bum rush the show, you got to go with what you know

I’ve been invited to read at a short story-esque thing in about three weeks and I’m a little terrified. I’ve never done it before – get up in front of a room full of people and read something I wrote.

Worst of all, at the moment, I don’t have anything of mine to read. Sure, I’ve been writing here on this blog for a couple of months straight and I’ve sketched out some rough ideas here, but I haven’t written anything close to what I would consider a finished piece in a long, long, long time. I look at this little blog as a place to practice the craft of writing and not much more. There have been a few successes and a few ideas that I feel as though are worth polishing up, but of course, I want something new. Something good. Something that leaps off the page and has a pace that holds people’s attention while I try not to look too hard at my shoes and vomit.

Blogging is easy – I wake up, find something in the last twenty-four hours worth writing about, and go. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t but the goal is to put words to the page, get a little exercise in getting the words to come and 

Writing a piece is different. The same general ideas apply but you gotta have a beginning, middle and end. You have to have a reason for the reader to want to continue and there has to be enough of a resolution to make them feel as though it was worth their time. Unlike a blog, or a journal entry, or a poem, a piece has to tell a story. You have to go back over it a dozen times and read it out loud and kill, kill, kill your darlings that get in the way of clear and concise language.

Truthfully, I haven’t written a story in a decade and most of the ones I wrote back then are embarrassingly awful. There were a few where I thought I might have actually had something interesting and worth refining a little more but mostly, I’ve written for the sake of writing and myself.

But I feel up to the challenge. I have what I think is a darkly funny and tragic little portrait of a scene and I just have to sit down and write it. The idea of getting up in front of people isn’t scary at the moment, because I don’t even have a piece to read, so for now the anxiety sits on actually sitting down and writing the damn thing.

Oh, I’ll have a nice case of nerves once I’ve got the piece staring in front of me, don’t get me wrong. For as big a mouth as I sometimes have, getting up in front of people to do anything is terrifying but reading a piece of fiction I’ve written? Yeesh.

But for now it’s all good. I’ve got an outline in my head and I’ve got a couple of weeks of free time and it’s about god damn time I actually tried to write a story after all these posts.

All I gotta do is tell the truth and it’ll all work out fine.

I have faith.

everybody pop a bottle, make that thing go pop

When we got to the little alley in SOMA he asked me to take him to, he was so drunk I had to wake him up. I shook his leg and he didn’t move so I had to yell.

“Wake up man, we’re here!”

He looked at me, eyes glazed, and promptly fell back asleep.

“HEY MAN, WAKE UP!”

His eyes opened and he looked at me.

“Fuck you maaaaaaaan,” was all he managed before he started to fall asleep again.

“YO! WE’RE HERE! THIS IS THE PART OF THE RIDE WHERE YOU PAY ME,” I shouted while shaking his knee.

“Fuckin’ faggotttt. I ain’t payin’.”

Nothing like pulling up to someone’s million dollar loft and having them tell you they don’t want to pay you.

“Cool, you can explain it to the cops then.”

I stepped on the gas and drove further down the alley towards the end before he started protesting.

“Here, here, here – take this,” he said handing me an Amex.

I slammed on the brakes, took the card and ran it.

Declined, of course.

“Card’s declined,” I said, my foot starting to shake from anger.

“Wellll, I guess you’re fucked then, huh? Gimme my card back.”

He was smiling at me. I was furious but I saw that the end of the alley was nothing but new lofts that weren’t finished. No streetlights. It was almost four AM and the alley was silent. My camera had been unplugged all night as I had always done in those days, what with all of the drugs that went on in my taxi. I smiled back and went to hand him the card but at the last moment chucked it out my window.

“Whoops.”

“Gimme back my card faggot.”

“I can’t. I just threw it out the window.”

“Asshole,” he grumbled as he got out of the car.

I smiled, my right hand gripping the round glass bottle of Martinelli’s apple juice like a softball, my leg no longer shaking. He slammed the door, stumbling into the night looking for his credit card. I unbuckled my belt, pushed the seat all the way back and waited. I could see his card, only a few feet away from my front tire and when he finally saw it to reach down for it I went for it.

In one perfect motion I couldn’t replicate again in a hundred tries, I hung out the driver’s side door, cocked my arm back and threw the little glass grenade into his head as hard as I could. The little bottle hit him square in the temple and he fell forward onto his stomach. The bottle didn’t break on his head but when it hit the ground there was the sound of breaking glass. He dropped like a bag of rocks and lay in the street without a sound, out cold.

