The Third Wheel

Days 101-129

Sometimes I feel like I'm writing just to destroy an entire year. Maybe not, but that's what I fear when I write about the people I'm close to. Will I hurt anybody by writing this? Maybe. While extremely high for the first time in a great stretch of time, and off of only one hit (and I can get a witness), I idiotically tried to edit one of my recent posts, and I endured an extended moment of great self-consciousness and concern, as is often the case when you smoke the marijuana. It is a substance that can provide great perspective, if not sometimes the wrong perspective, but I felt concerned for my friendships and the way people will see me after I reveal the truths in my point of view and the awareness that perhaps I'm just an asshole. I asked my roommate Nick about it, and his stock answer of, "It's good man, just keep doin' what you're doin'," soothed the doubts. So I will, because it is, in my comprehensively dwelled upon opinion, more interesting that way, and those of my friends who love me for who I am will forgive me for my faults, they should know that I cherish them and mean no harm, and operate with the understanding that my actions are mine and I will be responsible for them. Thereby, I am prepared for the pain of any severances I incur through my bluntness, but not entirely prepared since I'm kind of an emo bitch. I'll miss you :-(

I touched down in Boston and felt extremely well rested, my direct flight a respite from all the extensive flight changes of the typical frugal flying that I choose. Silver line, to green line, to Shea's place. Shea had offered me her bed for a stretch of time stating she could sleep with her boyfriend, and only laid down the no sex, jacking off, or eating in her bed rules, which I can totally abide by-I mean when do I ever eat in bed? I thought to myself in a flash, "I'm back in Boston, it's nearly impossible for me to get laid here anyway, I'll have to go out on like a million dates for that to happen," and replied, "OK." I had my suitcase full of clothing, my helmet, and some cold gear for any of those shitty, rainy Red Sox shifts that I anticipated, and got. It was a Thursday and so before even thinking about the stretch of work ahead of me, and all the revolutions I would make on a tricycle, I had to hit up that old 80's night at Common Ground. This is place I've loved, hated, and been kicked out of. I've met girls here that I've dated for months, or weeks, or once. It's been a wealth of drama and enjoyment, a go to for friends on Thursdays for "the cheese," which implies cheesy 80's music. In fact, Elaine, who I'll meet in Salt Lake City to continue up to Portland with is a girl I met at Common Ground for 80's night. One of my more interesting dating sagas developed out of this place with a girl named Tammy. She approached me for our first encounter, the neon on my torso a beacon to which she guided herself, or maybe it was pheremonal, because I smelled like a bag of sweaty assholes, and she asked a rookie pedicabber and me why we didn't wear helmets. Conversation, dancing, then numbers. We had this slow flirtatious boiling that couldn't quite work, our work schedules being almost entirely incompatible. I went out of my way on a shift to give her a ride around the block while she stepped out from beers with her coworkers, just to give her a little thrill. I asked her to the Pedicab Formal last year, and she was a bit distracted as a date with work issues, she being a busy economist fused to a blackberry, and I having honestly blacked out about two thirds through on my empty stomach, the sustenance that our host, The Beehive, offered being insufficient to lay a blanket over alcohol over and expect to remember your friend's three dates' names that night or the next day. I have been told that I kept it together, classy Kerrigan. I know I walked her all the way back to the Pru since she needed to go back to work that night, and gave her a proper gentleman's goodbye. We only chilled again when one night we saw each other at Common Ground. She ended up wasted, her friends had left, and there was no way in hell I was watching her get on a bicycle to ride 5 hilly, train tack laden miles back to Jamaica Plain. We walked the mile back to my place, and I put her to sleep on the couch, and I went upstairs to my bed. It wasn't until the next morning after serving her breakfast, and laughing with her at this story about getting stuck with way too many frozen waffles, the funniest story she ever told me, that something happened. It got very, very heavy for about ten minutes until my roommate opened his door and the process was completely startled. And in what could have been the "make" of a continued relationship, I progressively lost my punctuality for the shows I had to go perform at the Boston Children's Museum, my call time rapidly approaching. For all my sensitivity about her condition the night before, and the dotted history between us of good and interesting and weird encounters, I feel like I can break it all down into that final moment where I didn't ditch out on the kids and the $52 and the accountability to work just for a great moment between us, instead, parting ways on bikes nearly at my doorstep, kissing her goodbye, and like a bonehead, only giving her verbal directions to get back home and not riding with her to a more suitable point of departure, as easy as that would have been. I later saw her at another Allston area hipster dance night, one that had ensued after a comedy show I had done at the same venue. I was missing teeth from my November bike accident, and our conversation felt like we were talking about economics, not an area I can comfortably navigate with words, no less confidently with two teeth missing. Sometimes the universe likes to hand me serendipity, and/or closure. I didn't see or hear from her again until I randomly saw her pedicabbing during this month of riding. She looked at me like I had two heads, back in Boston despite what she knew about my previous departure, me with a four month deep, fierce beard, on a tricycle with two huge passengers. And there I was, back in the spawning point of this story and many others, with my good friend Shea, drinking beers and dancing to the 80's. Welcome back to Boston, Kerrigan, don't let the old wares wear you out, don't let your ghosts haunt you.

