Paris Blues

 

 

So me an me grand-daughter Jasmin flew to Paris and we wuz met at the airport by my cousin Maria-Claudia, daughter of my tío César, and I'd only bin to Paris once befo', in about I think 1991, wid me then-girlfren Jane, wot had the 'ump more often that not, so, so glad I did not end up marrying her... but we had our share of fun for a little while. It's coz of Jane I can boast of 'avin kisst a girl by the River Seine ( whilst a femme gendarme watched on, unimpressed ) Ya gotta kiss a gel down by the river at some point in yer lifetime. It's de rigueur.

"'Avin' the 'ump" is cockney for being pissed off. Don't quite remember WHY she seemed to be pissed off so often. Even the time we went to Barcelona and its environs she'd suddenly get in a bad mood...there we were, holidaying at the beach in Blanes, and out-the-blue, BAM! bad mood and bad vibes galore... I remember leaving her in the room of the hotel so she could sulk to her heart's content while I had a peaceful drink by myself. Also I needed to get outta there because something or someONE was making a hellacious racket out in the corridor.

Turned out it was the daughter of the hotel owner. A fetching little butch lesbo bitch, elfin and gamine ( I love these two adjectives. I'm-a try to work 'em in again soon... ) with short dark hair, jeans and t-shirt, and a leather pouch on her waist, like carpenters wear. She was drilling with a Black and Decker on the wall outside our room just to be obstreperous, doing somethin to the light switch, I think because she intuited Jane and I had bin havin a bit of a 'ow's yer father; a lil' horizontal recreation, as they say. Although what business of hers it was escapes me. She said to me, when she found me some few minutes later in the near-empty hotel bar: "Eres cachondo, Mexicano", which a loose translation of might be "you're a horny bastard, Mexican".

But 25 years laters, my cousin Maria-Claudia picked us up at Charles de Gaulle Airport on a sunny and warm late September Sunday afternoon, and took us to her abode near Pere Lachaise Cemetery. Jasmin my grand-daughter was on her best behavior throughout our two-day stay, I'm happy to say. Jasmin is 25% sweet, 25% indifferent/lethargic, and 50% terrible... but more on this later. Maria-Claudia lives with her boyfriend Alexis, ( it's his place, actually, as I was to find out ) a polite, well-mannered Parisian building contractor. He buys and remodels run-down dwellings and lives in them meanwhile he sells them. When we were introduced he asked me if I liked Paris, like it was important I did. Of course I said 'yes'. And I do.

Their apartment is in an old building with an inner courtyard the neighbours all share, to hang their washing, and to sit at the picnic table therein to chat and gossip. I saw two Chinese ladies doing just that. Another neighbor is a ceramicist who invited us in to view his work in progress of a female kneeling in front of a man, with her head in his lap performing you-know-what. I had to re-direct Jasmin out the door and have her wait at the picnic table, meanwhile we politely viewed the artiste's, er, they weren't really sculptures, more clay miniatures and figurines. This guy is pals with a homeless intellectual who sleeps on  a mattress in a shop doorway around the corner on Chemin Vert, a busy commercial street leading to the Pere Lachaise Metro. See the guy in the picture, a small figure in the distance coming down the sidewalk? that's him.

Jas saw this destitute erudite pissing into a bottle in the courtyard and went YEEEUUUUCH!, but in France they piss in the street, or they used to, so the guy was actually behaving normally, whatever his other idiosyncrasies. 

So we got in from the airport and immediately Maria-Claudia escorted us to the Metro and showed us how to buy tickets and then split cos she had to be somewhere else. She said we should go to Rue de Rivoli if we wanted to exchange currency which we did, but it was getting on towards evening, and as we walked and we walked and we walked past the arches with the tourist curio shops, we realized all the bureux de change were shut. But we did come upon La Samaritaine, the venerable ancient department store, now closed and being converted into a luxury hotel ( "as if we needed more of those", said Maria-C, a staunch Socialist like her dad ) When we got tired of walking, we got back on the Metro and went to the Eiffel Tower. 