“Motherfucker,” I muttered.

I drove off. No witnesses, no cameras, no nothing. I looked at the paper for a week afterwards, expecting to see something about an assault in an alleyway. I expected a knock at my door from the police, to come to work and be led away in handcuffs – but nothing ever happened.

Lucky me.

Thankfully, I don’t get stiffed very often, but when I do I always remember the feel of the bottle in my hand and remember that I don’t want to go to jail over ten bucks.

Even if the person who doesn’t pay me is a total prick.

it’s your birthday, so i know you want to ride out

I woke up this morning to my girlfriend handing me coffee in bed and delivering the following statement:

“We have leftover cherry pie from yesterday and some vanilla ice cream in the fridge. What are your thoughts on pie for breakfast?”

What are my thoughts on pie for breakfast? My thoughts are that not only is that a fantastic idea on my birthday, but that I knew there was a reason we’ve been dating. I don’t often eat pie for breakfast, but the fact that a woman I’m dating would suggest this means that she understands the simple things that make me happy.

So after drinking a little coffee in bed, I hopped out to the breakfast table to be presented with warm cherry pie and a gob of vanilla ice cream on top, slowly melting down the sides.

A good night’s sleep followed by a lazy morning of pie and coffee in the company of the lady?

Heaven.

Oh and she got me a big fat awesome Giants hoodie too.

Yeah, I think I might keep this one.

I got a few phone calls from friends and relatives wishing me happy birthday and then she went to work and I went to the park to lie in the sun with a few friends to watch a little of the Bay to Breakers aftermath. It was relatively tame, at least what I saw – only one puker and she was kind enough to go deep into the bushes to do her vomiting. At one point a girl dressed up as a zombie came walking up to us, her hands out in front of her and said nothing as she tried to remove a friend’s cold beer out of his hands. She didn’t break character for so long we all were beginning to think that she might have been an acid casualty until she started talking to my nephew so as not to scare him. We played frisbee, several times throwing to revelers on their way back from the finish line, including a group of Harry Potter wizards.

I watched my nephew eat dirt, which was pretty funny. Watching a not-quite two-year old stick his mouth to the ground and eagerly take a bite of earth is hilarious, at least until his tongue is coated black and he’s crying out in disgust at what he’s just done. Keep at it kid, eventually you’ll learn that dirt isn’t something you eat. He kept finding sticks to play with and I would get him to hold on tight to the stick so I could grab it like a handle and lift him high into the air, over and over to his delight. Then he’d look at me and drop the stick and I’d pick him up, all smiles and hugs. While I’m glad I don’t have any, I gotta say – kids are pretty cool. Being an uncle is pretty awesome and spending a day throwing a frisbee and hanging out in the park – there’s really no place I’d rather be on my birthday.

Then it started cooling down, as it does in the park, and we adjourned to the sunset for a snack and a cup of coffee. Recaffeinated, I came home to have a little downtime writing, showering and taking a thirty minute nap.

As soon as the lady gets off of work, I’m meeting her and a friend for dinner at Rich Table. Then I’m gonna go home, catch Mad Men and go to bed.

I’ve always abhorred the idea of a birthday weekend, but it looks like I just had a mellow one, full of friends and food and kids… and it wasn’t so bad. Tomorrow I will hopefully get to see a few old friends from out-of-town and spend another day doing a whole bunch of nothing.

Life is a gift, and making it through another year on the planet really is something worth celebrating.

I’m glad I made a little fuss over it this year.

from good friends and true, from old friends and new

Today was a beautiful day. I woke up rested, free from work until Wednesday afternoon. All I had to do was go to the grocery store, pick up a few last-minute barbecue items and go with my lady over to my old college roommate’s house for my birthday party. It was simple… get woken up by a pretty girl and go grill meat with a bunch of friends without a care in the world.

Which is exactly what I did.

We went to my friend’s house, a little late but right on time, showing up just as the first trickle of friends came in. We formed burgers, cut veggies, wrapped Hebrew Nationals in bacon, marinated chicken drumsticks in barbecue sauce and fired up the grill, talking the whole time. For three hours, we sat and stood in the backyard, grilling up more food than we knew what to do with, grazing with our fingers, telling stories and jokes and catching up.

A few of my friends brought their kids and I got to play with a few little ones while we sat around the grill and hung out. I had two old roommates from college, wives, old friends, a cousin – even a few people I had never met before. Even the fickle San Francisco weather cooperated with a nice bout of sunshine. To have a bunch of people I loved in one place at the same time was all I wanted, and being surrounded by a bunch of good friends I got it in spades.

