My Man

I took another Seattle cab on Sunday, and finally met what appears to be my Seattle equivalent. Young guy, East African, makes exactly as much as I do, listens to dancehall while driving because it's the only good thing on the radio. He kept calling me "my man," which I found kind of creepy as the combination of the phrase and his accent served to remind me a great deal of the Iraqi interrogator in Three Kings. Up here they pay their lease by the week (like most companies). His brother owns the cab he drives, so he only pays $380, but most people pay $405. He was impressed that I make as much as him while paying a higher lease, and by the freedom I have of not having to pay for a full week.

I'm really enjoying being on vacation. The more I think about it, the less excited I am about buying a cab. Is this really a business I want to commit to? I basically want to work at it for a year and save up enough money to finish my degree, and then have it as a part time gig while I'm in school. Of course taking a week and a half off to cruise up to Seattle and spend hundreds of dollars on music and omelets isn't bringing me any nearer to that goal.

I also had a cab driving dream last night. The dream was that I was up here, except that I was also driving a cab up here to help pay for the trip. It was really nerve-wracking for me, because Seattle is laid out in a really absurd way and it's not a town I know very well. I kept getting my fares lost, but I'd be cool about it and knock money off the meter, and they weren't getting too worked up about it. I had one group of people - two men in the back, and a woman up front. I was faking my way through it, but took a wrong turn and had to turn back around. The woman was very beautiful, and pressed up against me. She held my hand as I reached to shift gears (the cab was a stick, which makes very little sense). I felt a great sense of comfort and arousal, and she was starting to caress me right when my friend woke me up to fix him some tuna.

Not a whole heck of a lot else to report. I've met some great people. I've been listening to a lot of the music I bought over the weekend (10 CDs!), and really loving that. Speaking of which, I've added a link to Soriah's site (the logic being that he's another cab driver). I also added links to Through a Windshield, Darkly (a cabbie in some cow town down south who writes a blog I like a lot), and The Blanktop Diaries, which is a hilarious blog by a call-taker (NOT a dispatcher, they're two very different things) in Northern Virginia.