We mingled with crowds of tourists as evening drew in and turned on the lights. Africans selling their art and artifacts on the pavement. The aroma of dark tobacco wafting. I was being careful not to lose Jasmin in the jostle and bustle. The Tower had barriers underneath, people queuing for tickets, and military with machine guns patrolling in their red berets and green-and-brown cammos. Jas didn't want to go up anyway, so we went instead to an outdoor café opposite and had crepes, hers Nutella and strawberries, and mine a savory one with cheese, not a million miles removed from a quesadilla.

There existed a tug-of-war 'twixt Jasmin and myself all about her phone being glued to her hand. As I don't possess a smartphone on principle, we were to rely on hers for communicatin' with Maria-C. But the confounded phone kept dyin' thru permanent usage. I even had a spare charger in my pocket but of course Jas had to have it at the earliest, and when we were coming back from the Eiffel, the phone went dead at the crucial moment when Maria-C was about to tell us how to walk from an alternate Metro stop to her place because we'd taken the wrong Metro line. I asked Jas WHY was it she hadda have her damn phone on all the time, and she said because otherwise she'd get bored.

I don't speak French. I've always had this hang-up about it being the most pretentious, conceited, snobbish, highfalutin, fuckin pompous, YEEEUUUUUCH! language. Particularly when spoken by the non-French. The French themselves can be excused, as they got no choice. I always associate speaking in French with the petty bushwhacks in Mexico City. Everything in "good taste" in Mex City is Parisian-influenced, from when the Frenchies conquered our country, the days of Emperor Maximilian and his crazy wife Carlotta and that. In fact I often felt I was in Mex City, walking around Paris... I envisioned some paunchy shirt-and-tied Mexico Citizen coming on all petty bushwhack goin' mais oui, monsieur. Tres chic. Oh la la.

I was accused recently by an ex-girlfriend of being a Surrealist. Or perhumps a surrealist, no capital c, only because I've been known to harp and waffle about Luis Buñuel's devastating critique of the French petty bushwhack in his 1970s movies. I watched "That Obscure Object of Desire", and "The Discreet Charm of The Bushwhack" when a teenager, and was greatly influenced. So whenever I come across somebody putting on French airs and graces they make me wanna puke.

But French is widely spoken in Paris. I had some difficulty at the Tabac when trying to buy Gauloises Brunes. The lady behind the counter kept pushing Gauloises Blondes at me. Non, non! BRUNES! BRUNES! Oh fuckin 'ell...

I suspect my cousin's sanity is frail at the best of times, she's always going to the psychologist, and it happened that three days before we were to arrive, she found that her Sri-Lankan next-door neighbor had hung himself in the stairs! she screamed bloody murder, and other neighbors came and took him down and called the ambulance. The guy didn't die, but it nearly sent poor Maria-C over the edge. So MORE psychologist, and less time to spend with us. Kept us waiting 3 and 1/2 hours around Notre Dame while she went to her session because she absent-mindedly took the wrong train coming back and didn't realize it until she started seeing onion fields out the window...

That night us four repaired to the Brasserie on the corner and dined on fresh oysters, salad and white wine. Well Maria-C, Alexis and I did. Jas had a chicken burger and fries. I drank most of the two carafes of wine, tell the truth. The next morning I got up tried to take a shower but couldn't turn on the tap, so dressed in the clothes I'd been wearin' and went out while everybody still slept tho' it was already ten a.m. I wanted to buy a belt with a boar's head buckle I'd seen in the window of a sporting and hunting goods store. Ended up not buying it when I found out it was plastic, made in China, and cost 32 Euros.

Before you start thinking I'm quite the debonair boulevardier Bryan Ferry style, let me remind you that B.F might well be the messenger of your doom and your destruction ( how you doin' there, E. Ros, allright? ) and that I aint sofisticated. I'm just Miguel from Tijuana who likes to smoke tequila and drink marijuana, and in that capacity I will finish with a quaint commercial break, but no:

I was forgetting about Montmartre. The previous time I was in Paris, somehow I neglected to visit Montmartre; the venerable ancient once-upon-a-time enclave of impecunious urdists like Modigliani, and TooLoose Latrec, and them lot. Being a conceptual urdist myself ( at least in my head ) I wanted to breathe the same air, even though nowadays Montmartre is the last refuge of impecunious caricaturists who will chase you down the street trying to convince you to let them draw your portrait. But there still is something captivating about Montmartre, some atmosphere quaint and picturesque. We sat at a café and had lunch, and walked, and looked down upon The City of Light. At least Maria-C and I did. Jasmin looked down upon her cellphone. And then we walked back down to the Metro and fucked off. 

