Bright Lights, Big City

4 am. Day after Thanksgiving. Er...morning after. Whatever.

I put off updating my blog this week. I was feeling the cold pretty strong after driving Tuesday night. I slept in until 3:30 or so Wednesday. Then I had to look at my friend Gene's van. That doesn't sound like much, but it somehow occupied an entire evening. I went to 9Th Street Video and rented Mr. Death, Big Bad Love, and Da Ali G Show, complete second season. I had seen both of the movies before.

Ely was watching NBA hops, so there was a shut-out on the movie front. We went to get beer. I bought 6 16oz cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. I prefer the 16oz silo cans. They still fit in my neoprene coozie, but it's a man's can, sort of like a Trojan Magnum, only a real, tangible thing. I also think it's how the Amish would drink beer, as they pride themselves on doing everything half-again as hard as the white man. Of course, that would be an 18 oz can, strictly speaking, so I'm really only drinking a third-again as hard as my white brethren.

Well, the beer sucked, as you may have figured. But, that I planned on. The real disappointment was the total lack of desire on my front to drink a beer on my night off. I just felt like crap. I choked down a couple. After watching Ely's alma mater U-Conn play basketball (defeating the Zags in the Maui Invitational Tournament) we started Mr. Death.

Ely crapped out an hour in. He went to bed, and I watched a little tube. I turned in around 2 am, a very early bed time for me these days. Today was Thanksgiving. I'm not huge into holidays, and I had planned on getting stuck working Thursday, so I told my parents I would be a no-show. Then, somewhat miraculously, I didn't have to work. Kick ass. Ely had invited a bunch of his international student friends over, and some fellow entomologists. They cooked a nice 22lb turkey. I went to Gerbes and bought 4 kinds of beer and a pineapple upside-down cake mix. I baked the cake while we ate turkey, around 4 or so. Everyone got caught up in National Lampoon's Vacation prior to eating. That was much better than the opera music channel on digital cable. It's surprising how many people have not seen that movie.

After mostly finishing eating, I popped in Cool Hand Luke, for some background. Again, surprisingly few people had seen it. Everyone got caught up in it and watched it, silently to the end. Aikawat, a Thai fellow, commented that it moved him almost to tears.

So everyone left. I drank a handful of Shlafely's Pale Ales, which I find bitter and shitty. So sue me. I was completely wiped out (do not mention the word tryptophan) and slept from about 8-11 pm. I woke up and Ely and I finished Mr. Death. I then watched the Ali G show by myself. I hate watching movies when I'm not in the mood, for the sole purpose of not wasting the $3 I spent to rent one. I should have been blogging instead. But that Borat is well good funny, idinnit?

Yeah, so that was my holiday. I kept feeling like it was Sunday. I don't want to work tomorrow. I should be getting in bed now. We'll see how this goes. I don't want to drag this cold out forever. It has mostly run its course but a haggard cough is setting in now. I also gave myself a bit of a haircut.

I have been experiencing a bit of a love/hate relationship with hair in recent years. I'm kind of a Tina Turner to my hair's Ike. We are embroiled in a delicate and destructive codependent relationship. My hair makes me look like an ass. I humor it, believe in it, and hope things will change for the better. But, then, it just keeps on treating me like shit. So I cut it. Off. All of it. I usually try to sport a mohawk for a while but can't stand the excess attention. So, I shave that and razor it clean. Which is a satisfying tactile experience, but too much an expression of vanity for my money. So, I go from looking like a dick with bad hair, to a dick with a mohawk, to a pretentious shaved head/chemo patient dick. Then I look like a 12 year old with a flat top as my mop fuzzes back out. I let it go for a while, only to be yet again betrayed by my crappy hair. So I never look my best, or, really, any good. But, awe, fuck it. It's just hair. At least it still grows back.

Though I am a little concerned that it may be receding a bit at the temples. It's hard to tell, because I notice it when I shave it, but in old photos with hair the hair blurs the hairline. And, I haven't exactly been documented in film as much as, say, Paris Hilton in recent years. But it does come back. I'm finally starting to have enough hair to look like I got it cut this way on purpose, and not on a dare or for the armed services. I cut it myself, but the back is tricky. And, I'd hate to have my cab fares staring at the back of a disheveled or unevenly trimmed neckline. It's also getting long enough to require a couple of minutes worth of grooming before leaving the house.

It's not worth getting into tonight, but I saw my psycho female ex-roommate from a few years ago. She pops up every year or so, like Jason from Friday the 13Th--just when you finally relax and think all of the terror is over. In the meantime I mostly forget her, and, if I stumble across a tattered memory of her in the recesses of my brain, I smile fondly and imagine she's finally met her unavoidable fate, and is dead at the bottom of a motel swimming pool. Apparently she works as Arby's now.

