she made me wait

she added a stop in the middle of the ride

and we had to wait on a crowded street for her child to get out of school

but she was poor, black and carrying a newborn, so what was i gonna do?

i dont even know how i got over there, but i was way over there around 2pm

i know because when i arrived i texted her in the app writing, im on 68th street, not fig. at the corner.

she texted back, ok, but my son doesnt get out of school until 2:11.

most days i would have canceled right then because now you want me to wait for 10 minutes?

when you order rideshare, it tells you how far away the nearest car is, so just do the math before you click

come here.

68th and fig is not the best part of town unless you are looking for a parade of hookers or the sketchiest motels, whose walls would cry if they could talk.

the remaining palm trees on figueroa looked like they had also seen too much and needed a vacation.

so i didnt cancel. i waited and waved people around me.

you would have too. anyone would have. except veteran uber drivers because time is money and by the time this woman probably would make it to the back seat you coulda gotten either a long trip outta there or a short quickie for an easy $5.

with one minute to go on the 5-minute timer, she came out with a 6-month-old in a car seat wrapped in a few baby blankets. it was unseasonably cold. my car was toasty.

she was beautiful. but in an ll cool j ’round the way girl ‘type. like the palm trees, she’d seen some things.

huge smile despite being overwhelmed.

thank you for waiting. we just gotta go to the school down there and snatch up my son.

and then right back here? i asked

yes, straight back to the apartment complex next to the mexican mini-mart with hand-painted signs showing whats inside: a two-liter bottle of coke, a guava, a bottle of bleach, bananas.

any time a request comes in that mentions an additional stop, i decline the trip. in a way its double the work for not double the pay, and it involves waiting.

for five minutes i had been waiting, while watching women in lingerie and bikinis strolling up and down this south central street and i was upset.

thats what this job or side hustle or whatever can do to you after a few thousand trips. you stop soaking in the sights, be they venice beach during an accidental sunset or a slow motion display of shockingly good looking women of the night in the broad daylight.

which was this mom’s view from her one bedroom apartment.

when i realized that decades ago i lived on 68th on the other side, of the hood, in inglewood, i told her.

she said, oh the wild side!

thats the wild side? i asked in a shocked tone, you got big booty bitches out here twerking before the last recess bell, trying to make it happen, and the ‘Wood is the wild side?

she laughed and laughed. then said, i could be pushing a stroller down that street on a sunday morning and a truck will honk and ask how much? you right. i gotta move.

we got to the school and the pickup side street was packed with cars and minivans. it was narrow to begin with, but now cars lined both sides, inching toward the chain-link fence while their clueless kids lollygagged on the playground, ignoring their parents’ calls and honks.

HECTOR, ANDELE!

ANGEL, GET OVER HERE GIRL

my passenger chimed in TOMMY! oh thats not Tommy. Where Tommy!?

i saw a little opening closer to the gate and creeped the benz between one car and a loud pickup truck, inches from disaster.

tommy, who is in 1st grade, and adorable, finally appeared and damn near frolicked over to the car. not a care in the world.

now i had to get through the congested street that was not built for this.

a man in an old oldsmobile saw i only had an inch of clearance on either side of my doors, and waved me to him. i trusted him. he knew neither of us should be there.

we’d both been tricked by women. me for money and he for love.

once again id chosen wrong.

i followed his hand motions and when i made it and cruised by him

we high fived.

in the back seat, the boy said, mommy i love you.

i was all, what about me, Tommy? did you see how i got us through all that?

how does he know my name, mommy? he asked quietly, but not quietly enough.

see this cubs hat? it feeds me info. i know you have two girlfriends, a mexican and a sister…”

his mom laughed and said, oh he doesn’t like Black girls.

why not? i asked.

they’re mean to him, she said.

and I know you love roblox, i said. and he gasped.

lucky guess.

when we were nearly home the baby gurgled and then coughed loudly.