The next day was straight to work. Ten games in a row begins on Friday, ends, then seven days later, ten more. I plan to ride all but one, and attend the one I don't ride for the Kyle Crand/Dan Kerrigan Annual All Day Bender. It's weird coming back after some travel and some big pedicab stories. The old welcome back, the big smiles, the hugs and once-overs of the people who have changed slightly since you last saw them. Ten pounds more or less, a haircut, or promotion later, good to see you, look at you, what's going on, how's it been? Now let me sign up for that tricycle. I have plenty to say on the topic of pedicabbing, as I think it might be clear from how long I've been involved in this profession, but for me this month went by like reruns of Futurama, I've seen 'em all, but I still love it, and I'm always finding new stuff inside each episode. I went to work, met the rookies, rode as hard as I could, talked my way into big tips, imparted a few words to new guys when it was appropriate, and perhaps even a few times it may not have been, and banked, banked, banked. I easily slipped back into the routine. Claw my eyelids up to my salty forehead, head into work, sign up for bike, get coffee after the most miserable 40 minutes of my life, make enough during pregame that I can foresee a happy ending to the evening, get back to the shop nearly last, go get beers, rinse, repeat, sometimes failing to rinse. The rookies are a new class, hired by the new general manager and my old roommate at 21 Bennett Street, Jeremy. They are hungry, a few natural schmoozers in the bunch, some of them making big time pedicab statements in the first Red Sox series, I'm talkin' like 700 or 800 bucks on opening day, something never done before. I'm back and I'm feeling competitive, the job always makes me that way, my primary function to hit my goals and go back to Texas and break even out of Texas to finish my trip, but inside me I wanna show everyone what's up. It's small and worth little, but my name precedes me a little bit for this small cup of pride, and so people know me before I get there and it's a shoe I have to step back into. I got scheduled for the first three games of the first ten game set, and then all the rest after being on-called in to the two I didn't originally get. The feeling of being at the doorway to ten days straight of intense pedicabbing is intimidating, a little overwhelming, but you do feel a bit like I imagine a baseball player would feel. Just take it one day at a time and don't hurt yourself. And this includes your, ahem, "performance" off the field. I'm just waiting for the day somebody emails the pedicab email list and tries to get a shift covered because they cramped up during some rough sex. No, it won't be me.