When I woke up the next morning back in my daughter's house in Manchester, both she an Jas had gone to their respective occupations and it looked rainy out the window, and I had the Paris Blues so bad I put a drop of Scotch in my coffee and went back to sleep

TAXI !! pt 2

Well, the taxi firm I had been working for the last eighteen years shut down a year ago, through a combination of über and bad management. So I came to this other outfit where the owner seemed a little wacky, but hey, I needed the job. And I did ok for several months, then there came a slump of a few weeks, then ok again for a couple of more months, then another slump. So far I have identified three distinct slumps in the year: the end of August, Christmas, and the second part of April, first part of May. It is now almost the middle of May and business has not picked up yet.

I am now working in a more upscale, touristy part of town, but the tourists and the conventioneers haven't arrived yet, so I mostly sit reading a book, or I take naps in the back seat.

This is going to be addressing the wacky owner mainly. As a long-time independent self-employed contractor taxi driver, I am accustomed to a freedom that is severely curtailed here. Generally a taxi company will let us drivers come and go as we please, as long as we pay the rent and don't wreck the cab, but in this particular dysfunctional rinky-dink outfit we are treated more like employees punching a time card; obliged to work until being allowed to go home. and expected to perform duties other than just driving a passenger from 'a' to 'b' such as helping with the upkeep and maintenance of the vehicle, acting as public relations, and human resources operatives, even.

For many months I have put up with this state of affairs. I thought well, at least I am making a living. But there are so many things wrong here. The radio dispatch is a complete disaster. There is a senile elderly lady at the c.b. radio during the busiest part of the evening, and she drives the craziness quotient sky high. It's a scratchy radio where you have to repeat yourself and have a hard time hearing anything she says. All other cab companies have had digital dispatch for decades. None of this shouting "repeat please? say again?". Your calls appear on the dispatch screen and you press either the accept or the reject button. Yes, and that's another thing; we are accustomed to being able to reject a call for whatever reason, whereas here, management calls it "Abandoning a Fare", like it's a capital sin or something.

At first I thought the owner's peculiarity lay in being exceptionally hard-working, but little by little, and it has taking me up until just the other day, when I wrote the owner a letter expressing my frustration, that it dawned on me that the owner suffers from an obsessive disorder. The owner is obsessed with servicing E-E-E-EVERY LAST CALL ON THE PLANET and this is clearly impossible. Some calls are going to get away. I've seen it in the previous cab companies that I have worked for. If there are no cabs available, the dispatcher says to the person requesting a cab that none are available at the time. This is the normal, sane way of doing things.

Last October we had so much rain one day, it was a deluge of biblical proportions. We were navigating oceans of rain, and it happened to get very busy towards evening, when a lot of the drivers went home and there were I think, three of us left. Naturally there was a backlog of calls, and I was thinking to myself  I should go home too, because of the dangerous driving conditions. The elderly lady dispatcher was at the controls and she must've blown a gasket, because the owner took over the dispatching. It got so dark and so wet I could hardy discern the outlines of the road, and so was driving extremely slow. At some point I had to stop for gas, and the owner called me on the phone telling me to hurry up, and I said "You are stressing me out. It is not safe to hurry up in this weather". The owner went into a strange tirade about how I was an experienced driver, that I could handle it, and muttered something about 'people who get stressed out', like it was a handicap or a shortcoming.

There was an incident more recently, when a passenger got mad because I was thirteen cents short on his change of a twenty-dollar bill, and after some angry words, he slapped the hat off my head. I sent the owner a text requesting authorization NOT pick up this person again ( because he is somewhat of a regular caller ) and the owner phoned me and quizzed me minutely about the incident. Said I should have given the passenger a dollar back, and that I should be more diplomatic. I got a little hot and raised my voice a notch and said that it would be impossible for me to be diplomatic to somebody who in effect had assaulted me. The conversation was dragging and going nowhere. The owner has a habit of trying to talk circles around you until you give in, but I stood my ground and at long last the owner ok'd my not picking  up the offending party anymore.

