My first experience with claustrophobia was in a hotel room in Florence, Italy. I was eleven. My parents and sisters had left the hotel for a few hours in the afternoon, and I was enjoying time alone with comic books, away from lines of tourists at churches and museums. When I needed to use the bathroom, I engaged the rusty door lock just to be sure a cleaning maid didn’t walk in on me. It gave a disgruntled “clunk” on being turned. A few minutes later I went to open it and found it fixed in the locked position. With that awareness the room emptied of air and suffocation felt inevitable.
I turned around to see myself in the vanity mirror. I appeared green and the room light was dimming. Being barefoot and with only underwear on added to my sense of vulnerability.
I pounded on the door and yelled, using up the precious oxygen remaining.
The small window set in the door with cloudy glass and crisscrossed wires running through it was the only exit possible. I grabbed my sister’s hairbrush and with my waning breath attacked the glass, creating cracks and breaks and shards that I pulled away from the wires and the lower edge of the window frame until there was an opening. I turned the waste basket upside down and stood on it, assumed a diving pose, placed my hands and arms through the jagged opening and sprang off the waste basket. My stomach scraped against the bottom of the frame and my body stopped its forward motion.
A maid happened into the room a few minutes later to find the naked torso of a Bambino americano flailing in the door window.
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They weren’t too picky about talent at Hoffman’s Carwash and Service. I deduced that while waiting in the customer lounge for a basic oil and lube service. A tremendous screech and shudder went through the building when a mechanic backed a car out through a closed overhead door.
An automatic carwash though?
On an overcast fall afternoon, I pulled in line for my vehicle’s long overdue removal of mud and bird poop. My turn came and I rolled down the window and told the attendant “Just the basic wash and rinse, no wax or extra undercarriage cleaning.” He waved my front tires onto the tracks, lowered the antenna, and my car and I were at the mercy of the conveyor. No radio and prior to owning a cell phone.
Out came the high-pressure hoses to work their magic. The car was soon fully pre-soaked, and I expected to roll towards the next station, only the car didn’t move. Zero visibility out the windows and the noise of powered spray on metal and glass. Dang, such an inopportune moment to have to urinate.
Minutes and minutes passed. What the hell was going on?
Through the side mirror there were glimpses of a figure standing in the carwash entrance behind me waving arms. Then there was no car in line behind him. Then there was an orange traffic safety cone.
Brief shouts. The indistinct shape of a figure running along the interior wall past me. More shouting. No way to call out with the sprays trained on me.
The car lurched forward and a moment of clarity before the brush and cloth treatment. An assistant carrying a wrench the size of his leg disappeared into the miasma. I opened my window to yell for someone, but a “clunk” of the rollers propelled us into the long fabric strips and whirling brushes. Beyond the swirling activity there was a hinged door on the floor where someone descended on a ladder. Then suds and foam and we stopped again. Slop, slop, whirl, thud, slop, slop, whirl, thud, again and again.
My bladder felt critically compromised. My heart stampeded. Asphyxiation loomed.
“Clunk.” Another short lurch that landed us in a gap between the brushes and the rinse cycle. A worker ran up to my window and knocked. As it was opening and before I could yell “Stop this fucking thing and let me out!” he stuffed a fistful of papers in my lap and ran off. Messages explaining the situation? Free carwash coupons!
Another jolt advanced us into rinse territory, and I allowed myself a glimmer of hope that deliverance was nigh. In a few yards the rollers stopped again in the middle of the air blast cycle. Now I could see two guys next to the wall looking over at me and making hand gestures. They left. I waited. And waited. And waited. The blower jets howled against the car doors. No possibility of escape. Anger had been held reasonably in check up to this point, but now a hot wave began spreading from my toes upward.
The two guys reappeared and marched over as close as they could and yelled something. I lowered the window a crack and got a blast of air in my face.
“Turn your wheel hard to the left and gun it!”
After several repetitions and me screaming it back for confirmation I turned the steering wheel hard to the left, shifted the transmission out of neutral and into drive, pushed down on the accelerator and shot ahead. Both left side tires rode up along the top edge of a guard rail, slipped over, and ground to rest on the control arms leaving the car resting at a 30° angle.
I climbed out the door window.
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