That one of them showed up with homemade pie was the icing on the cake. Or pie. Whatever the metaphor should be, it was a kind gesture and the afternoon was full of them.

I usually go a few hundred words longer here on this blog but I don’t have much more to say. I want to stretch out on the couch with my lady, take a bath and go to sleep.

And that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.

Good night, age thirty-two. You were good to me.

it’s foolish, i know it, i’ll try to outgrow it

I woke up to a phone call this morning.

“Dude, I’m downstairs. Let’s go.”

I forgot I needed to go to Costco today, and I forgot that my friend was coming over to pick me up. I looked at the clock and I shuddered when I saw that it read just after nine. I went to bed a little before six, just as the sun started to crawl over the freeway. My friend was two hours early but it didn’t matter – I was now up.

Time to go.

I threw my shoes on and grabbed the little post card the mailman had left me yesterday on the way out the door; apparently I had a package I needed to sign for and the post office was on the way. So in an attempt to squeeze one more errand out of the trip, we stopped by the post office annex over on Townsend before we hit the insanity of Costco.

I walked up to the door and tried to open it but it remained locked. I looked at my phone and saw that it was five minutes past when their posted hours said they would be open. I shook my head as a small crowd started milling around the door, wondering why they weren’t open yet – and Congress wonders why UPS is kicking the post office’s ass.

Eventually a confused women appeared from behind the door and let us in and after a couple of minutes, she handed me a big box and I returned to the car.

My parents had already sent a gift earlier in the week, but it was my Mom’s handwriting. What could be so important that I needed to sign for it?

Back in the car, we drove off towards Costco and I opened it. Out popped a big green folded blanket, the last thing I expected to see.

A year ago, I had flown back to see my parents, my baby blanket in tow. It was a messy soft green affair, still big enough for me to comfortably nap under as an adult, but it had started to wear so thing the stuffing was showing. I presented it to my Mom, who was still blown away that I was using it.

“Of course I am. Every time I make my bed, it goes on top,” I said matter-of-factly.

I asked her, could she please fix it? She said she’d try, tucked it in a closet and I immediately forgot about it.

Now here it was, a year later, and I was holding my blanket again, totally remade into something new. She had taken a few parts of the old one and sewed them together with new fabric of exactly the same colors and patterns, making it a little bigger, even. There was a really sweet note and I found myself completely floored by a gift I hadn’t expected in the least. The thought of my mother going to the store and finding exact matches of fabric and then sewing a blanket from scratch for the first time in decades was so touching, I’m still searching for the words to describe it. Nothing I’m writing here will do.

I slept underneath that blanket as a child, as an adolescent, as a college kid. I’ve cried into it, kept myself warm by wrapping it around me, learned to read while it kept me from the cold – I even kicked dope underneath it, shivering to stay warm.

And now it’s back on my bed.

After me and my friend finished up at the store, I found myself back at home at eleven, some six hours before I needed to get up for work. Given the night of work ahead and the festivities tomorrow, I needed a few more hours of sleep, so I climbed onto my bed, and curled myself up underneath my old green friend.

I slept like a baby.

Thanks Mom. You’re the best.

i’m going and i don’t know how far

I’ve not been sleeping well this past week or two. I’ve had a few headaches, no doubt increased by the amount of caffeine I’ve been sucking down in an attempt to stay alert enough to function, and I feel like I’ve been wandering around a little brain-dead. I haven’t done anything physical enough to feel the way I do, so maybe it’s the medication I take for my thyroid that’s been fucking me up. For the first time in over four years since the doctors diagnosed me, I’ve been taking too high a dosage of the little purple pills that I take every morning. Today I started taking the lower dose but it may take a few weeks for everything to settle out again what with the way the body gradually reacts to the drug. In the meantime, I feel a little wound up but so much so that my train of thought seems to disappear quickly, as if I’m so jacked that I’m tired. It’s hard to explain, and I’m doing a horrible job, which I guess sort of proves my point.

Yesterday’s hours saw me getting to work an hour late and leaving an hour early because I was so assed out. Maybe it was all the fun I had on my days off, leisurely writing and reading and hanging out, but I felt like I had given practically all of myself away by the time my ass hit the seat last night. I did nothing but quietly listen to NPR and music while I drove my passengers around, only becoming able to hold a conversation halfway through my shift when I finally woke up enough to be social. When I can’t talk to my passengers I know I’m beat, as schlepping people around without talking to them is generally not how I get through my work day.