The cab company boss' favorite words are "fast", "quick", and "expedite", but I'm not having a heart attack just because somebody called for a cab.

I just had my regular Sunday and Monday off, so I haven't heard the boss' reaction to my letter, in which I voice many of the same complaints I do here. Who knows but that I may be out of a job. I will know in a few hours.

A few days later the boss left me a conciliatory message, so I guess I still got the job. For what it's worth.

Me paró la municipal

Eran las dos de la mañana. Regresando del gabacho, nomás rebasas Aduanas, está una calle oculta por la curvatura, del lado izquierdo, que conduce a la Colonia Federal. Con frecuencia está ahí a esas horas una patrulla de la municipal, por si acaso. Esta vez estaban dos. Me alcanzaron a la altura del CECUT y me marcaron el alto. Ya me pasé a la lateral y paré la marcha de mi viejo y confiable Ford Ranger 1997. Este pick-up está levantado de la suspensión y es bueno pa'andar en las aguas como las que han llovido últimamente. No me gusta que llueva porque luego tengo que subirme al techo a barrer l'agua. Y como NO soy agricultor, pues las sequías me valen madre. De hecho las celebro. A mí la lluvia no me acarrea más que problemas. Perdonen eso de "de hecho" que ya sé, es sólo una muleta lingüística, pero okey. Sigamos. O seguiré yo solito, porque nomás soy yo el que está aquí.

DONDE PUTASMADRES DEJÉ MI CABALLITO TEQUILERO?! creo que lo dejé sobre el librero. O tal vez en las racas de los cartuchos VHS... ya ves que a mí me gusta lo antiguo. Las circunstancias me jalan dentro del Siglo XXI a regañadientes y en reversa. No sé qué es la tal memoria USB y no quiero saberlo. Por dar un ejemplo.

Pues me pararon AMBAS patrullas. Y ya se acercaron dos chotas uno por un lado y otro por el otro, como suelen.

"Qué pasó?" dije.

"Licencia, por favor"

"Por qué, que hice mal? vengo bien"

"Vienes cansado? vas manejando mal"

"Si vas a decir que vengo tomado, te diré que yo NO tomo. No puedo tomar, porque soy diabético"

"Nunca dije que vinieras tomado, pero vienes manejando mal"

"Mal, cómo?!"  aquí ya me estaba empezando a enchilar.

"De donde vienes?"

"Del jale. Manejo un taxi en San Diego"

"A dónde vas?"  mira mi licencia con detenimiento.

"A mi casa. Allá por la Ermita"

"De qué parte del D.F. eres?"

"Nunca dije que era del D.F. Nací acá por la Calle Tercera, en el Sanatorio Balcázar", apuntando con el índice derecho hacia el Poniente con cara de enojo.

Este policía era treintañero, con penetrantes ojos oscuros, piel morena, esbelto, no mal parecido en cierta forma.. deste...gandalla, hijoputa. Digo, por la mirada torva que me empezó a dedicar nomás al darse cuenta que yo se las estaba devolviendo igual.

"Viene cansado, enfadado?" Aquí ya se pasó al 'usted'.

"Repito. Vengo del jale. Ha sido un día largo" Le miro directamente a los ojos con una mirada igualmente penetrante y llena de indignación, además.

El policía se empezó a poner truculento. Truculento significa "cruel", o "atroz". Bueno, no tanto así. Digamos que se empezó a pone altisonante. Alterado.

"SON USTEDES LOS QUE NOS TRATAN MAL A NOSOTROS! USTEDES USTEDES LOS AUTOMOVILISTAS USTEDES USTEDES SON!!!"  algo así, me pareció que dijo. Yo ya no dije nada.

"Tome. Aqui esta su licencia, y váyase, que dios lo bendiga. Ya no quiero estar recibiendo sus malas vibras".

Con eso, se regresó a su patrulla. Era sinaloense y andaba bien crico, el cabrón. Y todavía tuvo la desfachatez de bendecirme, como si fuera el pinchi Papa... yo arranqué hacia el Oriente por la así llamada Vía Rapida Poniente, que ni es rápida, ni va hacia el Poniente. Creo que esos chotas estaban ahi parados cerca de La Línea a la caza de algún turista o emigrado despistado, que les resultara presa fácil para una extorsión.

