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.)

Sure I Love You Baby, Like I Love Fresca.

I've always liked that Tab tastes like liquid pennies.

I guess these boys do too.

And, of course, the design is so pretty, so clean.
They could teach something to the kids who (recently) messed up Fresca.

Get(ting) a life

I took the bus.

But the driver was bitchy.
(She got on at the same stop as me. She barged on and we thought she was cutting the line. She made us wait.)

Bus drivers tell me...

Transportation Alternatives

No cabs.

I'm preparing for poverty.

Backseat Shooter: Apparently, Alyssa is a cheat.

Long Division

It was the first time someone closed that sliding divider for me.

That ride was rough.

Sweet dreams

I can't remember the last time I saw my bed on this side of midnight.

Street stalkers

If, when we passed eachother on the street on Sunday morning, I laughed at you and you laughed at me, and we kept walking, and laughing to ourselves, then we're totally dating now, right?

Debbie Downer

His name may as well have been David Downer.

As he drove me home he regaled me with a tale of the fire raging in SoHo.
And as we passed a taped-off 14th Street he pointed out the remains of a dead body in the middle of the road.
(He’d witnessed the hit-and-run earlier in the night.)
I, in no mood to talk, nodded.

He pushed for my name.
I told him it was Debbie.

Backseat Shooter: 6M50

Perhaps it was my stunning beauty that casued this man to forget to run the meter.
Or perhaps he was as intrigued/confused by the hanging flip-flops as I was.

Niether one of us noticed the other until it was time to pay.

A Pretty Place to Live

The thought of moving to L.A.

I was delusional.

The L.A. that I'm looking for doesn't exist anymore as such.

And we all know what a stellar driver I am.

Extension

"You're a good girl," said the caller, inexplicably.

I hung up.

That is not true.