To the cab portion:

Last Monday and Tuesday were surprisingly uneventful. I'm sure at least part of it had to do with people being out of town for the holiday. I didn't keep much track of eccentric passengers. That, combined with the late (early) hours, should keep this fairly concise.

My first fare Monday was a group home regular, but one I had not met. She was somewhat mentally retarded. She wore pink cargo pants and matching white-striped pink top. Her ass was wide and her stature short and thick. She lent none of the Old Navy commercial glitz or glamor to her garments. She was rather ordinary in appearance, and held her hands loosely in front of her, near her chin, sort of like Tyrannosaurus Rex or Montgomery Burns hatching an evil scheme, but with absolutely no malice or ill will. It was as if that action occupied a part of her brain that might otherwise grow listless if unused. She had a short forehead, obscured by a cascade of hair-sprayed bangs. The rest was tethered back in an officious pony tail. Her teeth were in regular rows and spanned the width of her jaw in orderly fashion. They were themselves firm and squat, like maybe the ones and Eskimo would use to tan leather. But, their most notable characteristic were their dull yellow hue, like the color of movie theater buttered popcorn.

She spoke with a soft child's voice, very orderly and systematically, with a pace unimpeded by inflection, pause, or punctuation. She sometimes mispronounced words I'm sure she knew in other contexts--more by way of impediment than misuse or misunderstanding. She talked of getting a new job--doing volunteer work at the hospital. If it worked out she would deliver flowers and mail to the patients of the hospital. She seemed encouraged by the prospect of meeting people with smiling faces. She told me of her last job, which was considerably less pleasant. She had worked at an old folks' home, feeding patients. They were not always nice, and often rude, as well as scary. The worst part, it seemed, in her estimation, was being treated unfairly by the other staff. She would sometimes be assigned to a table of old people who were 'feeders,' meaning they could eat by themselves. They often liked to play in their food, which was either tolerated or encouraged due to its recuperative or therapeutic value. This girl would just have to sit and watch, deprived of any responsibility or duty, which was patronizing to her.

She had graduated high school in 2002, at the age of 20. She spoke of such events with no linear connection to time or history, as everything that had happened to her occurred in no particular order in the preceding days. Such was the story of her family's house burning down. As they returned from vacation one night, and her mother was checking the mail at the mailbox, the girl told her mom "something smells like bacon." Their house had burned down and they had "lost everything." Such noteworthy details to her included a young neighbor child first noticing the flames, and the fact that emergency workers had assumed her family was burned up in the blaze. They had not told anyone that they would be out of town, and there were two cars burned inside the garage. A brother had been wrestled to the ground by firefighters when he tried to go inside the house, thinking his family was inside. They had moved 4 times since, settling on a house and neighborhood they liked and could call home. She was glad to be finished moving.

She also told me about her birth mother not feeding her. She said she laid in a crib for days and "my Mom wouldn't give me a bottle or anything." Her mom had gone to jail, she had gone to the hospital in a coma. At some point the hospital phoned her birth father and said "Ronnie, we've got a three yer old baby girl here if you want her." After that, her father 'dopted her. She said that when she would get her hair cut people would always ask her mother where she got her bald spot, and she would explain that that was caused from when her mother didn't feed her and she almost died. She said all of this without a hint of bitterness or emotion. To her they were happy stories, ones she had learned from the retelling but which held no personal context to her. I think that she knew that they had a happy ending and that they were explications of her family's love for her. I dropped her off at a swank house in a rich neighborhood with a red convertible Corvette in the driveway. I wished her luck with the new job and assured her she should get it.

I ran a lot of charges from the group homes Monday because another driver was sick. I was in trusty #10. I picked up some more regulars whom I wasn't yet acquainted. Two in particular were more severely retarded.

At this point I tired and went to bed. I resumed Sunday night, actually in the am Monday morning:

Okay, so I'm back Sunday night/Monday morning. I am not at this moment your humble narrator. I am a pissed off disillusioned half drunk son of a bitch. Wishing I was completely drunk. Which might drown out the desire to rant.

Last I wrote I was getting ready to write about retarded people I hauled in my cab. The short of it is this: significantly retarded, hard to communicate, really fat, breathed like they were choking on something big and wet. It's different driving a cab when you're listening to the sloshing gasping sounds of a fat retarded person breathing. I was rigid, waiting for something terrible to happen, looking for street numbers. At one point it sounded like one of them shit his pants. I braced for a waft of human waste, but I guess it was just gas. Sounded like a baby filling a diaper. Which, he might have been wearing.

I would have chased this otherwise deplorable story with an anecdote about the human condition or something I learned from another's misfortune. But that's not the Garner you're getting tonight.