Llegando a la casa me serví dos o cuatro tequilas, para borrarme el feo sabor de boca. Ahora creo que me voy a liar un frajo de tabaco en greña.

Una vez levanté en mi taxi a dos muchachos canadienses de un hotel en San Ysidro y los llevé al centro de San Diego. Me contaron que ese mismo día habían cruzado la frontera en su auto alquilado, y que en el primer semáforo de Tijuana los pararon unos policías, quienes los amenazaron con arrestarlos, y a los cuales les tuvieron que dar doscientos dólares para que los dejaran ir. Que se dieron la vuelta y se regresaron a Estados Unidos. Dijeron que nunca regresarían a México.

The Crank

I'm a cranky old guy, no doubt. My crankiness has alienated some of my closest friends, like who wants to be ridiculed and belittled alla time? Not him, not her. My tío Juan was cranky I recall. My dad wasn't. He was a happy, well-adjusted man probably got to suck at his mother's tit to his heart's content when he were a tiny tot. But oh no not I, I didn't. The woman who gave birth to me abandoned me in another country and went away. I've since made that country my home to the point I wouldn't want to be a fucking immigrant in anybody else's fucking nightmare, right.

October 1993 found my dad and I driving through San Antonio Texas in his gold-colored 1985 Mercury Cougar. My dad had two and a half years left to live and we were visiting San Pedro Park, the barrio where he grew up. He and his brothers used to collect empty soda bottles to redeem them and they would hand over the 25 cents thus earned to their mother, who would take it to the local panadería for to buy a big bag of day-old bread with which to feed the family. Hard times during The Depression. Are you depressed yet?

That October day it was hot and humid in San Antonio as we were driving around looking for a motel and I must have been complaining endlessly of the heat and the humidity, because my dad exclaimed JESUS MIGUEL YOU SOUND JUST LIKE MY WIFE!

We found a motel contiguous to a golfing range you know where you get a bucket of golf-balls and rent a number seven iron and a number two driver, and whack balls into the distance? They got like yard markers 100 yards 150 yards, etc. not my cuppa tea, but my dad usedta love that shit, so he got a room, and handed me the keys to the Cougar and bid me a good trip 90 miles up the road to Austin, which I was eager to visit. The Rock and Blues clubs and that. Stomping grounds of Stevie Ray Vaughan and whomever. Lou-Ann Barton.

I remember commenting maybe I'll grow into a cranky old guy like my tío Juan. My dad riposted you already are like that, Miguel.

But I only mention all of this as an aside and introduction to what burns in my chest today although the intro has taken on a life of its own and grown like a cancer. I want to bitch about something I got no real right to bitch about and should keep my mouth shut about because I've made my bed and got nowhere else to go.

Here's a 1985 Mercury Cougar.

I'M HAPPIER THAN SHIT WORKING AT CORECAB OK BUT I'M A SELF-EMPLOYED CONTRACTOR AND I SHOULDN'T BE MADE TO PICK UP PSYCHOTIC MURDERERS AND BATTY OLD LADIES WHO WANT ALL THE CAR WINDOWS OPEN IN THE FUCKIN RAIN!

There. That's all I really wanted to say. Have a nice day.

"The fly in the ointment"

meaning "a small but irritating flaw that spoils the whole". I'm overall really happy in my new place of work, it is just that some aspects of its antiquated, rinky-dink manner of functioning irk me no end, but I should look at the bottom line: I make more money here. I am somewhat antiquated myself, but CorCab should really get with the technology of digital dispatch, because putting calls out over the radio creates a lot of friction, especially because their radio traffic is more anarchic than at any of the previous cab companies I have worked for. Radio should be controlled by the dispatcher and the drivers should stick to accepting calls, or asking relevant questions about their calls. There's this particular dispatcher, an elderly lady who has a very short fuse, and who has the busiest shift because she's pals with the owner; she gets stressed out when it's very busy, and there are continuous yelling matches between her and some of the more argumentative drivers, those who are easily outraged by her faults and shortcomings. Also some drivers are in love with the sound of their own voice and are forever expounding their opinions over the radio, regardless of how germane they might be. Everybody knows everybody else's business, because we have to announce that we have picked up the passenger that was given us by dispatch, and to say where we are taking them. It sours your mood if you have been getting a string of short fares and another driver seems to be getting all the long trips. So drivers are envious of each other, and we don't take into account the times when our own fool selves have had a run of good luck. Like desperate Las Vegas gamblers we want to get lucky ALL the time. Yet at the end of the week, we all have generally done pretty well, so all the bickering and aggravation on the c.b. radio has been for naught.

