In December 1998, I bought a 1961 Ford Galaxie Sunliner convertible. If anyone could have a love affair with a metal object on wheels, it was me. S.S. Bonnie Parker aka Bonnie was a big, red convertible with a 390 V8. As with men, I had a lot of trials and tribulations with this car (see The Bonnie Chronicles post). Basically, I spent 2+ years and about $9,000 out of my pocket restoring Bonnie's cosmetics and making her mechanically sound so she could be my daily driver. The only thing I had left to do was get the interior redone and she would have been perfect. But...
One night in June 2001, I met up with my ex-boyfriend Mark (the one from the Cock Island post) in a hotel for an evening of amazing sex. He lived in a different city and was in town for work. I was still very much in love with him. We'd broken up about a year prior, but always kept in touch. At the time, I was seeing Alan, who I'd known since I was 11 because he was one of my best friends' older brother. He confessed that he'd had a crush on me since I was 16.
The day after my hotel encounter with Mark, I went out of town to watch Nephew and his brother while their mom was out of town. It was a perfect excuse to escape from Alan for a while, who was very clingy. Alan and I had been seeing each other for a couple months, but I wasn't really that into him. I'm not sure why I kept seeing him. Maybe it was the fantastic oral sex he gave me? The night I got back into town, I parked my car in front of the house and left the convertible top down. It's summer. Around 2am, I'm woken up by the annoying, continuous sound of a horn. I looked out the window, only to see giant flames roaring out of Bonnie's interior, and they're setting fire to the leaves on the tree in the parkway. I called 911.
When the firemen arrived I was outside in my t-shirt and underwear, laughing hysterically and trying to put out the fire with a water hose. Apparently, the fire had melted the horn wire which is why Bonnie started honking. Bonnie's entire interior was charred, and soaked. Half the front windshield was gone; the exterior paint was bubbling; only the skeleton frame of the $2,500 convertible top remained. I couldn't sleep so I watched The Violent Years. Later that morning, I attended the wedding for which I came back into town. I wasn't very happy at the wedding, but did my best to fake it. I called Alan later that day to tell him that someone set Bonnie on fire. His reply: "Oh." That seemed like a really strange reaction to me. Then I called David (who would later become my second husband); he was so devastated about Bonnie that he drover over immediately to console me, and then whisked me away from my misery.
The next day, I emailed Mark (also a classic car enthusiast and had one himself) to tell him the news about Bonnie's torched crispiness. He felt bad, but he had news of his own too: he got married! Unbeknownst to me, I was his bachelor party...the night before his wedding. Swell. I knew he'd been seeing someone but I didn't know they were committed let alone getting married the day after our hotel romp! I felt betrayed. Men forget to share the oddest tidbits of information, don't they? I was completely devastated. Were the gods punishing me? Yeah, it really sucked that Bonnie was torched but that was nothing compared to Mark's convenient withholding of information. What a fucker. To say that I was not a happy camper is a severe understatement. Mark's wife wasn't too happy either. It was a messy mess and took us over a year to sort out.
Back to Bonnie...I hoped that the insurance company would pay to repair the interior. I was really excited at the prospect of Bonnie being fully restored. Was that the silver lining in this mess? Nope. My mechanic pronounced her dead and a shop that specialized in interiors said the integrity of the metal was compromised. The insurance company totaled her out. So, I had no car, Mark was married, I was dating Alan who I wasn't into, I was a full-time student living on tuition grants and student loans, and I was waiting for an appraisal on Bonnie so I could negotiate with the insurance company about a settlement. And I was living in Southern California. You can't get very far in So Cal without a car and I wasn't able to buy one because I had no job and my bank account was virtually empty.
In swooped Alan, eager to cart me around Los Angeles and Orange counties. We got closer, became boyfriend/girlfriend, he told me he loved me, and in the wake of Mark's marriage I told him I loved him too. A few months later, Alan gave me ring and I sort of freaked out. He picked fights with me all the time about Mark, and grew increasingly jealous. I began suspecting that he set Bonnie on fire. Winter break was coming and I didn't want to spend my break with Alan, so I went to Germany for 2 weeks to visit a friend instead. Then I moved to D.C. for 3 months for my internship; I asked Alan not to visit me because I was "too busy." When I returned from D.C., things just got more creepy and I didn't feel comfortable with him anymore. He used to do covert operations in the military and I think he was using his contacts to have me followed in D.C., because he knew things that I never told him and never shared in emails. While I was in D.C., he would come to my apartment in California and stay for weeks at a time which creeped out my apartment mate.
It had almost been a year since Bonnie was torched and summer break was upon me, so I bought another car: a burgandy Saturn. A few weeks later, I broke up with Alan. During that conversation, I talked about Bonnie's fire and explained that, at the time, I was crying mostly because Mark had gotten married and that I'd found out about it when I contacted him about Bonnie's fire. Surprise, surprise...Alan already knew about my hotel encounter with Mark and a lot of other things that I didn't share with him. As far as I was concerned, they were none of his business because we were not committed at the time. Apparently we saw things differently.
My suspicions were correct: Bonnie got torched because Alan was jealous of my feelings for Mark, and Alan knew I would never have similar feelings for him. After we broke up, Alan continued to do creepy things. He sent me a lot of emails with details that implicated he was watching me. My apartment mate and I thought our apartment was bugged because he knew so much, especially since he wasn't hanging around our apartment anymore. It was scary at first, but I started ignoring Alan. Things dissipated over time and stopped altogether when David and I started dating about 6 months later.
Since Bonnie was a classic car and relatively rare, she was an investment. All the money I put into her, I got back in the insurance settlement. She was supposed to be in a car show three weeks after she got torched but, in her absence, I shared her story with spectators and participants, and she was voted for the Hottest Flames award. I have her ashes in a red miniature BBQ that was pen striped by a friend of a friend. Next to it sits her Hottest Flames award, along with some charred remains that were in her trunk. Until I moved out of California, I had Burnin' Bonnie BBQs every year.
