insides go out, part 1

when i leave school today i figure i"ll give myself the gift of getting home in fifteen minutes instead of the thirty minutes on the bus with screaming kids and then the additional thirty minutes on the train (which got stuck in the tunnel twice this morning, by the way) adding up to a big, fat, stinking hour. because i am sick and i figure getting home quicker reduces my chances of crapping myself publicly. and honestly, don't we all want to reduce our chances of crapping ourselves publicly?

so i get myself over to bay parkway to a little car service with giant russian guys who smoke cigars. this is where i go when i'm feeling icky and don't want to feel sick for an hour with an audience. usually i get this one russian guy who is not really russian at all and who sounds like what dracula would sound like in a round man's body. he is really nice and plays music from my youth. early u2. violent femmes. quiet guy. charges $14 for the trip. but not today. today i get an angry man who stomps out to the car and asks me three times what i mean by 8th avenue and 8th street. his version of the same route is $18 and on any other day i'd argue but i feel like crap so i get in. he drives away and this horrible dinging starts up. it takes me a while to realize that his car screams an alarm at two minute intervals. eleven horrible banging, shrieking beeps in sequence when the driver doesn't have the seat belt fastened. i figure he probably knows this because it is his car and all, and figure he'll pull the shoulder belt down at some point before i crawl over the seat and fasten it for him.

i am shockingly wrong. in what turns out to be a twenty five minute car ride he does not fasten his seat belt at all and this means, of course, that a horrible sound like our school bell blares through the car thirteen times, eleven rings each time. afte the fifth one i consider ramming one of my knitting needles through his skull but they're bamboo and probably wouldn't get through. i consider taking out an eye or puncturing an ear. feeling generally sick, fearing an ugly crapping incident and being assaulted by raging bells and awful russian pop music all at the same time can make a person aggressive to the point of actual violence. but these particular needles are the only size nines i have and i will be needing them to finish the little bear cub pants i'm making for my nephew. so the cab driver survives. but just barely. because all the while there's the alarm howling and my stomach swirling and storming and the man is on the phone to a woman. i know this because i can hear her voice the same way i can hear lester flatt and earl scruggs singing on my big console radio right now. because i have it cranked up to "hell, yeah! it's bluegrass!" and that's what this driver does. cranks up the banshee on the phone so i can hear both sides of the conversation i don't want to hear in the first place. i can tell you a few things.

1. the conversation is in russian.
2. both parties are very, very, very angry.
3. evidently the woman is as stupid as the driver because the driver keeps yelling the same phrases at her. five times. six times.
4. he cranks up some awful russian pop music, which takes all the worst of american pop music and adds to it a whining tone, nearly bleating, that concentrates my urge to kill or possibly crap all over the seat of this car in fear or rage. like how frogs pee when you pick them up.
5. the screaming conversation (so loud it actually drowns out one instance of the alarm alarming) lasts from the time we turn onto bay parkway to the time we turn off the prospect expressway onto 8th avenue. more than twenty of the twenty five minutes i am on this magic carpet ride.

so then the man asks me, again, again, where to stop. and i say, again, again, 8th avenue and 8th street. and he wants to know why. this strikes me as a bit odd and i start thinking about making eye contact with folks on the sidewalk. i tell him i'm going to the pharmacy on the corner there (this is true, actually, though none of his business) and he says, "well, where do you live?" i say, vaguely, that i live up the street a few blocks and am stopping at the pharmacy because that's where i want to go and that's where i asked to be let out when i got in the car. he says, "well, i could wait for you." what? WHAT? why would he wait for me? so i explain again, no. nonono. i want to get out at 8th and 8th. right in front of the pharmacy. he counts the streets out loud. twelfth. eleventh. tenth. i'm not kidding. every street. ninth. and between ninth street and eighth street he starts yelling, "what pharmacy? i don't see it? where?" so i point out the window at the pharmacy, which is right there on the corner of 8th and 8th, right where i said it would be. near side. right side. there is a painted picture on one window of a pharmacist holding a little boy's nose and shoving a spoonful of medicine in the mouth the child opened for breathing while a very smug little sister looks on. and the stupid alarm for the seat belt goes off one more time as this man unlocks the car doors. he says thank you all syrupy and tells me to get out on the side near the curb so i'll be safe. i peel off a ten. a five. and three singles. no tip. i am all about tipping. and i had tip money. but not for this guy and his horrible screaming and yelling and his neverending alarm and ugly russian pop music.

i walk out of the car and into the tiny two-aisle pharmacy where the guy behind the counter says, "picking up, right?" he remembers my name. and i nod. in the background, just audible, is "sylvia's mother", a song that seemed to me, when i was a child, so heartbreaking i couldn't even think while it played. the saddest, lostest song ever. and the pharmacist looks up and, while putting my pills in a little bag, says, "no dog today?" because he and guthrie have met. i promise to bring him by next time and the guy behind the counter and the pharmacist laugh and smile and tell me to have a good evening and i feel like i have arrived home after walking a great distance through a particularly ugly storm.