he's got his mofo rising

i think he had tourette's.

tourette's has always been this kind of weird fantasy of mine. to be able to say anything that comes to mind without that pesky pre-filtering seems to be an exotic freedom that i know i'm never going to bring myself to do. on the other hand, i will then run into someone like the cab driver and i decide that filtering is probably a good idea. people don't fear for their lives when there's a little bit of filtering going on.

"MOTHERFUCKER!" he shouted.

we were all sitting in the cab, taking the yellow steel journey out to a restaurant in north beach; out to the land where the parking gods look the other way and laugh when you suffer. we had been minding our own business, talking in a half drunken babble when eventually the cab finally settled into a modicum of silence. the radio buzzed with r&b that i vaguely recognized. everything seemed calm until his 'motherfucker!' interjection leapt out at us. we were jostled into surprise.

"ha HA!" said the cab driver, laughing at his break in the silence. "i just started my shift, you see..." he took a swig of caffeine from his styrofoam cup and shook his head a little, like when the cartoon character gets whalloped over the head with a mallet. i imagined tiny little birds twittering above him, flying around in dazed circles.

"that was my first swear word of the night!" he said proudly. an al green song floated out of the radio and he sang along to it, his voice scratchy and in a tune different than one would wish for.

"yeah... it's good to ease into these things," i replied, thinking maybe he was just trying to make small talk.

"WHAT THE... MOTHERFUCKER?! what the hell does that god-damned sonofabitch think that he's doing making a right hand turn from the middle goddamned lane?! if i was... if i was... i'm gonna kill that motherfucker!" he blasted suddenly, glaring at a taxicab in front of us that swerved around the corner, wil-o-wisping itself down broadway.

he turned his head to his left and saw a passenger in another cab laughing at him.

"hah! that sonofabitch passenger in the next cab saw how fucking pissed off i got!" he exclaimed, happy that his wrath had been given an audience.

it's possible that the profanity onslaught that poured out of the cabbie's word hole would have been triggered by anything that evening, but it appeared the the entertainment of the passenger in the next cab was the cork that came undone. the cabbie laughed in an institutionalizing way and proceeded to spew anger at every other cab that drove in front of him. the guys in the back seat stayed quiet while i nervously tried to continue harmless banter with him. his coffee cup shook in his hand as he spat another angry word at the taxicab swerving before us.

i think i've always just assumed that all taxis drive like maniacs, like all san francisco bus drivers. it's a given. san francisco has big hills, bad streets and bad drivers. that's the reality so why argue?

our cab driver didn't really argue, he just continued with his goddamned motherfucking sonofabitch christ-for-all shit-man recombination of words until we finally arrived at our destination. to our slightly bewildered and somewhat entertained relief, he hadn't pulled a gun on another cab and he smiled at us as we exited.

well... shit.

<02.05.02>

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