damn. that was a grown person cough, mom said to the little girl. we getting you home baby. i’ll heat up some nyquil.

see how much they tipped

this story isnt about them, but once i took a family of five from a grocery store in inglewood to LAX. turks claimed to be headed to hawaii. no luggage.

dad sat in front, and mom and the three 6-to-9 year-old kids in the back.

i was all, i hear turkey is mostly muslim.

that’s right, the dad said.

are you muslim? i asked, remembering that in polite company you shouldn’t talk about religion or politics, but that rule can politely suck it.

yes, we are, he replied. they seemed both poor and suspicious but also carefree, so rich?

outside of my benz i probably seem poor. which is the aim, even though thanks to you and you and you, i’ve had the richest life.

tell me something about the quran i probably don’t know, i said, because like records, rules are meant to be broken.

the kids were enthralled by me for some reason. at first rowdy and distracted. now they were barely mumbling. huge smiles. it could have been because when i asked them where they were flying to, and they told me hawaii, i asked them to tell me the turkish word for “brother” bc I wanted to be their brother.

turns out there’s several words for brother, one being specifically older brother: abi.

i’m your abi now, kids, i declared and they laughed and hugged each other in faux congratulations.

the dad, wearing a clearly worn t-shirt and gray trousers, told me that the virgin mary has over 100 verses dedicated to her in the quran.

WTF?! Why? I asked.

he said, muslims recognize jesus as a very important figure because he was born through miracle. no sex, no father, just mother. but even harder, mary gave birth while being a virgin. that’s bigger.

so now i gotta read the quran to see what those 100 pages are all about.

which brings us to today’s luggage-free traveler. a gentleman named petey from miami, oklahoma. not that miami, he stressed, very quietly.

timid fellow.

we were en route to hollywood presbyterian hospital where petey was going to do something that, quite frankly, i’m not sure he will succeed at.

nine months ago, he knocked up a stripper who he had met two years previously. prettiest girl in miami, he claimed.

they met on facebook marketplace for she was looking for someone who could drive her home after work.

petey is about 30-years-old, and when i asked him what he did in miami, he told me he was a box boy at a supermarket. normally he would get up around 6am to go to work but once he met his lady, he would wake up at 3am to fetch her from the gentleman’s club and drive her home.

once home, she would smoke meth and he would make his move. spoiler: he had a few lucky nights.

but as soon as her parole officer (!) found out she was pregnant, he informed her that no court would grant her custody because she has a long police record, is a damn stripper, and has a raging meth habit.

so she skipped town and went as far away as she could. hollywood blvd. blocks away from my apartment, it so happens.

i love her, but she’s troubled, he whispered.

no offense, petey, but you’re a little crazy too, i said with the tone of an older brother, an abi, if you will, who felt the need to keep it real.

you flew out here with no change of clothes, you don’t even have a duffle bag or backpack. And your plan is to somehow take a newborn child and, what, fly home with it by yourself? you’re gonna need a car seat just to get in the uber, i said.

we sped along the 110 carpool lane. watts on one side. south central on the other.

you’re right, he agreed. i did not plan this very well.

and then he told me that this would be his first child and he couldn’t sleep knowing that she surrounds herself with drug addicts, dealers, hookers, and pimps. he had to do something.

then his phone rang. it was the soon-to-be baby mama.

im on the way, he said. this is so weird being here. i see the hollywood sign. the driver showed me where biggie was killed.

they exchanged i love yous numerous times which confused me. later he explained that it was the only way he figured she would sign the declaration of paternity and allow him to sign the birth certificate when the boy is born in a few days.

we drove past a giant billboard advertising condoms. i pointed.

he laughed.

he told me his daddy was a pool shark and his momma was a thief. he didn’t want his son around either of them or anyone except for his actual girlfriend back home who was “a cougar” with three grown kids of her own. but she cant wait to hold an infant in her arms again.

