Strange Relationships

            I was eager to continue reading Crash, looking forward to further fusions of technology and humans, more insight on James and Catherine’s relationship and more excruciatingly descriptive car crashes. Though I found all of the elements in my recent reading, I was most struck by James’ strange, yet natural, with the wife of the food engineer who died in the his first crash, Helen Remington.  The two meet at a police junk yard in a somewhat awkward situation of Helen walking by James’ old wrecked car with him in it; ‘As she raised her head she saw me through the empty windshield, sitting behind the deformed steering wheel among the bloodstains of her husband. Her strong eyes barely changed their focus, but one hand rose involuntarily to her cheek’ (pg. 69-70).  Helen acknowledges the connection between the death of her husband and James feeling undisturbed, a reaction that would appear strange to me.  Recognizing James believes that he should ‘launch into a formal apology for her husband’s death’, only to be immediately dominated by his sexual desires; ‘At the same time, her gloved hand on the scarred chrome aroused a feeling of sharp sexual excitement’ (p. 71). James is unable to have single interaction with another human (and with most cars) without having sexual thoughts. This only leads to the affair that will eventually occur between Helen and James, the lovers brought to union by the crash. As James drives around with Helen, in the same car as the one he had in the crash, he begins to anticipate coitus with her; ‘Had she any notion of the man, or woman, with whom her next sex act would take place? I felt my penis stirring as the lights changed’ (pg. 73). James is a man propelled by his sexual desires, and now satisfaction in simply driving randomly on the highways. The addition of Helen in his life completes his ideal of a mechanical and human fusion; ‘Her strong body, with its nervous sexuality, formed a powerful junction with the dented and mud-stained cat’ (pg. 71).