The owner of CorCab has a very civilized, polite manner about her, in a Lutheran sort of way, but she surely must be aware that she has two Cerberuses working in the office; the accountant and the head dispatcher.  The former ( I forget her name... Doris? Doreena? ) hounds you to hell if you are but a minute late in paying your lease. The latter, a certain Ronnie, is a pathological accuser. Blame, blame, blame. Blame you for this, blame you for that, blame you for something you never even heard about. Because he is in charge of the maintenance of the vehicles, and the company does not have their own mechanic, his job is to relegate on the poor driver the responsibility of the vehicle's upkeep... thirty-three years driving a cab this month, and I have never had to deal with the yearly taxicab inspections conducted by the municipal taxicab authority. This has always been the responsibility of the taxicab company. The ten-year old jalopies with a quarter million miles on the clock that we drive are bound to be breaking down often. Now, I am mechanically challenged. Checking the tires and the fluids is the limit of my ability. I cannot be blamed for a malfunctioning heater core. But he blamed me for the very thing the other day. Drivers I have spoken with share the same complaint, This Ronnie guy is insidiously relentless with his blaming, like a sword hanging over your head. Alternator conks out, and why did YOU let it happen? This qualifies as downright psychological abuse, Qué no?

I've met some of the drivers. We congregate at the taxi stand across the street from Hotel del Colorado. This is a smoke-free town but some of us surreptitiously indulge. I roll my own tobacco, so if cops should stop by I can easily dispose of the evidence. The drivers I best get along with are Danny, a 30-something year old Puerto Rican ( he looks like some cheeky monkey always bouncing around ) who is married to a girl from Tijuana. They have two daughters. The other is a Polish guy about my age or a little older ( looks like some skinny bird, a stork maybe )  called Alexy, who is not very forthcoming with his biography, but who I gather is retired from a previous job and is augmenting his income and keeping busy driving a taxicab. Then there is Biff.

Biff used to be a tuna-boat captain until the fishing company went bust. He's been driving a cab for five years. A tireless worker, he must be one of the top earners. His wife, who waits tables at Jerry's Café, kicked him out of the house so she can conduct love affairs with the cooks and the bus boys from the restaurant. She kept their teenage sons. Biff is a houseguest at his brother's, but his brother's wife doesn't like him and he has long since worn out his welcome, but can't afford his own place because he's still making payments on the house he used to share with his wife. Or because of bad money management, debts, I don't know.

Biff is big and burly, dresses always in black shorts and black t-shirt and sports an impressive biblical beard of prophet proportions. A Captain Ahab type who probably hums sea shanties in his dreamtime. He drinks a lot, for somebody with diabetes. He told me he drank seventeen Stella Artois the other Sunday. Biff cut his foot on a sharp stone and it's been weeks and the wound has not healed yet. He was very helpful to me when I first started, offering advice and directions. Biff is fun to talk to, but all the same he's a competitive and somewhat dishonest fellow driver, always taking any slight edge, any slight advantage that he can, sometimes stepping on the toes of other drivers. In fact most of the drivers are greedy, selfish little pigs. The only gentlemen that I can see in the bunch are Danny from Puerto Rico, and Alexy from Poland. They'll say, "after you, sir". Well, they'll say that to ME, because they can sense that I'm somehow disconnected from the prevalent dog-eat-dog competition.

But let me tell you about this Miami-Cuban woman in my cab! she ignored both her companion, a burly white guy from Colorado; I'd say in his mid-forties, and my humble self, because she was on the phone with a friend the whole time, and usually people on the phone irritate me, but her conversation although not meant for us, was riveting: she was describing a get-together at the Hotel del Colorado, with the families of both the future  groom, and the bride-to-be, of a wedding fast approaching. This woman was to me some sort of star. Not so much what she was saying, but how she said it. She would speak fluent English interspersed with Cuban-Spanish asides which my ears found captivating and exotic, and I wanted to listen to her talk on the phone all night. But alas, we soon arrived at the U.S. Grant Hotel and I dropped them off. As her slim figure all in black scurried inside still on the phone, the guy said to me, as he paid me: " Yep. Cubans. Cubans and weddings".

