A Post Is A Post

I’m still having a hard time going to sleep before midnight. Still have to wake up before the sun. Every animal in the farmyard is depending on me and waiting for me to show. I want to sleep in so bad every single day. Once I’m out the door I’m fine. The roosters are all crowing.
I spend 4 hours in the morning and four more at night, milking goats and caring for the chickens, cows, pigs, and greenhouse. In the hours in between I make cheese with the farm’s cheese master who is also my roommate. My brain can’t manufacture words in the right order by the end of the day. Plus I hate this tiny keyboard. We will hope for better next week.

Another Direction

Happy Birthday to me. Once again.
I’m still alive and still psyched about it because I’m still sexy despite being bald and broke. Thirty-motherfucking-six.

In a few minutes it won’t even be my birthday any more.

Dear readers I have made a change in my life. I am no longer a taxi driver. I am no longer in NYC.

I am in a place without internet and I’m sick of the too tiny imaginary touch keys on this phone.

I am safe. I wake up before the sun and work hard. More later.

Taxi Impressions: The Prequel. Part III: Taxi School

Explanation

Taxi school taxi school I have to resist the urge to rhyme I have to watch my spelling. Taxischool taxi school. I’m sleeping in my friend’s apartment on a mattress. Slowly getting back with my ex-girlfriend. We’ve been watching the olympics together on NBC sitting together on the comfy couch we picked out together trying it out at Macy’s one night right before I walked out. I don’t know. Taxi school taxi school. [scratched out word] nights broke a rule tried to cross out. Can’t stop. Taxi school taxi school taxi school Mattress in the corner James wakes me up in the mornings and buys me coffee but now I’ve been spending more time with A. watching the olympics and James has a girlfriend now and I feel weird being on my mattress while they’re trying to watch T.V. I go there one night and grab all of my taxi tutorial materials. Maps flash cards, maps, flash cards, rule books, section 9 Subpart B code 372 blah blah. I leave from A’s apartment on the morning of my first day of at the Master Cabby Academy. I haven’t been to any kind of school for over a decade unless you count writing workshops but anyway My mom always made me waffles on every single first day of school for breakfast. I even made frozen eggos for myself my first day of classes at college. I didn’t get waffles this time. Made a thermos of coffee and hit the subway. Hot muggy day. My sweat was soaking through my tishirt. It always looks like a face. A sweat face. Taxi school taxi school taxi school. Showed up sweaty walked the stairs up to a second floor in an anonymous commercial building, rundown on Franklin or some Queens blvd of such commercial bldgs squat, tan things. Up to a hot muggy waiting area. Large photo prints of foreign scenery. Mountains. One looks tibetan. Temples. Plastic chairs for waiting. An office with a woman scolding a man standing at her desk. Everyone seems sullen. Bored Beaten. My turn. Money paid by internet. I forget her name  she was nice she gave me the supplies and the paper for class taxi school taxi school Hot sweaty everyone sweaty maps. Maps. Maps. The teacher was angry for no reason. I felt stupid

[If you feel let down and really want to hear all the lurid details of taxi school, email me and I’ll send you an audio recording of what taxi school was like. I assure you that the above is probably going to be more interesting.]

Lackadaisical

Monkey’s life is in flux. I don’t feel like writing about taxi school. Or writing at all as a matter of fact. But I do so hate to break promises.

To get at least something out, I did a writing exercise I learned a long time ago at improv camp. Take a pen and some paper. Set a timer for ten minutes. Start the timer and write whatever comes to mind about a topic. My topic: taxi school. No stopping except to start the next word. Maybe you’re even supposed to use cursive and never skip a beat but I don’t think they teach that in school any more so the point is moot. There’s no pausing to think though. The ink must flow continuous. If you don’t know what to write, write the topic over and over until something comes. Taxi school taxi school taxi school.

Ten minutes went by and the timer went off and I then transcribed exactly what was written. I’ll post it shortly with photos of the hand written version for provenance. For all you collectors out there. Mostly to keep me honest. 

Not to much about taxi school I’m afraid. I was getting there at the end. Maybe another ten minutes and it would have emerged. An unfinished sculpture for now. Either way, that’s all I’ve got for you this week.

Big changes next week. 

I love you.

Taxi Impressions: The Prequel. Part II

STEP 5: Physical Fitness

Interviewed at a moving company out in Brooklyn today. Got the job. Might be a driver. Pay is shit. Got the number for a doctor who does DOT physicals. The very same certificate I need for the Taxi and Limousine Commission license. Take the subway to Maspeth, Queens. Walk the hot bright sidewalks until the stores and apartments give way to auto body shops and trash in the weeds against rusty fences.

I enter the storefront office of my physician for the day and give my name to the sexy receptionist. She smiles friendly and gives me a clipboard and forms to fill out. Take a welcomed seat and enjoy a break from the heat. A drug salesman comes through the door. Peddling his wares. A cure for everything in his wheelie suitcase. I feel like I’m in pioneer times. The receptionist buzzes him into the back with the doctor and doesn’t call another name until the drug guy leaves over an hour later.

