* * Valentine’s Day * *

Shift #18

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 14 -- Octavia/Market to Geary/Webster -- $6.70


AROUND 10:00 AM, as I’m parking across from Noah’s Bagels in Pacific Heights, I notice a middle-aged woman sitting on a bench in the nearby bus shelter. She’s wearing sunglasses and a pink scarf. Her legs are crossed. Despite her shades, I can see that her head tracking back and forth to study me and my cab. When I emerge from Noah’s a few minutes later, second cup of coffee in hand, she’s still there, legs still crossed, still studying me. I get behind the wheel, pull to the end of the block, do a U-turn, stop directly in front of her, and call through my window, “Every day...free ride...” Etc.

“Oh, thank you very much,” she says, with a thick Latina accent. “But here comes the bus right now.” She nods toward the street behind me.

In the rearview I see a MUNI bus huffing its way down Fillmore, just a block away. MUNI recently installed cameras on the fronts of all its buses, and now $88 bus-zone tickets (mailed-conveniently-to-one’s-home) have become a routine complaint of cab drivers (and civilians, too.) “No problem,” I tell her, and I’m gone.


ALL MORNING I have been feeling a little weird. Until two nights ago, the existence of this journal was my own little secret. I had enjoyed nursing it along, getting the feel of it, but there was bound to come a time when I would share it with others. Two nights ago, in an e-mail to a few friends, I mentioned its existence and asked for feedback.

Reactions have been lukewarm -- no one has raved about my little experiment, but on the other hand no one has said they found it a waste of their (or my) time. A few people wondered if I have a book in mind, but I really don’t. I’m a writer. I’m a cab driver. For years now, the free ride has been a major factor in my work day. Why not take one year and keep a journal? Might be fun... I’m not aware of any specific ambition here, but doesn’t every writer nurture the hope that an audience will ignite around him or her like a grassfire? In any regard, it’s not the tepid feedback that has me feeling weird: ever since I “outed” myself, I’ve had the uncomfortable feeling that I’m under some sort of imaginary spotlight...

I created this, there’s certainly no one I can blame, but this morning everything feels different. Scientists say that the very act of observing something causes a change in behavior -- sometimes subtle, sometimes not subtle at all -- in both the Observer and the thing being Observed. I’m not sure there’s a direct analogy between that phenomenon and my journal experience, but this morning I’m aware of a jangling self-consciousness, a sense that I am somehow both Observer and Observed. And I’m mourning the loss of my secret.


AT THE CORNER OF CALIFORNIA AND VAN NESS, a couple in their late twenties flags me down. When I offer, they each choose a chocolate from a bag of assorted Valentine’s Day Hershey’s chocolates I picked up earlier at Walgreens. The couple is meeting a bunch of friends for brunch at a Castro District restaurant named Lime. “The food’s great," the woman tells me. “They serve bottomless mimosas for seven dollars. And the music is good and loud.”

Me: “I’m 58. I can remember liking restaurants with music that was good and loud, but when I go out these days I want a place where I can have a conversation without having to raise my voice or lean forward. I wonder where the cutoff age is?"

The woman: “I’m guessing 35.”

The man: “I think it’s probably having kids. I’ll bet you’re a parent, right?”

It’s a fun ride, but when I check in with Body at ride’s end, the free-ride feeling just isn’t there -- and I don’t know why. Body and I are off our game. The glare of this damn spotlight is throwing weird shadows everywhere.


AT OCTAVIA AND MARKET I pick up a late-30s Latino dressed in black from his engineer’s cap to his motorcycle boots. He says he is going to “Chopantown.” With a grunt, he accepts a chocolate and tucks it into the pocket of his black bombadier jacket -- but I’m not sure he understands my English all that well. When I ask what he’s up to today I receive a one-word answer -- “Restaurant” -- and then we are silent. It’s a short trip (my waybill shows that it lasted six minutes and ticked up $6.70 on the meter), and midway I start wondering whether or not I can possibly make it my free ride. The whole thing is feeling like a burden today, and I can’t wait to get rid of it.

As I’m having this thought, I notice 11:11 showing on my dashboard’s digital clock. In recent years I have developed a fondness for this number, and for some absolutely illogical reason (I do like the way the digits all line up neatly) I have started assigning quasi-mystical weight to its every sighting. (A quasi-mystical aside: When I was buying my chocolates at Walgreens this morning, I noticed a young African-American woman wearing an enormous, powder-blue sweatshirt proclaiming Judgment Day -- November 2, 2010. What? I thought we had until 2012...!)

When we reach Japantown I turn and tell my fare, “Free ride.” He seems to have absolutely no trouble understanding this two-word pronouncement. He folds up his wallet, nods once, and...poof -- he hustles out of the cab as though he’s afraid I might change my mind.

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