Fine, fine, fine, but how are you going to feed that baby on the airplane on your way home? isn’t the momma going to get suspicious when you ask her to pump a dozen bottles of mothers milk into bottles? also, how will you keep them warm? also WTF Petey?!”

then he told me he only has money for the bus fare home, not airfare. and he was planning on getting formula at walmart.

AINT NO WALMARTS ANYWHERE NEAR HOLLYWOOD PETEY! i said, thinking, do i need to let him sleep on my couch? do *I* need to raise this poor, doomed, already drug-addicted baby?

we got off the freeway. it was so quiet the only sound was the left turn directional clicking.

i asked, are you a christian man?

he said he was.

so i said, let’s pray. and I took off my cubs cap.

Lord, please help petey figure out how to get his child to safety. he’s going to need your help. his heart is in the right place. and this looks like a job that he can’t do alone. so please guide him.

amen, petey said. when we pulled up to the hospital, he got out, empty-handed except for his samsung phone.

thank you, he said.

see how much they tipped

my secret smile might be from rosa who i picked up in the arts district last night in the rain.

i have a terrible time with ADHD and even though i love recreational drugs these pharmaceuticals they have prescribed to me are the devil.

one made me wanna kill. one made me wanna kiss. and the one im on now suspiciously does nothing even though its 2x the dose of what it replaced.

one thing my condition does though, is that it allows me to drive beautifully in the rain in traffic, on a highway of drunks, at night while a young woman in super tight ripped pants tells me dirty things.

i can see every rain drop and predict all the cars movements.

i can also hear intentions and last night, dear reader, 29-year-old rosa wanted some.

was she beautiful? am i?

was she dying for it? was i?

is there one thing i would risk my job for as a rideshare driver which would end this slow drip of tales? um.

messy hair. thick glasses. sloppy firehouse red lipstick. all the things i love. and worse: she wanted to talk about books.

talk rosa. tell me everything.

i am a librarian, she revealed

libraries are my safe space, she said propped up back there. when i love a book it’s my new friend. i dont want the book to end. i speed read through most of it and hit the brakes as its wrapping up.

omg, rosa. ive never finished my favorite books, i said.

ME NEITHER! she shrieked, then leaned closer.

what are you reading now? i asked, knowing this was foolish because i havent read a book other than the bible in forever because of the previously said condition and impotence of unsaid meds.

i listen on “tape” now, i told her. is that reading?

im nearly done with a very suggestive version of harry potter, she said sheepishly as we splashed along the 101 into the valley past universal studios where the wizard’s LA castle looms, coincidentally.

its about after harry dies and many of the witches, like hermione, are rounded up and bred like in The Handmaids Tale.

bred?

bred, she said in a way that sounded a bit guilty and confessional. as if i was the only person she has ever admitted to loving this twisted and weirdly sexy book.

so wait, is it fan fiction? i asked.

yes! she smiled and flung back into her seat, beaming. what fan fic are you into anthony?

im a million years old, young rosa, that ship sailed.

turn around, she said. we were now speeding down the soaked 170 on our way to porter ranch. i want to see you, she said.

instead of obeying and crashing, i lowered my rear view mirror and turned on the dome light.

you dont look old, anthony, she laughed, taking a sip from her boba.

yr only as old as yr girlfriend feels, i informed her.

but wait a minute – what valley library has dirty ass harry potter fan fic in the racks? i asked her, resetting the mirror.

oh, im in a facebook group called The No Judgement Book Club where we read one of these trashy books in a week and then talk about it.

no judgement? i like that, i said. you know what the Good Book says about judging one another?

she said, yes i do. i was baptized two years ago, i love the Bible.

rosa, you wont believe this, but the Bible is the only book-book that can hold my attention any more.

there was a silence from the back seat. and then a quiet i love the Bible so much.

