route I didn’t know about? Has google betrayed me. Imagine having the entirety of Los Angeles ask you for directions, hinging on your every word for guidance. The freeways are the veins of the city and Google maps literally has power over the flow of the blood. Who’s to say they don’t keep the nice and empty routes hidden from the masses. Maybe they set them apart for their VIPs, persons in power, people with money, the government? With a push of a button they can misdirect thousands of vehicles to make a side street empty for Jeff Bezos to get McDonalds coffee. Is this truck evidence of that? Maybe, because if not what am I to believe. The choices I’ve made don’t matter? Every smart decision I thought I made driving on this highway, every driver I’ve cut off, every time I switched lanes only to notice that it got slower and immediately switched back, every motorcyclist I spooked….did it all not matter? All the split second decisions shaving off minutes of my life in stress. I’ve literally given my life to get ahead and here this truck is nonchalantly caught up, taunting me with it’s hideous message of consumption. EAT FRESH. The tortoise to my hare, a sign that in the end everything I’ve done is meaningless, the universe doesn’t care about me or the risks I’ve taken, the decisions I’ve made or even my morality because it will just let this giant, lumbering beast of a truck catch up to me…..this fucking truck…..this MOTHERFUCKING TRUCK! I grunt audibly.

“That truck is the WORST, fuck Subway!”, I interrupt my passenger.

“Damn, I didn’t know you hated them like that?”, they say.

“Yeah man, they have trash sandwiches. Never eating there again.”, I say.

My passenger pauses reflectively, almost as if to question whether Subway is even worth defending then lets it go.

“Are we almost there?”, they ask.

I look up into the sky while the blast beats thump out of my speakers. Still even now, faced by the indifference of the universe, I feel a sense of defiance, my spirit won’t roll over and accept death, It will die a warrior’s death traveling a low speeds on the 105.

“No”, I say, “We’re not. Give me like 10 minutes”. I turn my blinkers on.