August 27th, 2008
“Son of a bitch, you’re running up the meter!”27 comments
August 20th, 2008
"Hey bro, remember me? You wrote that story about me in the paper."3 comments
August 13th, 2008
“It’s the Californians, man, the Californians are the worst.”15 comments
August 6th, 2008
The middle-aged man I picked up at Vendetta is in a hyperactively verbose lather ...0 comments
July 23rd, 2008
When I step into the obese old woman's apartment5 comments
July 16th, 2008
The obese old woman at Fred Meyer has a bad hip and a wheelchair...8 comments
July 9th, 2008
“...I need to take a shower first and wash all of this blood off.”6 comments
July 2nd, 2008
“So I’ve got these two women in the back of my cab who just refuse to get out...”8 comments
June 25th, 2008
“My friend’s getting divorced, and he’s really drunk,” says the bartender...8 comments
June 18th, 2008
There’s nothing like a good Friday night, and I’m referring to the money.3 comments
[August 10th, 2005] There seem to have been a lot of Irishmen in the column lately, but not nearly so many as are now in my cab. Eight. I am really not supposed to carry more people than I have seatbelts for, but these minor infringements are part of life. Carrying so many people I can't see out the windows, now that's another matter. But these drunk passengers are cheerful and funny and begging and, most importantly, not going far. Just 20 blocks along Hawthorne.
Everyone piles in. The windows steam rapidly, so I open them. Which is fortunate, as someone farts. The car explodes with laughter and invective. And another fart, probably forced out by pressure upon the farter's abdomen. Now everyone is making jokes about the dinner eaten earlier, as well as those jokes, both homophobic and homoerotic, that any group of three or more straight males feels compelled to make whenever they're unusually close to one another.
Thus I hear about the sexual predilections of eight Irishmen in the space of 20 blocks. They chortle and tease while the one whose mouth happens to be situated directly above my ear, as he is draped across his fellows, asks me about driving a cab, how I like it, and so on. It's extraordinarily odd somehow, to be having this banal, quiet conversation in the midst of all that cheerful cacophony.
Finally we arrive, they get out, some of them requiring help as their legs have gone to sleep. As each of them wants to tip me for allowing such a ride, I do rather well.
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