One night in June 2001, I met up with my ex-boyfriend Mark (the one from the Cock Island post) in a hotel for an evening of amazing sex. He lived in a different city and was in town for work. I was still very much in love with him. We'd broken up about a year prior, but always kept in touch. At the time, I was seeing Alan, who I'd known since I was 11 because he was one of my best friends' older brother. He confessed that he'd had a crush on me since I was 16.
The day after my hotel encounter with Mark, I went out of town to watch Nephew and his brother while their mom was out of town. It was a perfect excuse to escape from Alan for a while, who was very clingy. Alan and I had been seeing each other for a couple months, but I wasn't really that into him. I'm not sure why I kept seeing him. Maybe it was the fantastic oral sex he gave me? The night I got back into town, I parked my car in front of the house and left the convertible top down. It's summer. Around 2am, I'm woken up by the annoying, continuous sound of a horn. I looked out the window, only to see giant flames roaring out of Bonnie's interior, and they're setting fire to the leaves on the tree in the parkway. I called 911.
When the firemen arrived I was outside in my t-shirt and underwear, laughing hysterically and trying to put out the fire with a water hose. Apparently, the fire had melted the horn wire which is why Bonnie started honking. Bonnie's entire interior was charred, and soaked. Half the front windshield was gone; the exterior paint was bubbling; only the skeleton frame of the $2,500 convertible top remained. I couldn't sleep so I watched The Violent Years. Later that morning, I attended the wedding for which I came back into town. I wasn't very happy at the wedding, but did my best to fake it. I called Alan later that day to tell him that someone set Bonnie on fire. His reply: "Oh." That seemed like a really strange reaction to me. Then I called David (who would later become my second husband); he was so devastated about Bonnie that he drover over immediately to console me, and then whisked me away from my misery.
The next day, I emailed Mark (also a classic car enthusiast and had one himself) to tell him the news about Bonnie's torched crispiness. He felt bad, but he had news of his own too: he got married! Unbeknownst to me, I was his bachelor party...the night before his wedding. Swell. I knew he'd been seeing someone but I didn't know they were committed let alone getting married the day after our hotel romp! I felt betrayed. Men forget to share the oddest tidbits of information, don't they? I was completely devastated. Were the gods punishing me? Yeah, it really sucked that Bonnie was torched but that was nothing compared to Mark's convenient withholding of information. What a fucker. To say that I was not a happy camper is a severe understatement. Mark's wife wasn't too happy either. It was a messy mess and took us over a year to sort out.
Back to Bonnie...I hoped that the insurance company would pay to repair the interior. I was really excited at the prospect of Bonnie being fully restored. Was that the silver lining in this mess? Nope. My mechanic pronounced her dead and a shop that specialized in interiors said the integrity of the metal was compromised. The insurance company totaled her out. So, I had no car, Mark was married, I was dating Alan who I wasn't into, I was a full-time student living on tuition grants and student loans, and I was waiting for an appraisal on Bonnie so I could negotiate with the insurance company about a settlement. And I was living in Southern California. You can't get very far in So Cal without a car and I wasn't able to buy one because I had no job and my bank account was virtually empty.
In swooped Alan, eager to cart me around Los Angeles and Orange counties. We got closer, became boyfriend/girlfriend, he told me he loved me, and in the wake of Mark's marriage I told him I loved him too. A few months later, Alan gave me ring and I sort of freaked out. He picked fights with me all the time about Mark, and grew increasingly jealous. I began suspecting that he set Bonnie on fire. Winter break was coming and I didn't want to spend my break with Alan, so I went to Germany for 2 weeks to visit a friend instead. Then I moved to D.C. for 3 months for my internship; I asked Alan not to visit me because I was "too busy." When I returned from D.C., things just got more creepy and I didn't feel comfortable with him anymore. He used to do covert operations in the military and I think he was using his contacts to have me followed in D.C., because he knew things that I never told him and never shared in emails. While I was in D.C., he would come to my apartment in California and stay for weeks at a time which creeped out my apartment mate.
It had almost been a year since Bonnie was torched and summer break was upon me, so I bought another car: a burgandy Saturn. A few weeks later, I broke up with Alan. During that conversation, I talked about Bonnie's fire and explained that, at the time, I was crying mostly because Mark had gotten married and that I'd found out about it when I contacted him about Bonnie's fire. Surprise, surprise...Alan already knew about my hotel encounter with Mark and a lot of other things that I didn't share with him. As far as I was concerned, they were none of his business because we were not committed at the time. Apparently we saw things differently.
My suspicions were correct: Bonnie got torched because Alan was jealous of my feelings for Mark, and Alan knew I would never have similar feelings for him. After we broke up, Alan continued to do creepy things. He sent me a lot of emails with details that implicated he was watching me. My apartment mate and I thought our apartment was bugged because he knew so much, especially since he wasn't hanging around our apartment anymore. It was scary at first, but I started ignoring Alan. Things dissipated over time and stopped altogether when David and I started dating about 6 months later.
Since Bonnie was a classic car and relatively rare, she was an investment. All the money I put into her, I got back in the insurance settlement. She was supposed to be in a car show three weeks after she got torched but, in her absence, I shared her story with spectators and participants, and she was voted for the Hottest Flames award. I have her ashes in a red miniature BBQ that was pen striped by a friend of a friend. Next to it sits her Hottest Flames award, along with some charred remains that were in her trunk. Until I moved out of California, I had Burnin' Bonnie BBQs every year.
Bonnie posing with a fireman
Bonnie posing with her Hottest Flames award...Awwwwww
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