Relief

I shut the back up door to my room while the last party-goers said good night. This was the symbolic end of the party. I stripped to my underwear. I turned off the lights. The door closed.

There was peace in my home.

As I nodded off, I felt sublime. Positively sublime. For the better part of three hours over a hundred people came through my front door. At one point there were eighty people in this building. And all the insanity that entails. This place was alive. It breathed. The windows dripped thick drops of water. The stairs were splattered with vomit. Then, almost abruptly, the part evaporated. And it was still. And it was dark. And it was beautiful.

George Noory

It's a fairly well known theory that people who work overnight jobs are unimportant. The idea being most anybody in school, with a family or holding a worthwhile job is asleep by eleven. With mostly loners, psychotics and socially inept simpletons left to guard the various gas stations and restaurants open all night.

Forgotten or unloved they wake up at eight in the evening to slap their uniform on and hulk off to work. Making chit chat with customers and going to sleep with the sunrise. Moping and sweeping. Red eyed and thick tongued. A cup of coffee for comfort.

And as their overnight life drags on, three, four, five, they seek solace. They seek understanding they won't get with the day dwellers. UFO's and Druidism seems a lot more plausible when there's nobody around to refute it. A xerox of a religion that died centuries ago. Religious zeal toward life off the earth. Abduction is a sign of affection, not hostility.

And George comes into our lives at midnight. And he takes our calls. With the patience of a father, our father. He patronizes. He feigns understanding. What cynicism must lurk behind the velvet voice. What snide remarks could he making during breaks. Thirty-five year-old Wiccans and Shamans cleaning toilets. Claims to cure cancer and befriend the aliens and travel to Mars.

And George understands. He asks questions and agrees. He pretends to be fascinated. For us. For our sin of social isolation he nods and smiles. The great psychologist of ante-meridian America. The skeptics can't stop us now.

Then the cold came...

It's going to hit the zeros this weekend. I knew it was inevitable. It always is. I steel myself inside two shirts, a jacket, and a coat. The true winter is unavoidable. In the few days before the freeze, I'm still possessed by crippling delusion that somehow, someway, I can enter spring.

Cold signifies waiting. Waiting signifies isolation. Isolation eventually breeds madness. I know this. I know this well. Cabin fever sets in. The last subtlety on Earth. It's too easy to fall into. The helpless four a.m. vigilance, the furious attention to trivial projects. The pacing. The idea of getting food abhorred due to the inevitable contact with wind.

Twenty-five degrees isn't supposed to be balmy.

Spring becomes a myth. A Zeus or a Saturn. Pounding softly in the background of everything, affecting nothing. Songs on the radio about summer only rub salt in the wound. It's not quite torture, but it's right on the cusp.

For the record...

Yes, I am still alive which is ironic because cab driving is basically death.

However, since it is considered an occupation and I am thusly occupied by it, I conclude I still remain alive.

To date nothing amazing has happened. I hypothesize that people aren't as jacked up in winter as in summer, as a result I am at a loss in the fucked taxi story department.

Back on the Streets

Well, here I am again. Sitting and stands and picking up fares. The job remains essentially unchanged. Slackers with children. Slackers with illegitimate children.
Push the button, eject the unruly. Two-ninety to kick the meter on. Twenty-five cents a block.

It doesn't feel the same. Maybe I've grown callused to the passengers. I honestly don't care for them. Apathy rather than amusement. Not a grand state of affairs. Not a bad one either. Maybe I've matured in this aspect. No longer Travis Bickle Jr. Now I approach this as an actual job and not some grand experiment or noble vigilant. Just a guy in a cab making cash.

I told my co-cabbie I had a B.A.
"And you're driving a cab?"
Was all he had to say. What else could he say?
I'm aware of the absurdity myself, thank-you.
I don't need a guy in a Hot Topic jacket to point it out.
I figure if I have to be overqualified for a job, it should be a job with minimal responsibility.

Whatever

Because he was an American. For this, Ben saw no problem. No problem at all. This was his classroom, his class. He sat at the front of the room. He held the cards. He ran the show. And for this reason, he took as he pleased.

Joe sat in the class and smarted off when he felt sufficiently motivated or offended. When the teacher got out of line, he tried to keep it in check. Mostly he let class lurch forward, stop, sputter and spiral into the ground. He just wanted warmth, which he found in gloves from the gas station on his block.

A deal, the only words for those gloves. Joe paraded them on the union steps. A dollar. A damned dollar. Red, bright red. With a solid knit pattern and black plastic grips. Mitten tops allowing fine motor control and warmth in the same fantastic garment.

Joe and Ben met in class, or battle. Whichever you tend to call it. A poem here, a statement there. Work shopping. A valuable tool, when the participants know how to use it. A hopeless waste of time in the hands of amateurs, as was the case today, and everyday of this class.

Ben stood at the head of the class. Flashing his rejection notices and telling the class what they already knew: there's no money in poetry. And you will be turned down. The class sat at half mast. When the question was posed, Ben sitting in front.
"What is poetry," the teacher asked. the eternal question every student dreads at mid semester.
"Diction and meter?"
"Rhyme and imagery?"
"Yes, and yet no." Ben sneered from his pulpit. "Is it anything more?" Does anyone with a brain stem care to answer?"
And this sufficiently offended and motivated Joe. He posed Ben's own question to him.
Silent for a moment, Ben spoke.
"The combination of all art forms. The use of painting and music and photography and language and acting. Mixed into one. The ultimate art form."
"But doesn't that work more with movies?" Joe said.