then, america, two suddenly turned-on strangers got into a very deep discussion about how amazing the Bible is as both a book, a sci fi novel, a collection of puzzling poems, and a fascinating study of human nature.

are we in love, rosa?

nervous laughter followed. and then, this is the best uber ride ive ever been in.

we arrived at her gated community and she said the code is {redacted} which i punched in.

the gate slid open and she said

remember it.

see how much they tipped

white oak blvd. afternoon. 24. so calm. we were in traffic but who cares.

she asked, were you in a frat?

do i look like i was?

lol no but you’re really outgoing

thank you.

i wanted to join a sorority because i didnt know many girls and i was going to rush one where my only friend was

but she gave me the heads up and said

you might not want to do this, they’re going to make you sit in a row

with the other girls rushing

and make you wear a dress or a skirt

and tell you to take off your drawers

and sit on the paper towel on the chair

and then they’re going to turn on the tv

showing a lesbo porno

and you all will have to watch it for a half hour

and then you have to stand up

and if the paper towel is wet

you’re gone.

no lesbians in our house.

see how much they tipped

i wasnt able to get out of the house until 5pm

so i set out on an experiment where i intentionally drove when traffic is its worst and see what sort of money i can make

my nephew plays video games on the easy mode to learn

i play them on the hardest mode to learn

i did ok, and then around 8 got a beautiful chinese woman from usc going to her boyfriends house in laguna beach

seems long. it is long. but in the middle of the night, it only takes an hour and i’d be getting $40.

usually i wouldnt do it, too far for that little cash. but $40 for any ride on a slow ass tuesday is a gift.

her english was better than my mandarin. she told me that she grew up in china during a time when women could only have one kid.

some families would kill the newborn if it was a girl or have an abortion if they found out early enough. but then there were alllll these guys and not many girls.

i asked her, so is it true that the men would try super hard to woo pretty women like you because they were competing against like ten other dudes for the same hot babe?

she laughed and said yes.

i asked, so did you ever make them do crazy things like buy you fancy shoes or coats or a top hat just to see if they would?

she said no. that she didnt want to take advantage of anyone.

i said no, you weren’t asking for a car, just a top hat. it was a test.

she said, no, because it was very hard for the guys. many were very nice. some were lonely and stayed lonely because there wasn’t a lot they could do, especially if they were average looking or came from a modest family.

she told me that lots of the young men would travel to the philippines or vietnam or africa to find wives. they would go anywhere that was, in a way, poor and could use a nice chinese man who could support a wife better than a local guy.

and i said, so is your boyfriend from your part of china?

she said, im not dating a chinese man. mine is italian.

i said, omg poor, poor chinese guys. one of the few super smart, super beautiful, chinese girls in their town and she runs away to america

and hooks up with an italian

lol omg lol

see how much they tipped

his name was jamaal. picked him up at the fox hills mall in culver city. many call it the westfield culver city now, but Black folks overwhelmingly call it by its original name.

we were heading to the ralph’s in nearby inglewood. he asked if he could vape weed. i said, just roll down the window so i dont catch a buzz.

my nigga, he said, relieved.

met this bitch on facebook, he said, while exhaling an enormous cloud out the back window of the benz. the rain stopped, so i cracked open the moonroof a tad because i feared he smoked stronger stuff than i do.

my cousin knew her and told her i could get her some weed. but i had been staying in lancaster not LA so i didnt have any, nor any money, but when i saw her FB picture i could see she was fine so i told her id chill with her and we could share my last pre-roll. it was a big ass spliff of the kush. not this hood shit.

she was cool. lived in a house. kids toys were everywhere. but we turned on a little movie, smoked, chilled, immediately bonded. maybe i moved too fast. fucked up.

next time i came over, she told me she has five kids. i could only hear two. but if you saw her body you’d ask: where did they come from? not from that! she was fit. funny. and very giving.

very.

we didnt have sex for the longest time, but she took care of me every time. without asking.

why didn’t you have sex?

