Back in Effect

Yes, I'm still alive.

I apologize for not keeping this updated. There's been a confluence of circumstances that have kept me from writing this: I haven't been working as much, and I've been devoting my very limited reservoirs of "writing about cab driving" energy in another direction that could potentially bear more fruit in terms of money and prestige than this miniscule corner of the internet.

Let's be honest: this has always been a pretty half-assed little affair.

But the main reason I haven't been writing is that work's been mighty boring recently. This is largely by design, and something that I greatly prefer. I've been working steady parts of town where I know that I'll just be carting around nice, boring people, and I've been loving of it. None of the madness of the outer east side or deep north Portland. Just a bunch of boring-ass hipsters with nothing to say or terribly interesting to do. It's been a nice break.

I promise to try and get back on the beam, though. I'll start adding shorter pieces that recount older events, etc. I'll be taking a somewhat extended vacation soon, after a few shorter ones this past month, but autumn will bring a more regular work schedule, more business, and the likelihood of my purchasing a cab of my own in the next month or two. So there's all of that to look forward to.

Oh, and comments are back on. Sorry, I hadn't realized they were off, I think another part of my non-posting was not getting any comments and feeling like people had lost interest. Yes, I'm a dumbass.

So that's the update. Now, to make up for lost time, I'll give you the one bit of sleaze that's cropped up in the past few weeks, even if secondhand. WARNING: This story veers away even from my usual "hard R" content into "XXX" territory.

So I got a call to pick up at Cocktails N' Dreams on Thursday night, a very sleazy strip club off of Powell that's notable for its Miami Vice-esque interior (this is not due to a sense of kitsch or irony) of pastels and neon, as well as the fact that occasionally someone gets murdered there. I hate picking up people there, as they tend to be drunk men who are unintelligent, uninteresting, going somewhere close-by, and poor tippers.

This call was for a dancer, who was going maybe 14 blocks away. She was attractive, in a tattooed and pierced sort of way (which is not typically my sort of way), and began hitting on me from the moment I walked into the club to tell her I was there. When she got in the cab, she told me about how happy she was to get out of there, that everyone was so sleazy and the music was so terrible, and here I was the first hot guy she'd seen all night and I was even listening to good music in the cab.

I ignored the latter bits, and made a joking comment about how shocking it was that there was bad music and sleazy people in Cocktails N' Dreams.

This led to an animated and brief conversation about sleaze in our respective professions, and her dropping this gem on me:

She also works at Cabaret (essentially downtown's version of Cocktails N' Dreams, I've never been inside, largely due to the strikingly similar exterior color schemes). While at work one night, she looked over at a girl giving a man a lapdance and was shocked, truly shocked, for one of the first times in a long time.

The other girl was getting fisted. Willingly and happily. In the middle of the club.

My passenger just sat and stared for a while, and then finely got the security guard. He initially didn't believe her, until she finally got him to come over and have a look for himself. He was similarly dumbfounded for a bit, and was too embarassed to interrupt the procedure, and waited until after the "dance" was over to remove the woman from the premises.

So there's a nice little vignette for you.