The fact is I'm pissed. Driving a cab sucks. I don't know how much longer I can do it. Friday and Saturday blew. This is mostly because students were still out of town for Thanksgiving. But, guess what? After one week back they'll be gone for another four. I don't know that I can do it. Of course I will, if I have to.

Friday and Saturday were horribly slow nights. I ran like $131 and $145 on the meter, respectively. This means I took home about $50 each night. This includes cheating on my taxes and counts for a twelve hour shift. Yup, that's a cool $4 an hour, give or take.

At least it was boring and I had shitty fares.

Maybe recapping some details will cool my jets. A bit.

Friday. I got car #16. It is a fine car, mechanically, with the usual crap windows. This time I noticed that #16 had developed a brake problem, and pulled hard to the left whenever the binders were applied. As I got in, after Lorette, the day driver, she said she had to clean the passenger's side of the front seat with some disinfectant, mentioning something about a passenger needing to "wash that fat, nasty ass" and a smell of tuna.

There was nothing going on. I took a break, picking a little at home. I told the dispatcher to call my cell phone if he needed me.

I ran very few fares and none were too interesting. I kept having cancellations and was getting pretty pissed. At one point I finally got a call at Quinton's. It was closing time, and there was the usual cluster-fuck of traffic in front. A civvy car was there to pick someone up, who was apparently slow in coming, and was blocking most of the lane. Another A*1 cab was behind them, blocking more of the lane. I was third behind them. In the oncoming lane was an MUPD car, and a John Luter Transportation (rival cab company) van. All be damned if I was going to lose a call to another A*1 cab looking for a flag or a fucking John Luter cab. Unfortunately, another cop came up behind me and shined his spotlight in my rear view mirror. Pissed off, I had to circle the block.

Of course I never got my fare. I sat outside, seething in anger, watching a John Luter driver jawing with some disinterested college students. The dispatcher radioed to see if I got anyone, and I lost it, saying "there was a big cluster-fuck in front of Quinton's and some prick cop lit me up and and I had to leave, and there was a fucking John Luter cab across the street." As if I wasn't pissed off enough, I had to endure a well-meaning sermon form my dispatcher chastising me for cursing on the radio.

I also had the owner of the cab company approach me about getting sized for uniforms. I don't want to wear some shitty monkey cab-company polo shirt and black denim jeans. I forgot to get back to her about it. On top of everything else, I have to pay for the uniform service myself.

About the only funny/interesting moment came when I picked up my Dandelion Wine regular, the country/western/gospel songwriter I ride to Hoot-N-Anny's. I asked her again, as usual, how the writing was coming. She told me about her nephew, who 'sang in a rap band.' He told her of some problems he had writing a song, so she collaborated with him, with a poem she entitled "Dead on the Streets." It was a song about living the hard life, presumably on the streets in the ghetto. She also mentioned a song he had written, which she consulted on, called 'House of Ho's.' She mentioned that the predominate subject matter of many of his songs was 'bitches and ho's.'

Sometime after bar closing I saw a chick I know from the downtown bar scene walking with some dude I knew as a bartender. She was wasted and all over the place, pushing and kicking him, pulling on him in good spirits and drunken revelry. I pulled up to them, to see if they wanted a short ride for free--since I assumed they were going to a downtown apartment. She was good and drunk, with an drunk excitement following a hesitant vague recollection as my memory came into her focus. She introduced me to her friend, using the wrong name. I'm sure it was booze-induced, as she normally bats 1.000 with my name. I politely corrected her, and she told him about me telling her about the Greyhound bus lines carrying transplant organs between hospitals, which I told her another time we were both smashed. He then remembered me as his cab driver a few days before, from the Greyhound station. She told him I was her friend, and, a cool guy, and closed with "I have your number in my cell phone," perhaps to spare my feelings a bit.

I was very envious. I sit in a cab for hours on end during prime drinking time. My only opportunity to go out on the town is on Wednesday night, and I can't really afford to making so little money driving the fucking piece of shit cab that ties me up weekends. A vicious fucking cycle.

I hoped that Saturday would be better, thinking it could scarcely be any worse. I was mostly wrong. Despite seeing many more people out drinking, very few were taking the cab. I had purchased a notebook and some new pens at Staples before going to work. I filled many pages with exaggerated longhand, framing ideas for songs, and plugging in numerous details to later be culled through. That was the only productive enterprise on the evening.

I had few calls, and fewer interesting ones. I had purchased a new Scott H. Biram CD the night before (actually a reissue of one I bought at a concert swiped by my ex stripper ex girlfriend from this summer) and let it roll on a loop all night long. I was in #10, which has been blessed by a working aftermarket CD player. The southeast Texas methamphetamine and whiskey inspired murder tunes may have conspired to put me in a more sociopathic mood than I was already in. I had a call to the strip club sometime after bar closing.

