Unpretty

What the fuck are you doing in the shower for two hours?

You're far from pretty.

And I have to pee.

Calculations

It's pretty clear that the day won't be pretty when the first thing you do upon waking is count the number of hours until you're allowed to return to that spot.

Reading in Cabs With Girls

"He handed her into the taxi as though she were a package marked glass – something, she thought, not merely troublesomely womanly, but ladylike. 'Put your legs up on the seat,' he said. 'I don’t want to, Miles.' Goodbye Missis Butter Put your legs up on the seat. I don’t want to – better luck next time Missis Butter Put your legs I can’t make out our window, Missis Butter Put your 'All right, it will be nice and uncomfortable.' (She put her legs up on the seat.) Goodbye Missis But . . . 'Nothing I say is right,' he said. 'It’s good with the legs up,' she said brightly.

Then he was up the steps agile and sure after the fruit. And down again, the basket swinging with affected carelessness, arming him, till he relinquished it modestly to her outstretched hands. Then he seated himself on the little seat, the better to watch his woman and his woman’s fruit; and screwing his head round on his neck said irritably to the man who had been all his life on the wrong side of the glass pane: 'Charles Street!'"

Tess Slesinger: from The Unpossessed (1934) (reissued in 2002 by New York Review Books)

Reading in Cabs With Boys*

"A bus's circular steering wheel is not only larger but is set at an angle of incidence more horizontal than any taxi, private car or police cruiser's wheel I have seen and the driver turns the wheel with a broad all-body motion which is resemblant of someone's arm sweeping all the material off a table or surface in a sudden fit of emotion."

David Foster Wallace, from "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature," page 184 in Oblivion.




*A new segment in which I read things, find the word "taxi," and then reprint bits here.

Two Stops. One liners.*

College Humor's Ricky Van Veen has a blog.

It has nothing to do with taxis or prettiness, but it is, often, adorably hilarious.

And today, topical:
All's Fare in Love



*Not one-lined this time, but usually.

Tongue. Taxi.

Houston Street, at Ludlow.


Pretty friend Nina Lalli and I shared tongue with strangers on a bench outside of American Apparel. (Village Voice)

Elegy For A Cabbie

Tom Robbins reports on "A veteran driver who fought the Nazis in Europe and the bosses at home." (Village Voice)

And If We Talk, (Mis)communication

“Avenue P?” he asks.

“No, Avenue B,” I reply. (If only he knew how appropriate his question actually is.)

“Oh, he says, “I have trouble with “B” and “P.”

I don’t know what to say. He does have trouble with those two.

“You have talent,” he says. “In the lips.”

I’m not sure how he knows this, because it’s dark, and I’ve said little, and I’m not even remotely close to kissing him. And, if he confused the two, then it’s due to my saying them too similarly. Which would indicate a lack of talent in my lips. Or in his hearing.

Liar.

Premature

Done.

Masada String Solo

It was snowing.
He had an upright bass and a ton of street cred.
I let him grab my cab.

Absentee

This past week-or-so I've taken more cabs and had less time to write, than ever before.
This is not a model of efficiency.

Fill In

I won't even pretend I can advise you on that front.

(I hope to backtrack by the end of the day.)