Ditched on the Road to Geneva

Here's a time twist. My memory involves the terrific song, Rest Stop, by Matchbox Twenty, which came out in 2000. But my memory happened in 1983 along the A6 highway in France on the way to Geneva. If you're not familiar with the song, Rest Stop tells about a breakup that happens while a couple is riding along in a car. The man wakes from a nap, and the woman, who has been driving, tells him she's decided while he was asleep to end their short relationship. She dumps him from her car at the closest rest area.

In the song, the most moving lines are these:

She said - while you were sleeping
I was listening to the radio
And wondering what you're dreaming when
It came to mind that I didn't care
So I thought - hell if it's over
I had better end it quick
Or I could lose my nerve

The first time I heard this song, it transported me instantly back to 1983. I was riding in my girlfriend's Saab on Autoroute A6 speeding toward Geneva. That November, I had skipped grad school in the States to go meet my girlfriend in Paris. As is true for most long distance romances, ours suffered from the strains of geographic separation. My girlfriend had been working at an intership in Switzerand for months, and we decide to meet in Paris. I bought the cheapest group charter ticket out of JFK that I could find, and she drove her car to Paris to meet me. We had a wonderfully romantic weekend while she showed me around the City of Lights, kissing beside the Pont-de-Neuf, sipping espresso at a sidewalk cafe.

When the weekend was over, realty crept into our relationship. She had to get back to work in Geneva, but I still had several days before my group charter jetted back to New York. So I tagged along on my girl's drive to Geneva. It's a long trip by car, sround 440 miles, or about the same distance as driving from Boston to Washington, D.C. The long trip gave us too much to time think.

The day was overcast and gray, which made the driving easy but cast gloom on our moods. We had had a whirlwind in Paris and were now riding silently toward Switzerland. As the road rushed by us at 130 kilometers per hour, reflection and introspection overtook romance. We sat side by side in her car, but I swear I could feel us sliding apart. I tried to stem the change in mood several times by breaking the awful silence. She was pleasant, but cold. "I don't feel like talking right now," she said.

We eventually got off the A6 and onto the A40, heading west to the Swiss border. By now the silence between us had grown into a brooding anticipation of what was to come. We arrived late at night in Geneva. She dropped her bags, showed me the pullout, and headed straight to bed. "I'm tired and have work in the morning," she said as she disappeared into the bathroom. I laid in bed pondering whether she was really tired or politely putting distance between us.

Unlike the song, my girlfriend couldn't bring herself to say what she was really thinking. But I could sense the loss of affection. I soon felt about as abandoned as the man in the song, left to roam the streets of Geneva alone all day. In less than a week, I had gone from reuniting with the love of my life to boarding with a near stranger. Every time I hear Rest Stop, the song evokes a powerful mix of love and loss in me, reexposing a vulnerability that is 25 years old. It was a sad moment, for sure, but the song also makes me realize just how alive and full of passion life was in those days.