it wasn’t even like that. i felt a connection. maybe she was someones side chick. i dont know. i liked her.

after a while, the kids started getting annoyed with me. asking me, when do you go to work? where are your kids? they were jealous of the time their mother was spending with me and not them.

that first night, no one knocked on the door, but because they were 5 to 11 years-old, after a while one would knock. she would tell them to go play, and then ten minutes later, another one would knock. i had to put a lock on the door because some of bebe’s kids just walked right in.

but i kept going back.

could she cook? i asked.

that’s what got me. she could cook anything. with a smile. with dat ass swaying to the music, being all nice to the kids, all who had different daddies. she’d give me plates to go to work with. i work nights. i always had food. my stomach my head and my soul were right.

five kids, does that mean she was strict about the condoms or not at all strict?

no trojans, ever.

the ride was going to pay me $20. one side of town to the other. which meant he was paying probably $50. so i said, so wait. you also work nights and you take ubers every night to these jobs? where’s your car?

so she had bad credit. i had good credit. she had no car and all these kids. she said she would give me the down payment on a mini van / suv if i put it under my name.

bet.

but after she got the car, she sort of changed and i didnt like it. but i was stuck. i had clothes over there, and now a car. she wasn’t doing all the things any more. and i was like, how am i taking some other man’s son to football practice and picking up some other man’s daughter from school in the morning when i should be sleep?

and im not the king of the castle?

so i told her, i needed to take a little time out and you know what that ho did? she put sugar in the gas tank.

No!

so i stopped paying the payments and let it get repo’d. but here’s the thing. repo sells it and you owe whats left on the loan. i bought it for 25, they sold it for 15, so i owe 10.

how did they sell it for 15? wasn’t it destroyed?

her nosy ass neighbor told me about the sugar before i started it. so it never got in the engine!

what?!?!

anyway, new subject. but thats why i usually have this other uber driver who ive worked out a deal with. he takes me back and forth for half, and i give him weed. but he couldnt do it tonight, but im glad i got you. his car stink.

so theres this white girl at my other job at ralphs. she lets me rub up against her. fine as hell. booty. eyes. everything. but married. she giggles and says, ive been so good until now.

where do you rub her?

up against her ass, legs….

no, where? in the ralphs? arent there cameras everywhere? Black man cant be doing that with a white girl in the back room.

back room? this be in the aisles. anywhere nobody at.

worse! what about the cameras?

im a manager. who you think erases those tapes every night?

he laughed, and blew a cartoonish looking cloud out of the window.

see how much they tipped

sometimes you gotta wait. sometimes you dont mind it.

they were coming out of a sports bar. slightly older than the type youd see exiting such a joint. turned out he had just retired and she was a year away. he was from london. she from the valley.

both been married before. neither thought lightning would strike twice, but it was immediately clear these two weren’t the problem in any relationship.

they laughed. they made space for each other. complemented. allowed each other to finish telling tales on the long trip due to traffic on the 10

we were going from the marina to pasadena. finally, i was gonna make a few bucks that night. so i didnt mind waiting as she used her cane to get in, while he kept the door open as if they were on their first date.

dont let my motorhead tshirt fool you, i said. im a sucker for romance and i love asking people about their first dates, their first kisses, and the first time knowing whoops! ive fallen into something suddenly out of control.

i was in a tom waits cover band, he said from the back seat, holding his bride’s hand. i wasn’t allowed to play any instruments back in london, so when i moved in with some lads in echo park i picked up the bass and they taught me the rudiments by learning tom waits songs together.

omg, rain dogs is one of my all time faves, i told them.

earlier than that, he said. ’70s tom waits, when he was a beat poet, the crystal gayle years.

i didnt have the heart to tell him that was my least favorite era, but any style of the gravelly voiced poet is better than most. we crept along the 10 and i turned down the radio.

her friend brought her to the party, which was originally a practice in my mate’s living room, but people began to appear like this one and before you know it, it was a party.