CNN keeps repeating itself, flashing videos of a grandmother being picked on ruthlessly by a bunch of kids on a school bus. They don’t explain how she got on the bus. I wonder what is wrong with those kids, with people in general, that we can be so cruel to each other. Then I catch myself wishing I could punch each of those little assholes squarely in the face.

Watching CNN for too long makes life seem bleak and hopeless. No wonder so many Americans are fat. Before long I opt for the battering heat outside.

One hour and forty-eight minutes after I arrive, an even sexier medical assistant (must be great to do your own hiring) finally calls me in.

I read an eye chart, but she makes me stand four times further away than I did at the DMV and she has me read an even smaller line. I can’t!  My suspicions are confirmed: I have a bum eye. The one on the right.

Somewhere the specter of Vision Coverage Past is laughing. I do my best reading the line with my right eye. When I switch hands to read with the left, I realize how wrong I was. I feel terribly old and frail in front of this beautiful younger woman in teal scrubs. Less than invincible. I guess I can’t escape mortality either. Those kids on the bus will get theirs too.

Next, I have to hand a cup of my hot piss to the pretty girl. No asparagus last night at least. She dips some paper strips into it and then tells me to wait for the doctor.

He is rotund and jolly. He looks me up and down skeptically, “Whadda you wanna drive a cab for?”

He moves on without waiting for an answer so I don’t offer.

He listens to my breath and feels my stomach and asks me if I feel sick. I feel fine. Then he tells me I passed and signs his name to my certificate.

 

STEP 6: Waiting For the Smoke to Clear

A tad irritable on the first day, but that’s it. Now it’s been 2 weeks. I’m impatient, less for the weed than to get this whole process over with. The idea of driving a taxi, all the possible crazy and deadly variables to consider. All the possible addresses that may be requested. Have you looked at a street map of Queens! Brooklyn? I do not sit well with anxiety. Let me dive into it. Don’t leave me sitting there blindfolded. Shoot me.

Step 7: Spring Becomes Summer Without Weed

All of my documents have arrived in the mail. I’m ready to go. Just waiting on the THC. Eight weeks is seeming a bit excessive now that I haven’t smoked in four. The whole thing seems a bit pointless. I could be drunk and high on crack behind the wheel all year long just as long as I cleaned up in time for my test.

There are cleanses and all sorts of cheats out there for passing a drug test, but I wanted to do it honestly. It hasn’t been difficult to keep my hand out of the cookie jar. But, oh how I miss the weed sex. So pleasantly electric. No self-consciousness in bed.

 

Step 8: Oops

Two more weeks to go and I just couldn’t help myself. I blame the drink. I cheated and smoked a bowl before sex. That tiny amount can’t possibly reset the clock. Shit. Add two more weeks.

STEP 9: Hurray!

Application day. Pile of papers assembled. Checklist checked. Fresh head-shave so I look sexy in my taxi ID photo. I’m nervous. Getting drug-tested and fingerprinted for the first time, all in the same day. A thought: I will now be in the system, making the perpetration of future crimes more difficult.

The Duane Reade down the block is completely sold-out of at-home marijuana test kits. Luckily there’s a Walgreens across the street.

Back at home reading the instructions I am shocked to learn that the test has been marketed to parents for testing their teens. I was a total square when I was a kid. This issue never presented itself. To think of being so disconnected from my parents that they would sneak around collecting my piss!

I pee in the beaker and don’t even get any on my fingers. Dip the strips and pass the test.

STEP 10: T & LC

The Taxi and Limousine Commission has a DMV style setup in Long Island City, Queens. You wait on line to get a number and then sit and wait some more. Finally my turn. All documents in order. Pay $185.

Wait again and then fingerprinted. Disappointed that the process has gone digital. Inkless. I was looking forward to getting my fingers dirty. Our lives grow ever more tactile while simultaneously shedding texture.

The woman taking the photographs has a workstation and a digital camera and one of those fake flowers in a pot that keeps trying to dance to every sound. The woman changes into a fresh pair of surgical gloves and places her hands on either side of my head to wordlessly position my face in the frame. “Hold still.”

The photo software slowly snaps four images of me.

Now, this is a happy day. In a few hours I will have passed my drug test and be allowed to smoke weed again. More than that, I’m about to be a New York City cab driver! Something I always wanted to try. The thought of making money again is like Christmas Day coming when I was a kid. I can already see the sparkle of the tree lights on the shiny-wrapped gifts! I was smiling huge in three out of four of the images. As per some secret DMV policy, the woman chose the fourth image for my license:

STEP 11: Lamb Cart Lunch and The Real Drug Test

Unbearable heat on the street. The sun is laying a smackdown on the pavement. I grab a lamb over rice plate from a cart and scurry off to a slim stick of shade from a construction sign. I feel disgusting as soon as I finish eating. Was this going to be my new diet once I drove a taxi?

The drug test was unremarkable. The TLC will notify me of the results by mail. Then I can enroll in Taxi school.

NEXT WEEK: Taxi School

Taxi Impressions: The Prequel. Part I

Back before I first sat
                       in the front seat
                                 of a taxi.

