Drive a Grand National for long enough, and you’ll find yourself in a fight outside a pub with a mustache in a 77 Chevette. But you’ll win every time, because you have the righteousness of choice on your side. Maybe your left hook isn’t as strong, and your haymaker isn’t as wild, but dammit, you have taste. And that counts for something. An ass-kicking something. You bang like a champ because you don’t know when the next time will be. And that kind of dedication means you’ll never be un-bung again.

Your Summit Girl will hate that she let you go, because she’ll see you in a Grand National, and she’ll say, “You know what? He’s driving automatic, but that’s a Man for All Seasons right there.” And she’ll know, because she’s dating a Lion In Winter. A feckless, limp-dicked, do-nothing shell of a man who doesn’t know what to do with his free time in the NFL off season.

-It’s everything right and good, and a little bit off, with the world. It’s the bitter taste of a smoker’s nicotine kiss, and the welcoming, cushiony pocket of her vagina. You’re home now. You’re slopping around in the primordial ooze. The Grand National loosens the pickle jar of human goodness. It takes you back to a past that’s irretrievably but eternally present, just on the edges of your consciousness, like all good things. Capable of being called up on a drunken night. Because sometimes, you just get drunk, and sometimes you start thinking about where you come from, and sometimes you call your mom just to hear her voice. And when she asks why you called, you just say, “I have a missed call from you. But maybe it’s old. My phone doesn’t say.” You both know it’s bull, but you both let it go, because you’re a grown man, and you can’t just say, “I needed to hear you, mom. I was in a Grand National today, and I can see it all. Stretched out in front of me like it happened yesterday. Playing Turtles In Time and drinking Juicy Juice out of a triangle-shaped hole you made with a can-opener handle.” So you bite your lower lip and put on a brave face.

The Grand National is automatic, but no one’s emotions are that simple.