Bumper Stickers My Partner Won’t Let Me Put on “Our” Car
by Miles Klee
When you live in Los Angeles, or any American city choked by traffic, it’s customary to turn your car into not only an expression of your personality, but a piece of entertainment for other motorists. Sometimes spotting a good vanity plate or bumper sticker ahead of you at a long light is the difference between having a rush-hour meltdown, or not.
One friend used to drive a black BMW convertible with “DUMPHM” as her plate—the special California edition with palm trees. Another has a sticker declaring simply, “GABAGOOL.”
As Tim Robinson’s character says in I Think You Should Leave—in an instantly-canonical bumper-sticker sketch about a pathologically turned-on Conner O’Malley and a “Honk If You’re Horny” bumper sticker—“I learned to make my car a little funny.”
But because my parents instilled in me that bumper stickers are trashy, or hurt the resale value of the car, or something like that, it wasn’t until my 2014 Volkswagen Jetta was fairly beat-up that I finally said, “What the hell, I’m putting stickers on it.”
Since my partner Mads shares the car with me, we had to reach consensus on these decorative choices. She signed off on a couple of stickers that advertise us both as connoisseurs of neo-psychedelic and ethereal rock music.
The first of these says “STOP HONKING! I’m trying to figure out what Cocteau Twins are saying,” against the cover art for the dream-pop band’s seminal 1990 album Heaven or Las Vegas. The second is in the style of the 1997 Spiritualized drugged-out album Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, but it reads: “Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Sitting in Traffic.”
So far, so good, and a fitting representation of our shared tastes. But Mads refuses to let me apply any of the additional bumper stickers I’ve suggested, despite the ample space for them.
Keep us breathing fire!
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