The first three games went rather smoothly, even though Sunday managed to be lazy and not quite as lucrative as I had hoped. It's better that way since I got to enjoy some beers with Mr. Keith Cardoza, a wife carrying champion with thighs like steel bridge cables, and he let me bully his mountain bike around for the month. I insisted on paying for the drinks, but think a lot of pedicabbers don't even want to consider favors as favors, it's kind of a brotherhood that way. It was nice to roll in the air again, as cold as it did get here and there, but mostly, it relieved me to not have to have the same conversation with cab drivers over and over and then pay them for it, and the ride home. If they are nice, I tell them I'm a pedicab driver and we talk about it, of course, and the same questions come up: How does it work, what do you make, where do you go, and all the other ones. It is always funny to hear a Haitian man skirt around the appropriate way to ask me how it goes when I take bigger people. Stock answer for everyone who wants to know: We just go slower. Keith gave me leave from this repetitive experience, and saved me about $15 nearly 15 times, about 15 trips to the Pour House as it goes with the hook up I occasionally see there, or plenty of PBR's at a dollar a pop in the shop.

I had already approached the thousand dollar mark for the homestand, but it was Marathon Monday that really set the tone for the pedicab tour de force. I thought I got up so early on Marathon Monday that I leisurely commuted to the shop, confident I'd obtain an acceptable bike, and underestimating the rookies and their drive to acquire the coveted Main Street bikes that are faster and more narrow for beating traffic. By the time I got in, they were all gone. I cursed my fate, a 14 hour day with an accompanying 60 extra pounds for its duration. Nuts. But I went to work. In past years, the big mistake I made in working the marathon was that I left Fenway and I swore to myself, after having worked three of them previously, that I would not make that mistake again. When I pedicab, I operate on an adaptive goal system. Tips can be low, or large, and one must always consider what is possible when aiming to earn a certain amount, and then when approaching that number, factor in how much time is left to earn the difference between what you have, and what you want, and check in with your body, and see if you need time to eat, or drink more water, or perhaps a round of ibuprofin is necessary. How long do I have to make a stop if I need to make $150 in the next 3 hours? How many rides at $20 do I need to make that happen? Just one of the next five rides has to be a tip up over $30. From here I put on a series of performances, physical and verbal to get what I need, but before any of that, you have to get people in the bike. And then sometimes I just don't think, because I don't even have time to, I just ride and balance my weight on the handlebars and just kick into the pedals for speed, and have a lot of familiar conversations with whoever is on the back, assuring them they shouldn't feel bad, even though I know they will anyway, and I'll play up the pain a little with a high pitched "Whew" after cresting a hill. I didn't start my day thinking I could do it, but by the end, I had record numbers for Boston on my mind.

I took only one trip into the heart of the Back Bay, where the marathon concluded in Copley Square. Just as I dropped a ride off on a marathon-route confused Newbury Street, two fellas up around 400 lbs each asked me if I could get them to the Westin in Copley Square. Where we were located at that moment was somewhere that on any other day would have been embarrassingly close to ask for a ride there, perhaps only 300 yards. The marathon cut any pedestrian traffic off to cross from one side of Boylston Street to the other as exhausted runners walked out their blisters, found the medical tents, ate chips, wore medals, and wrapped themselves in mylar to shine as fuckin' badass dudes all day and night long. So we took the ride. Every access point was closed and all we could do was go all the way down to Arlington Street and around the entirety of the Back Bay. I've got over 800 lbs of "deadweight" in my cab, plus the 200 of the cab, plus the 170 of me, and the fiberglass is flexing down to kiss the attached LED lights to the tire, and so I hear a grind and feel the friction for what ends up being 1.75 miles of slow going. I start up Columbus Ave and it's there that I see Tammy, sometime shortly after 5, giant men in tow, beard of an epic journey, sweating like a bastard, huge smile on my face, fake teeth filling up the gap. I bet her heart skipped a beat from the look she gave me, until she got a chance to break it down into derivatives or something like that. I got another ride up towards Fenway, and every ride after that was either to or from the park, always returning, tipping just a few kids off to the idea, scraping up rides until 1 am, exhausted as a marathoner, throwing my shoulders forward to push the weight over my leg to get gravity to force the pain into the cranks and get that Andrew Jackson paper. $1043, walked with $883. Let's ride another game tomorrow.

