I'm waiting for a call in the parking lot of the Chevron at MLK & Fremont, leaning against the cab and smoking a cigarette.
"Say, can I get me one of those?"
I look over, and an emaciated form lurches out of the shadows. She could be anywhere between 30 and 50 years old. I've seen her before, hustling change and yelling loudly. Her decrepit fur coat almost matches her long and absurdly tangled hair. But what's always scared me about this woman is her eyes, which bulge with the consuming hunger and intensity of a basehead nearing the end of the line.
I shake my head no, and look away.
"Well how about this? I'll suck your dick for four dollars."
I wouldn't let her touch my penis if she were the one paying me. I don't say a word, and take another drag on my cigarette.
"Show you my titties for two?"
I shake my head again.
"Just give me a fucking dollar!"
No dice.
"Well fuck you, then!" she screams and spits at me, missing the mark. I shrug and let her shamble off into the night.
Talking with another cabbie who keeps a running tally of such things, I later find out that I was offered the cheapest blowjob in his memory. He's jealous that I beat his five-dollar record, but I haven't yet reached the point where I'm able to find these things more amusing than depressing.
Hey, try to treat that stuff with humor if you can for sanity's sake, but, on the other hand, you know you are starting to get really jaded, just reveling in pitch-black humor, when you start to assign nicknames to the more far-gone crack zombies, like "Tombstones for Eyes," the toothless redhead that was often spotted over near the Matador, before the condo takeover. Or "Mu-Mu," whose pimp had cut out her tongue, who worked out in front of my old place in Texas. One time I handed her a beer out of some sense of mis-guided pity, and watched her promptly run across the street to trade it for a "choreboy" at the crackhouse, squealing with delight.
Uplifting, huh ?
Any yet our failed charade of drug policy in this country, the absurd burlesque called the "War on Drugs," just goes on, and on, and on...