To think of the days when I went to work tweeking my brains out high on speed – ugh. I had a regular last night ask me what driving a taxi was like before I got sober and it made me shiver just to remember it. After all these years without doing drugs, I can’t imagine how horrible it would feel to chalk up a big fat line of whatever and have to drive for ten hours – I’d probably either have a heart attack or chew my own ear off.

But even as I sit here and write this, years between me and the last time I got high or drank, I feel hungover. I feel unable to keep a linear train of thought going for long enough to actually do much more than the task in front of me.

And writing? Forget it. I feel as though I’d have a better chance forming a coherent thought by vomiting up a plate of spaghetti and forming words with the noodles than filling this space today with sentences that mean anything. It’s like Chuck said about sleep deprivation – everything feels like a copy of a copy of a copy.

Which is not how I want to feel after eight hours of sleep.

I still have to go by the shop to have my laptop keyboard switched out before work, and seeing as how I’m in my boxers still, it looks as if I’m gonna be late to work again. I just want to wake up Saturday and BBQ and spend the next couple of days shaking this feeling off.

And just like that, it’s time for work.

Adieu for today.

berkeley is my baby and i want to kill it

I’m up early again.

Something about waking up next to a woman makes me want to simultaneously stay in bed longer and get out of bed to face the day. Maybe it’s because it puts me in a better mood, I don’t know. All I know is I was up at nine in the morning on a night where I’m working until after three at night and I feel fine about it.

Today I have little to do other than write and go to Berkeley to screen a friend’s documentary project.

Berkeley, how I… never spend time in thee.

When I moved here a bunch of years ago, I figured I’d spend a ton of time outside of the city of San Francisco; hiking in Marin, dinner in Berkeley, bar hopping in Oakland… I assumed I’d spend at least one day a week outside of San Francisco.

Boy, was I wrong.

While I’ve spent plenty of time outside of the environs of San Francisco, leaving is a far rarer occurrence than I would have thought. I used to roll the MacArthur BART to get weed when my guy in the city was between harvests, back when it was sketchy even in the daytime. Occasionally, I go to a friend’s house in West Oakland for dinner, though it’s been some time since that happened. I’ve been to Chez Panisse once (and would love to go back), the Berkeley and Oakland Hills a few times, and I’ve always wanted to go to the outdoor gun range over in San Leandro. I know there’s a lot over there in the East Bay that I don’t know about, and seeing as how eventually the entire middle class of San Francisco is going to end up in Oakland, I feel like I need to become more familiar with the East Bay.

For now, there aren’t a ton of reasons for me to leave the city when I keep finding things in San Francisco. I can walk to practically everything I could possibly want to do, and when I’m feeling lazy, I can get on the motorcycle and roll to the beach. The BART – while close to my house and fast – is still a long enough journey to make going to the East Bay just enough of a pain in the ass that unless there’s something specific that demands my attention, I stay in the seven by seven most of the time. When I do leave, it’s usually to get my ass over to Marin and it’s plethora of open outdoor spaces.

But today, I’m going over to UC Berkeley to watch a documentary a friend made on a drag queen. I’m always confused walking around over there – the mix of students, street punks from a bygone era, senior citizens on bicycles and drivers who stop for pedestrians everywhere always reminds me that I ain’t in San Francisco anymore. It’s too suburban for me in Berkeley, too college town. The hippie aspects of San Francisco are expressed tenfold in Berkeley and I’m hella good on missing that particular part of the East Bay. 

Berkeley – if nothing else, it makes me glad that I live in SF.

Gimme Oakland instead any day of the week.

But even Oakland will have to wait, as I still don’t have a big enough motorcycle to make trips across any of the bridges on a regular basis. Soon, that should change, but for now the little two-fifty cc engine is staying in San Francisco until I sell it. It’s too windy out today for the bike anyways, and if not for a friend with a car who is recently unemployed, I wouldn’t be able to see my friend’s screening and still make it to work on time. Thankfully, his boss was a dick and he got laid off so me and him can take advantage of his unemployment and get outside of the city for an afternoon before I head into what will undoubtedly be a long night of work.

Speaking of which, it’s time to go make lunch and get dressed so I’m not late to the show.

The East Bay awaits.

oh, think twice, ’cause it’s another day for you and me in paradise

I don’t have much to say today, other than it’s another lazy day in San Francisco. Tuesdays are my errand day, or in today’s case – my lazy day. If I don’t have much to do in the way of regular life tasks, ie groceries, the bank and the like, I pretty much get the day to myself.

