Lamborghini lust

I never imagined I would have an intimate encounter with a Lamborghini. We’ve had a few chance meetings here and abroad. Some were as close as can be: abreast with my car at a stoplight; others were faraway sightings of careening blurs down avenues, never failing to cause pedestrians to snap their heads in their wake.

Interesting. Oddly interesting. I’m talking about the Lamborghini’s shape and design — boxy with abrupt cuts-outs, flares and ridges where you least expect them to be.  But I don’t think that’s the reason they call attention to themselves. There seem to be doppelgängers on the market from Asian carmakers (and, by saying so, I expect a bounty to be placed upon my head A.S.A.P.). Men love to talk Lamborghini engine capacity and horsepower and road-worthiness. But more than any of these features, it might be the prohibitive price tag that makes it so nakedly coveted.  Isn’t that always the case? You covet what you don’t have, or put more desperately: you badly covet what you know you might never have. Come on: a brand new 2012 Lamborghini Aventador will set you back $400,000. If that doesn’t make you nauseous, try converting it to pesos and see just many more zeroes get added. Yikes.

That’s why it’s boss. It will cost you your wife, your four children, and your dog. You might even have to throw in your mother-in-law just to snag one of those entry-level models — stock: no options, no upgrades. I dropped this very line to a friend recently and when I got to the mother-in-law part, his eyes sparkled for a minute and then just as quickly turned glum. â€œWhat’s up?” I asked. â€œMother-in-law? No one would take mine, not for a beat-down Minica — not even for free,” he said.

That’s how deeply desired these Lamborghinis seem to be: men actually contemplate paying off with their family members. It is puzzling, this obsession with exotic cars. A friend told me long ago, “Men are defined by the cars they drive. Hardly anybody sees where you live. So if image matters to you, you’d opt to sink that money into a mean car and live in a cheese box.”

I raised my eyebrows so he changed his line of reasoning. â€œMaybe you’ll understand if I take the ‘woman’ angle. See, a Lamborghini or a Ferrari or any exotic car would be like Angelina Jolie. You follow?” I nodded. â€œA trusty, late-model Japanese car — say, a Honda — would be like a Jennifer Aniston. You know how they call her America’s sweetheart — the type you marry and have kids with and lay down a double mortgage on a suburban house? You drive a Honda sedan every day to work, to run errands, to take the kids to and from school and to soccer practice. You drive the Honda because it’s reliable. Whereas you take the Lamborghini out for a spin on weekends and to go to cocktail parties. You drive it to feel great about yourself.”

“Does it follow then that when you drive the Lamborghini you feel like Brad Pitt?” I asked. 

“Wrong.  When you drive it you are Brad Pitt.”

“Brad Pitt was married to Jennifer Aniston. You know this, right?” I said.

“Yes. He left her. He upgraded to a Lamborghini.” 

I reminded him that sometime in the ‘90s, Charlie Sheen sat down with Jay Leno on the Tonight Show and compared his wife to a top-of-the-line Porsche and was called out by women’s’ rights groups for offensive behavior. My friend was quick to add, “I am not Charlie Sheen and I don’t like Porsches.”

Much ado about a car that looks like a Lego model without the round, knobby protrusions. My son at a young age came up with Lego builds that quite resembled the Lamborghini in miniature, shape-wise. But let’s not compare men’s obsessions to children’s toys.

And that’s exactly what I told myself as I spotted a matte-white Lamborghini parked at the entrance of Maxim’s Hotel in Resorts World last Friday. I was headed to the graduation dinner of a niece, Cheska del Rosario, at the Ginzadon restaurant and passed by the car holding court there. So we meet again, I thought, at closer range this time. I admit my heart did skip a beat — maybe half a beat — as I rounded the corner and came within spitting distance of it. Still, it was nothing like the reactions grown men exhibit when they come across exotic cars. I’ve seen some either yelp and point, go apeshit and jump up and down, do a rain dance, or run alongside the car until their lungs give out.

I remember my 14-year-old son as we drove by a row of exotic cars parked at the entrance of The Casino in Monte Carlo. He was in charge of the video camera that day but upon sight of a Bugatti, he froze — video camera forgotten. My daughter, Sophi, was beside him and urged, “Take a video, kuya, take a video.”  He said, in a robotic, yet eerily calm voice, “Hold on, Soph, let me have a seizure and then I’ll take your video.”

Last Friday, I was nowhere near that carboy fan zone —not by a long shot. As I said, it was merely half a heartbeat skipped, nothing more, and all because the Lamborghini looked fierce: like Darth Vader was lurking inside and was at some point going to breathe out and say something to me in that low, raspy growl.

After dinner, as we all waited for our cars at the hotel entrance, Gail del Rosario, Cheska’s mom, waved a friend over and introduced him to us. â€œGuys, this is Gerry Ramos. He drives that Lamborghini over there, and there’s more where that came from. He has a fleet of 10 or more exotics at home.” You can imagine how our group of eight or so people, half of which were men, tried to act all chill about that slice of trivia. But for some unexplainable reason, as we exchanged pleasantries with Gerry, we were collectively inching closer and closer to the Lamborghini without really intending to. It felt as though an invisible force field was drawing us toward the car — impossible to resist.

Before we knew it, we were all huddled around, ogling, grunting and clucking. The men spoke of 700-horsepower and top speeds and what sounded like a blather of facts and figures — who knows? I feigned disinterest. But the moment Gerry opened the gullwing doors and I saw the word “Aventador” emblazoned on the floor of the car and the sharp-looking interior, I felt a head rush. I closed in, intending only to take a peek, but my legs had their own idea because in another heartbeat, my bottom had plopped onto the leather passenger seat. My legs swung in without my brain knowing it and settled my whole being onto that seat that seemed to have been sculpted especially for my behind. At that very moment I believed I was its rightful owner. 

The smell of the car made me feel like I had invaded a men’s dressing room, like I had stepped into a secret world of leather and rubber and dials and gears. I wasn’t ready to get out yet, but everyone else had to have a turn. I stood in a trance at the periphery, watching but not quite, hearing but not really, as everyone else tried the Lamborghini on for size and posed for photos in, out, or beside it.

When everybody was done, Gerry said his goodbyes, slid into the car, and gunned the engine. We stood watching in a neat row, speechless and pensive, as though at somebody’s funeral, eyes fixated not on the casket of a loved one, but on the departing Lamborghini that was never to be ours. It rolled away in a low moan, turning a corner onto the driveway, until it reached a clearing, gurgling as it gained speed, the sound fading until it was no more — quiet, very quiet — as it flew away.

Damn, I thought still standing there, would my kids ever be able to forgive me if I gave up two of them for one of those?

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Thank you for your letters. You may reach me at cecilelilles@yahoo.com.