September 2012

I took three separate and fully defined shits before 10am. Coffee and nerves. Tonight will be my very first time taking strangers around the city in my backseat. I put it off for months, too afraid to take the plunge. I’ve been institutionalized since Kindergarten. Thirty consecutive years of getting up and going to a place where others informed me of my responsibilities for the hour or day or week or semester or animated movie. I’m accustomed to working within a more defined framework. This is like jumping out of a plane. The bureaucratic hurdles and hoops have been jumped over and through. Tests passed and fees paid and now I’m allowed to drive a cab but I have no idea how to go about it. I watched YouTube videos to learn how to use the taxi computer and the meter. I just signed up at a garage yesterday. The guy there said, “Get here around 4-4:30.”

I don’t know the rules. No one told has told me what to do.

————-

April 2012

GET YOUR NYC TLC YELLOW CAB LICENSE: 

STEP 1: Chauffeur’s License 

Officially known as a Class E license in DMV parlance. All taxi drivers must carry a New York State Class E designation or its equivalent from a surrounding state. It’s also known as a Chauffeur’s license because it allows the bearer to transport up to 14, 15 or 16 people ( I don’t remember exactly and don’t feel like fact checking) for money.

The licensing process is extremely rigorous. First the applicant must stand on line for 38 minutes or more while the perspiration which has collected below his nipples and around his belly-button, from the vigorous walk over to the DMV, soaks through his t-shirt to form a smiley face of sweat on the front. Then he must fill out the appropriate forms. $120 to the cashier. Please stand back and read this line on the eye chart. Wait for your new license to arrive in the mail.

STEP 2: Social Security 

The NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission requires applicants to present an original Social Security card when submitting their materials.

To the Social Security office!

Can’t find it. Ask a postal woman on the street. She says follow her. Walk and talk for three blocks. She is only a few weeks from retirement. She lived in the West Village all her life until she got sick of the noise in the city. Now she lives in the Bronx. The Social Security office is two buildings that way. They have a good lunchtime margarita special at that place there.

Thank her and watch her cross the street. She parks her mail cart outside the restaurant and disappears inside. It’s lunch time.

Escape the angry sun into the cool lobby of a melancholy medium-rise. The Social Security office waiting area is on the third floor and not air-conditioned. Apparently, my country can fight everyone in the world but cannot provide clipboards. Instead, the federal police officer with a holstered gun, who doubles as the receptionist, hands me a sad, floppy, creased rectangle of cardboard from the top of a pile of similar such rectangles sitting at the corner of his desk. Their sizes are irregular and the edges are tattered as if the officer had torn them all from a cardboard box himself, perhaps in a fit of rage about his job.

Fill out the forms and he prints out a number from a machine and gives it to me. I sit. There are six or seven other people. The place is stifling and depressing. The dying guts of a great republic. All kinds of posters and pamphlets inform us of our right to benefits. The people pictured are all super-psyched about Social Security. Not one person in the waiting room is.

There’s a late middle-aged woman on her cellphone. “I had to jump into the East River! They sent helicopters to pull me out.”

Despite her excessive volume, I never hear why. The old lanky guard has creaked out of his seat, pointing to the “no cell phone sign” he escorts her out. I get a good look at his gun. A killing machine in the room. It’s a cowboy revolver with a comically long barrel that sticks too far out of the bottom of his holster. Maybe it only pops out a flag. He returns to his desk in the corner of the small, quiet waiting room and gets back to picking at his nails.

—-

SS Employee: “Twenty-two.”

Guard: “NUMBER TWENTY TWO!” 

—-

SS Employee: “Thirty-five.”

Guard: “NUMBER THIRTY FIVE!”

—- 

SS Employee: “Forty-three.”

Guard: “NUMBER FORTY THREE!”

—-

If I believed in hell, this would be a room somewhere within it.

—-

SS Employee: “Forty-eight.”

Guard: “NUMBER FORTY EIGHT!”

—- 

SS EMPLOYEE: “Fifty-one.” 

Guard: “NUMBER FIFTY ONE!” 

My turn. Stand up and notice that the happy face of sweat is showing again on my shirt. I have to wipe perspiration from my bald head. Hand the nice woman various articles that prove I am who I say I am. Return home to wait for my card in the mail.

 

STEP 3: Prepare to Pass the Drug Test

The TLC requires that applicants pass a mandatory drug test. Once a year on the anniversary of your licensing.

I read somewhere that depending on body fat it takes 4-6 weeks for weed to leave the system of a heavy smoker. I’ve been living off savings and haven’t had a full-time job in two years.

I decide on 8 weeks.

 

STEP 4: I Forget.

Just kidding. The fourth step is a defensive driving course. I choose an online course that has “improv” in the name so it sounds fun. $26.95. Students must spend a requisite amount of time on each section. Click on the first section link and a timer starts at the bottom of the screen. It’s all common sense to me. I leave the page open and let the timer count down while I do whatever. I can even open other tabs. Watch Netflix. I’m getting a little scared about actually driving a taxi so it takes me a few days to finish the course material. Then I pass the test and add yet another parcel to the mailman’s sack.

—-

To Be Continued…