I woke up after a nice nights sleep, leisurely going about drinking my morning coffee before getting on the bike and rolling out to Bayview to hang out with a couple of friends for breakfast. Two pieces of fried chicken over a waffle, an over easy egg, and some red beans and rice with more coffee and good company is a fantastic way to start a day.

Then I had to be off to the doctor’s office for a relatively routine checkup so it was back on the bike and out to the Richmond. Twenty minutes and a couple of vials of blood later, I was off to scoop up a borrowed laptop so I could have a keyboard with which to type for the next few days until the part to fix my own comes in at the end of the week. As fun as yesterday’s exercise was in using a typewriter, it took a bit more time to type on paper and transcribe the words onto the lady’s laptop than it normally does to get the day’s post up on here. Today in the interest of time, I’m back writing on a computer, though when I finally get around to starting this book I’ve been kicking around, I think I’m gonna type it on the Selectric first.

I parked my bike back at my house, dropped off my bag, checked the mail and walked to meet another friend fresh back from Asia at Four Barrel to get a cup of coffee. We sat at the parklet in the sun and talked, drinking yet another cup of coffee while watching the world go by on Valencia.

After about an hour, he had to bounce for a job interview so we walked to sixteenth and parted ways. I strolled down to the produce market, picked up a few ripe mangos and some blueberries, hit the dollar store for a couple of cleaning products, deposited some money at the bank and came back home to write.

After I finish this, I’m off to make my weekly pit stop at Trader Ho’s for my groceries, stop by the motorcycle shop to get a cover for my bike to keep the sun from cracking the leather seat and then come back home and take a little nap. After that, I’m gonna roll out to the Sunset to drop a gift off for my little nephew, say hi to his parents and hang out for a few. Maybe I’ll stay for dinner, or maybe I’ll go to my girl’s house after work to kick back and watch the evening news underneath a big blanket on the couch.

All I have to do before work tomorrow night is write another post, go to Berkeley to watch a screening of a documentary my friend helped make and make lunches for my work week.

Today, life is easy. I got time to myself, money in the bank, a birthday coming up in less than a week and not a care in the world.

I don’t have much to say today, but that’s alright – I’d still put today squarely in the win column.

writing intentions, you see, such as my typewriter in the corner

My laptop didn’t totally escape damage when I spilled an entire glass of water in it the other day. A few keys on my keyboard stopped working – just enough of them to make attempting to write a post on my laptop an exercise in frustration.

Thankfully, I have a backup. No, I don’t have a backup computer like I was kindly loaned the last time mine was in the shop for a tune-up a couple of months back. Today, my backup is a typewriter.

Yes, I said typewriter – an IBM Selectric III to be exact, the last Rolls Royce of electric typewriters. I found it a couple of years ago at a thrift store, completely intact but nonoperational. Even though it wouldn’t turn on, it was only twenty bucks, so I bought it and took it to one of the last typewriter repair shops in the entire Bay over in Berkeley. For less than a hundred bucks, I went home with one of the last great analog business machines of the pre-computer era in perfect working condition. As I sit here typing, the keystrokes deliver perfectly measured strokes and fill my studio with the staccato sounds of typing from a bygone era.

To think that most of the great works of literature of the last century were written on a similar device seems almost quaint in this era of blogging and Twitter. yet as I sit her and type, I find something soothing in the hum of the motor, the pitter patter of keystrokes and the look of my words staring back at me in ten point Courier. There is a corrective key for mistakes that allows you to go back one character at a time and white out mistakes before typing over them, but compared to a mouse and a backspace button, changing a word or a sentence is a monumental task.

Typing on a typewriter is like a lot of things in life – it’s easier to keep moving forward then going back to fix your mistakes. When I first started writing in high school, I noticed that it was harder to get over writer’s block on a computer. Having the ability to delete a sentence over and over, I would cut and paste myself into a corner, producing far fewer words than if I had just sat down and run through it without trying to get each sentence perfect.

Somewhere along the line, I came across a typewriter. I couldn’t tell you where I got it, but one day there wasn’t a typewriter in my house and the next day there was. I remember one night wanting to smoke, and – not being allowed to smoke in the house – I dragged the typewriter out onto my front porch, lit a cigarette and started pounding the keys.

I don’t exactly know what it was, but there was something about using a typewriter to write that made me produce. Sure, I had to sit down and type it into the computer later, but I found that doing that had its advantages too. Writing on a typewriter means that I couldn’t edit on the fly, instead having a day or two before I would sit down to transcribe the pages onto the computer. Somewhere between writing and the transcribing, the words had time to settle. It was as if I had performed an exorcism and now that the demon had been expelled, I could deal with the reality of the words on the page.