The guy I share the cab with, he works the day shift, keeps putting these tin cans of cherry-scented car deodorant under the driver's seat, and their cloying perfume gets in my sinuses and makes me cough. I told him before, I said, I had to throw your cherry perfume out because it was bothering me. Well, he put in another one and hid it good but I still found it. I told the boss lady I cannot abide by this fellow any longer but she said we all have to get along as a team. I said I am more a lone wolf than a team player. Had a cab all to myself 18 years and it's impossible for me to put up with other people's idiosyncrasies. I don't want the guy to change his ways, I just want him gone. Put him in another cab where he can indulge his cherry scent fixation to his heart's content.

Steely Dan II

I dropped some kid off at The Belgian Lion, 30th and El Cajon. It has been a very poor week and finally we get some business. Driving down 30th Street listening to Steely Dan looking to get back on the freeway, North Park seems inviting.Young people crowding the sidewalks and bursting out the bars and restaurants and coffee places and old-style barbershops. I spy a row of arts and crafts stalls and decide to park and walk around a little. It's a beautiful Saturday evening not even seven o'clock and dark already. Warmer than it's been. The neon lights, the commercial buildings from mid-twentieth century, a quarter moon peeking from behind a cloud and everything else like that. Them girls all look pretty, not an ugly one in the bunch. What used to be a Salvation Army thrift store, one where I used to shop twenty years ago, is now a carpets outlet. The old North Park Theatre is now ... what. Is that a bar? looks like it. I need to urinate, so I boldly walk into a trattoria that looks like an old converted fabrics store, still with the concrete floor and bare walls. They didn't waste any money decorating, ha ha. Maybe that's the style nowadays. Walking out of the trattoria, I turn the corner and come upon a kitschy, over-the-top taco shop called "Lucha Libre". It's got a Mexican wrestler's mask painted on the window, behind which there is a gold lamé upholstered booth that makes me laugh. Much too much. It faces the window, and the patrons sitting on it seem on display. Still the kids are everywhere, the world belongs to the young, and do they realise how lucky they are no-one's shooting at them or trying to blow them up?



They call Alabama the Crimson Tide

Call me Deacon Blues



Just what is Donald Fagen singing about? Why am I even listening to Steely Dan? I never said I liked them. Well I do like them, a little bit. I think what it is, they remind me of happy times long-ago. Because they used to be all over the radio. They used to play in Bob's Big Boy Restaurant rest-rooms. Steely Dan II is a metallic dildo in William Burroughs' The Naked Lunch, any major dude will tell you. Back in North Park, I hurry through the narrative and the crowded streets, back to my cab I left parked on North Park Way, behind the CVS, and glide down the southbound 805 to Chula Vista, some girl singers singing about fettuccini on my stereo, behind Donald Fagen.

The VFW club in National City has closed down. The nationwide directors of all the VFW's came to town and closed it the fuck down. I wasn't surprised. They shouldn't have called it the VFW, but the WTF? Normally, a VFW is members-only drinking club for retired military. Veterans of Foreign Wars. They pay their yearly fees and they go in there and drink and party and dance and drink some more and eat hot-dogs and potato salad, all at a discount. The National City VFW though, looked more like a Rosarita Beach whorehouse than anything else. They'd be blasting narco-corridos on the jukebox and nobody spoke english. Maybe there'd be ONE veteran of a foreign war in there. A transvestite from Tijuana was seen doing the Can-Can atop the bar by this reporter. A member? I don't think so. So word must've got back to VFW headquarters and like I say, the head honchos came with fixed bayonets and ándale'd everybody out the door.