Calls to the strip club are usually pretty good, because you often have a group of drunk guys who are in the habit of tipping. This time, unfortunately, I was there to pick up a wasted 115lb bitch of a stripper. The sleazy door guy, with his well groomed yesterday's goatee, bald head, and 'sport coat' practically carried the bitch to the car. When he took her hand off of her to open the back door she nearly fell. She wasn't a dead-weight drunk, but a manic, spastic one. He got her in the back seat. I mentioned that she might be better off in the front, since that was the only working window #10 afforded. Plus, staying vertical might keep her from passing out, so she could give directions.

He quickly complied, which made me believe she was, in fact, in real danger of puking. She was scrawny, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Her face was entirely ordinary, a little slack, and wearing a less than pleasant expression. The corners of her mouth were turned down slightly, in what appeared to be a standard expression for her. Her skin was not fabulous, textured with maybe a hint of acne scarring. She clutched a purse and a handful of clothing. It looked like a sweatshirt and a stripper's bathing suit/bikini affair. She did not smell like a strip club, that I noticed. The door guy gave me a well-worn $5 bill.

$5 won't take you far in a taxi, something that even this stripper, despite her advanced level of intoxication, was able to recognize. The most coherent thing I would here form her on the evening was "I need more money, it's like $12 to my house." The door guy intimated that it was out of his hands, saying "that's all they gave me to give to you." He was ready to be shed of her.

I tried to get the address out of her, which she couldn't remember. I tried to get a general location, but the one she provided didn't match her directions. She was a fucking mess, and very demanding. She wanted to get some food, but I reminded her she had no money. At some point she said, "I'm not a whore, I just had too much to drink." I told her I wasn't a whore either. She said something to the effect that she had been drinking with some guys, who spent all of her money, and they would only give her $5 back. She managed to dig up another $3.

I hadn't driven far, and hadn't extracted much more useful information from her, when her thoughts again turned to food. As we passed the Waffle House she told me to turn in. I didn't, heading towards her house. She got mad and insolent, telling me I was supposed to do what she told me, and that I was "wasting [her] minutes." She said she knew people at Waffle House, so I obliged and turned around. She was still bitching about the meter, and started hitting it, not coherent enough to push any buttons. I took her to the Waffle House. She kept saying I owed her money.

"How much money do you think I owe you?" I asked, choking back all of the rage I had for this deplorable ass-bag. "$2" she said. I bought her sorry-ass for $2 and dropped her at the Waffle House. I wrote the fare down as $5.05, and tipped myself $1.95. I hoped she'd choke on a fucking waffle, or at least the vomit she tried to induce in the Waffle House bathroom after gorging herself. I sit in a cab for 12 hours, barely making anything, busting my ass, and she shakes her narrow behind for tons of money in a couple of hours, then pisses it all away and can't even afford cab fare when she's kicked out of the pathetic establishment she works for when she becomes too big of an embarrassment. And you should have to work to be an embarrassment on a strip club in a strip mall.

The only people I felt any sort of human common bonds with who graced my cab that evening came very late. One was a young black girl from the hood whose jaw had been 'locking up' on her that night. She had gone to the hospital once before, trying to avoid the ER, but they just shooed her away because she didn't have any insurance, and told her to 'put some heat on it.' The problem persisted, which she described as very painful. She said at one point the pain was so intense it made her nauseous. Her jaw was clenched tight and she had to swallow her puke to breath. The pain had subsided for a spell, and her jaw began to work again. She had waited for her younger brother to return home with her '78 Chevy. He was late and wouldn't return phone calls and she only had $6 and change. The fare was $6.30.

The other was a guy dressed in some authentic 80s looking punk gear. He was probably 40. I picked him up from the porch of an older house in an older, forgotten residential neighborhood. He was sitting on the porch swing with a male friend, enjoying the mild night and smell of ozone from the looming thunderstorms. They embraced tenderly as I waited for him in the cab. His fare was $4.80 and he tipped me $2 and change.

Besides only make about $100 for 24 hours of labor, the boredom from this weekend was merciless. The only saving grace of this job is the interaction with the people, and I am denied even this when I only run 10 or 11 fares in 12 hours. My picking is suffering. All I do is sleep and work, with a few odd off days to wonder where the fuck I'm at. I'm hopeful things should pick up, but I can't take a month of this bullshit. Perhaps things will turn my way. I am ever naive and persistent that I have paid my dues and the perfect job opportunity and a wonderful lady are hiding right around the corner as my reward. Or, perhaps, I am just another random piece of shit adrift in this indifferent sess pool whining and crying about entitlement. Perhaps the near future will shed some light on this debate.