So now, I sit here typing on a machine that’s as old as I am, clad in a wife beater and drinking coffee. Something about the whole experience is bringing me back to those long summer nights on my front porch, writing because I didn’t seem to know how not to. I sit here in my studio, pushing through with nary an edit, the rapid burst of keys hitting the paper like the sound of machine gun fire.

It’s been nice writing every day the past couple of months. It feels sooth, centering even. And I have been invited by someone who’s read a few of these posts to read at an upcoming event that he hosts, so while I’m terrified and anxious at the thought of reading anything in front of a crowd (let alone anything I’ve written) – it looks as if something tangible is coming from my pushing words around a page. Another life experience – good or bad or inbetween – to cross off the bucket list. Most days, today included, I don’t feel like I have much to say when I start writing. Half of the time, I don’t feel like I’ve said anything when I’ve finished. But as I sit here at this beast of a typewriter, I’m reminded that that’s not why I’m doing it.

I’m writing for myself first. There are things that I’ve jotted down the last few months that have made me look at things differently. There are events I’ve described that made me change how I felt about them, and there are nights I have completely invented that are truer than the experiences that I drew them from. To quote a favorite poet, I am “sifting through the madness for the word, the line, the way.”

So far, I’ve been enjoying writing more than I remember ever having enjoyed it before. I remember thinking that in high school and college that I had a clue what I was doing when I would sit down to write. Now I know that I don’t know a thing, except that as long as I keep writing, eventually I’ll figure out where I’m going.

One foot in front of the other; one word, one line, one post at a time.

the sound of the door slammin’ your ass out, is music to my ears

- God, I hate the fucking Matrix.

- Yeah that makes two of us.

- Nothing but a bunch of stuck up bitches in there, man. Don’t waste your time.

- Where we going man?

- We got a couple of stops. First I gotta go to triple five Cal and then I gotta go to Howard and Spear.

- I don’t mind multiple stops as long as I don’t have to wait.

- I just gotta run upstairs and get a bag.

- That’s too long of a wait for me, man.

- It’ll only take me five minutes, man. I’m fast, I promise.

- Five minutes is too long.

- Keep the meter running then.

- Even with the meter running, five minutes is too long.

- You’re getting paid, I don’t see what the problem is.

- Look, I’m not required to wait. I can take you to triple five Cal and you can get another cab but I don’t want to wait.

- It’s only gonna take five minutes, I just gotta get my work bag before I go home.

- It’s one thirty on a Friday night. I don’t want to wait spend it waiting during the busiest part of the busiest night of the week. Sorry man, it ain’t happening.

- Well what’s it gonna take to make it happen?

- Nothing.

- Nothing?

- Nope, nothing. I’ll take you wherever you want to go, but I ain’t waiting on for anyone when it’s this busy.

- So you’re not gonna take me.

- No, I’ll take you. I just won’t wait. You can get another cab if you want to go somewhere else.

- What’s your problem, man?

- I don’t have a problem. You have a problem and now I’m done.

- You’re done?

- Yup, I’m done. Ride’s over. Have a nice night.

- Fuck you.

- Riiiiiight.

- You don’t wanna waste your time. Well now I’m gonna waste your time, ’cause I’m not getting out.

- Am I gonna have to get the cops?

- You’re gonna get the cops? Because you won’t take me where I want to go?

- You crossed the line and once you cross the line I don’t drive any further.

- What line?

- My line.

- I didn’t know there was a line.

- Well that seems to be part of the problem.

- I’m not getting out.

- Cool, you can tell that to the cops.

I turn the ignition off, get out of the car and put the keys in my pocket. I start walking to the corner, looking for the cops that always seem to be around the triangle at this hour. I look and look but I don’t see any.

I stand there at the corner of Fillmore and Greenwich and breathe deep. Another asshole that works in finance that doesn’t understand the word no, who, as I turn around to take a look back at my car, is taking pictures of my cab’s ID number with his phone. I wait a few more moments until he steps away from the cab and starts walking in my direction.

- I got your number bro. I’m gonna call your company and get you fired.

- You do that bro.

- Eat a dick.

- And that’s exactly why you’re walking.

I get back in the car and drive less than a block before someone else’s raises their hand to flag me and just like that, I easily forget about throwing my last passenger out, already on to the next one.