Which brings us to the sad and continuing saga of the not-quite-romance of  Elvira and Ponytail Dave. Dave lives in the house where he grew up that his parents left him in the old part of ChulaVista. He was born around the corner in the old Chula Vista Community Hospital, now a rest home for disabled / handicapped paupers. God grant me my death before I end up there. Now, Elvira is not ugly, has tits out to here and a slim waist. She is pals with the erstwhile manager of the NC VFW, an alcoholic old harridan I don't want to think about, and so Elvira used to hang there. Elvira has the reputation of befriending the richest guy in a room and making him buy her pickup trucks and other trinkets in return for I-don't-know-what. Maybe just her charming conversation and the occasional dance. Ponytail Dave is madly in love with her, bought her a second-hand Mercedes when she crashed the truck that the other guy had got her.

A few years have passed since these likely tales were put down. Ponytail Dave died  mmmm… March of '17, and at the last minute he married Elvira the Vampyre and she, by all accounts, or by the only account I got first-hand, got Dave's house and ancillary and sundry properties, some bungalows for rent out back giving to the other street. Curiously enough, Dave phoned me from the Hospice a few days before he passed, to thank me for my services throughout the years, and to say goodbye. The unexpected call stunned me to near silence and I was unable to articulate the thought that I would never forget him. Instead, inanely, I said "thanks for calling, Dave".

Incidentally, it was Ponytail Dave told me all Steely Dan fans are assholes. Toward the end of his life Dave wanted to re-live the good times he had going to concerts in his youth, and so he went to see Hall and Oats, ZZ Top, The J. Geils Band; em, fuckin Rush or somebugger of that ilk, and quite a few others, Steely Dan among them. Apparently some of the audience in the front rows started some sort of back and forth discussion with Donald Fagen. I dunno, maybe he wasn't playing the songs they wanted. Then Dave nearly came to blows in the restroom, over I forget what, with somebody. So he told me they were ALL assholes. I had occasion to concur when I tried to join a Steely Dan appreciation group, in order to do which I first had to answer some questions. I was asked to choose my favorite between two S.D. albums. I must have given the wrong answer, because I never heard from them again.

With the weed scientist

My old friend Tibbo, we go back 45 years, has been visiting Tijuana regularly because he has a contract with the local professional soccer team to oversee the maintenance of their playing fields, him being and agricultural engineer. Always very good to see him, always good for a laugh and a drink or two hundred. This time I agreed to take a Saturday off work in order to meet up with him. I am loath to take Saturdays off, because it's the one day of the week I can be sure will be profitable.

But OK, Saturday I took the bus into town and walked to the Hotel Nelson, were we have met before; at the outdoor café on the sidewalk just under the silver arch that is 50 meters high and resembles a miniature of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis Missouri. The corner where this venerable old hotel stands is always very busy at the weekend. Musicians, prostitutes, pickpockets, police, taxi drivers, shoeblacks, fake-silver jewelry vendors and assorted beggars and drug-addicts all roam and congregate, vying for a share of the gringo tourist largesse.

So we sit there like fucking tourists, being importuned every few minutes by different specimens of the types described above. At first it's just me and him, but other friends soon arrive, the first of which was Turi, who was actually my brother's friend back in the day, same age group, but now we both belong to the old farts age group and he's good company.Very simpatico.

We sit and drink and presently there arrives a friend of Tibbo's I was introduced to I forget his name, but I'll call him the weed scientist. He's an engineer of some description, somehow into forensics, who regaled us with tall tales of having stayed at the U.S. embassy in Kazakhstan hired by the government to set up a forensic computer program to help identify massacre victims. Or something.

As he monopolized the conversation it transpired he makes his living curing terminal cancer patients with different varieties of cannabis extract. But as he got deeper into technical detail he lost me and I became impatient for the conversation to take a different turn. I actually wanted to talk about pop music, silly me. And both you and I know that I am a depressive. Because I used to fall on my forehead a lot when I was very small, and as the weed scientist expounded on his very dark vision of a world controlled by big pharma and big bad government, I began to get the dismal feeling I have been living my life all wrong, putting my health in the hands of quack doctors who are instruments of big pharma.

But I have faith in my doctor and I do not believe he is some kind of big pharma robot. The weed scientist could have shaken the very ground underneath me to the point I would have thrown myself at his feet begging him to take over the direction of my health if I had continued to sit there, but I said 'excuse me a moment' and took my leave. By then other friends had arrived and I would like to think my departure remained unnoticed for at least a few minutes.

I wanted to think about something else, like maybe a plate of chicken chop suey.