the missus chimed in by saying, i didnt tell him until later that i didnt know who the hell tom waits was, which is ironic because i worked at warners when he was signed to asylum.

do you fall in love with people and their little details? is it just a libra thing? it’s good i dont have a meter like an old school cab because when she said that, i wanted to give them the rest of the ride free. which is reason number a million that i need to figure out what im doing wrong with the lottery numbers.

i knew she didn’t know tom waits, he chuckled.

sometimes the conversations are so sweet and tender you just want to sigh, which i did right as the traffic opened up and i gunned it around the curve next to the convention center.

what was your wedding song, i asked?

we had two, she said, but don’t tell anyone because we didn’t have the rights cleared.

her husband laughed. there were 50 people there. who would care?
she cared. still does apparently.

my favorite song since being a little girl was elvis’ cant help falling in love with you, but i really enjoy bruce springsteen’s version and he put it on tape for me when we were courting

the one i chose was little trip to heaven, he said.

on the wings of your love, she finished.

so i said, hey siri, play little trip to heaven on the wings of your love by tom waits.

the muted trumpet set the tone of the old school romantic tune. you could almost smell the cigarette smoke in whatever studio he recorded it in.

or was it a bar?

or was it a dimly lit living room apartment in pasadena where they’d later recreate that first dance moment while the warm santa ana winds snuck in through the cracks of the old house?

see how much they tipped

friday night and i hadnt driven all week

so i knew it had to drive longer and further, luckily traffic was as light as a three gram eigth.

dave chappelle says he cant be cancelled because he doesnt believe in twitter.

she was an exhausted, exotic nyc model going from hollywood to lax at about 9pm for the red-eye back to her side of the world

nervous about traffic, i calmed her by saying, chappelle doesnt believe in twitter and i dont believe in traffic

she asked how? do you fly?

if necessary.

driving through silver lake to get to the freeway she said something like, i love the east side.

i asked, do you work a lot in la?

about once a month.

ok, then for your own good. dont call silver lake the east side. thats what the ny times would do.

she gasped.

someone had to tell her.

then what do you call it? she asked.

you call it silver lake.

she said, but why not the east side, it’s east of the beach.

everythings east of the beach, i thought in my head, knowing i had probably already lost the tip, which sucks because new yorkers are reliably good at tipping.

she was not dumb. she was jetlagged from jetting here the night before, working all day, and then dinner and drinks with friends at horses

and now in the presence of high energy mr know-it-all

silver lake is east of places like beverly hills and hollywood, i explained, as nice as i could. im terrified im turning into a grumpy old man. fuck the dh. fuck kdl. fuck plaschke.

finally i said, but it’s not what angelenos call the east side unless they want to get into a fight – a verbal fight – with someone.

so what is the east side? she asked. and i said, east of downtown.

but what is even over there, she said?

i replied, real east side shit which in many ways is the opposite of silver lake which is what NYers call our williamsburg and williamsburg is not boyle heights or the unincorporated area literally called east los angeles.

she was not happy with this conversation, which made me sad, because there we were so smart, so sexy, both smelling my jack-in-the-box curly fries poorly hidden in the glove box

she was probably falling in love with me, and if i had just let her be wrong we’d be texting selfies right now saying lol and omg after each photo

but i have the biggest mouth

it was bad on the 101, so i changed the subject and said,

most people think this is traffic

she tapped the closed window and stated, this is traffic

i said, the right lanes are traffic. lets scooch over all the way to the left like how mark twain woulda done when he was a steamboat pilot in life on the mississippi. you gotta know the patterns, which side of the river’s gonna fuck you and which is gonna help you slide around the basic bitches

two lanes of cars in the slow lanes were a parade of red brake lights along the hollywood freeway east as it crept to the 110 and 5 interchanges. stay left as long as you can, drafting the cars on the fast lane, soon the backup on the right will die down and you can merge over with ease, skating into the off ramp and into the hells mouth of the 110 south through DTLA

she was not impressed, and soon we were met with another set of tail lights. these in the alleged faster lanes.

traffic, she tapped.

opportunity, i sang, and turned down the bee gees

why had i sat out so many days? the podcast for one, which was tardy, and without rest my arms and hands get sore. i felt great.

also driving at night in LA, calling your shots to a super sharp new yorker who hates you so much because youre now being cocky, is extremely fun because thank god im finally good at something. and for once profitable.

$29 to LAX for a 41 minute trip? do you know how many ive taken for $20? $21 that take an hour? desperately? gambling a tip would be involved or a sweet ass fat ride out of LAX?

$29? did uber see i was driving way more for lyft lately? of course they track us. we give them that permission so we can use the app. if they’re not tracking then shame on them.

as everyone merged to the left of the already congested harbor freeway in front of the beautiful westin bonaventure, i kept to the right where the only assignment is not to get hit. thats it. survive long enough to get to the magical overpass thing around 6th street / wilshire.

i did all those things and got back on the 110 with ease and turned up foghat. she was still not awed enough to say, im yours.

my jetlag just hit me, she sighed, leaning back in the shiny leather seat being splashed with colors from the digital billboards around staples center.

it was probably a hint to let her nap for the next 20 minutes, but you shouldnt snooze before a red-eye because you might not be able to get to sleep once youre on the plane. so i switched topics.

i love new york, i told her. every time i go i have a great time. but i gotta tell you, wtf is up with those rats?

it’s a disgusting city, she said flatly.

and with her hate now directed elsewhere, we sped onto the upper deck carpool lanes above the 110 next to USC and talked shit about our black mayors with mutual disgust, topping each other’s tales with our miseries.

see how much they tipped

she was 28. wonderful. she gets in. i ask her how shes doing and she says fine with a sigh

so i look at waze and say, you have 16 minutes. lets hear it.

pisces. alcoholic, almost always bad relationships. so sweet. good clothes. way into fentanyl.

what kind of high is it?

she couldnt say.

for the first year, i got sick. every time.

why would you do something for a year that made you sick? i asked.

she couldnt say.

picked her up in encino. we were going to universal. i coulda taken the freeway but ventura blvd was just as slow, so i kept on it thinking about how there used to be a tower outlet over there, moby disc over there…

tell me about your first time doing it, i said.

my boyfriend blew it into my face. i barely inhaled. i was scared. but after a while i let it in.

what was it like?

it was good then it was bad. then i got sick. but it was like, i had been dope sick, like i had been taking it for years.

i asked, isnt it scary because you could OD over the smallest amount?

she said, i have six cans of narcan at all times because one time i blacked out and my boyfriend used two cans of narcan on me but it didn’t bring me back to life. he freaked out, tearing the apartment apart looking for another can and finally found one.

he said my lips were losing color. the third one worked.

did you see a light at the end of the tunnel? did you see god? heaven?

i saw nothing, she said.

so when you come back from death, how do you feel?

she said, the problem with narcan and fentanyl is that narcan blocks all the nice parts of opiates, so you’re immediately withdrawing and fentanyl withdrawals ARE THE WORST.

i have kicked everything. ive been doing this for 10 years. fent withdrawls, you want to rip off your own skin.

i asked, so should people duct tape a joint to their narcan to help ease the come down?

you know that might be a good idea. or a beer.

or she said

a hug.

see how much they tipped

fratboys make the news
but theres lots of wholesome kids over there.

on the last trip, i was talking music
with a beautiful young woman
who was all, you dont know lana del rey?
my gray hairs were obvious in my beard

yeah, youre probably right, i said. hey who’s your favorite painter?

artist? she asked.

probably vincent van gogh.

weird, i said, cuz mines norman
fucking
rockwell

see how much they tipped