It's hard to write about most individual days, or individual games since when I pedicab in Boston, it becomes a routine that blends together in the same way I imagine any career blends together. Tell me about your month of work two months ago, would you? Oh, you can't really remember any specifics? Your boss exhibited some douchey qualities? You drank some coffee? You programmed html? Interesting, now something more specific, if you would. And you know what? They don't really matter, the details but they are what your day is built out of, so the also do. A lot of cruising around on a tricycle, jockeying for rides, talking people into your mobile couch. Lots of using the same lines to entertain different people. A lot of wearing neon green, tons of water, masses of food. The occasional attitude adjustment ice cream Snickers bar to make my inner fatboy happy and fun again. A lot of going to bars in a pack of neon, getting cred, cutting weekend lines with a smile and a nod, having people start the conversations with us, putting fast beers down before the bars close, leaving with that fading burn in your esophagus from a 10 oz pull from a giant mug that you have to leave a quarter of behind, while you are ushered in an sympathetic fashion from the bar by the door guy you are buddies with. A bit of that unstable bike mount, the beer entering or the shift finally leaving your legs, a tired football player kicking a pathetic penalty kick after 120 minutes of play, and scoring because the goalie guessed wrong and watched the ball roll across the line and stop short a meter from the net, never touching it. It's a liquid dream of progress and ruin for someone like me. A cycle I had to break, because I knew it could eat the rest of my healthy youth, and so in October of 2009, I impulsively booked the ticket to LA, thinking I'd score a vehicle there, and perhaps some satisfaction, but at least, warmth in the midst of friends.

The Saturday of Game 9 of the first 10, I cycled up Beacon Street towards Shea's place, and a guy behind me powered up the same hill along with me. The hill topping out, he caught up to me to mention that he enjoyed watching the cadence of my spins, I looked very motivated and serene in it from behind, and it gave him a sense of perspective and self recognizance that he, too, pedaled uphill in a similar fashion. Turns out he came from Austin. I said to him that it figured because people in Boston don't just talk to other people like that, not even in summer. We laughed off our commonalities and he invited me to a party that ebbed only blocks from Shea's place. I accepted, knowing it would be detrimental to my lazy Sunday performance of game 10, and perhaps hurt the standup show I had lined up two months prior for after the game, but hell, my heart was beating and hard, sleep wasn't close anyhow.

The next day, I kicked back with a few beers after finishing 10 games in a row, some brutal double shifts in the midst of it all, and feeling comfortable about the five beefy trips to the bank I made. I grew tired, but I needed to make myself energetically available for the show I had to perform. I just ran my mind through the iteration of "duplicate the last one" over and over. I biked fast to Central Square, a three mile zip over my favorite stretch of bikeable terrain, the astonishing view of the Mass Ave bridge, flying forwards, yet taking the dangerous seconds to crane my neck back at Boston and watch the skyline emerge in the darkening evening. Coffee, then a chat with the host, then beers as I scratched up my set list, expecting just to talk about the census and fire off another joke or two if I had time. I nearly missed my entrance. I walked back in as they were about to move on and ask me where the fuck I was? I hurried to my bag to grab the census vest, a center piece to a bit, and got in the light. Establishing stage presence, I took my time to organize the stage as I needed it to be for comfort. This process scored the first laugh, since I basically got on stage late and then proceeded to take my time as if it were no issue at all, then, the look up to recognize everyone I had to entertain. Another. Then, from calm organization, I poured out extreme energy. The first joke hit, that locomotive dragging the rest of the freight, the first laugh, the introductory energy picking up steam on a downhill stretch. My car, the census, whaling watching. There just wasn't enough time. Afterwards, Dana, the guy who taught me to love my standup, told me, "That was the best set I've ever seen you do." Humbled to hear it, I silently and proudly compared it to the one I did in Austin, and felt satisfied. Two in a row. It's hard to ignore a good thing like that, happening in two different cities. I burned that night down at old haunts, popped into the Model on the way to Shea's, and sat outside for a long drunken talk with Miranda before putting my head down to transport my life back home for a few days.

I missed my bus, but got the next one, and sat in traffic to New York City. It hurt me to feel that old slowness and squeeze the 2005-2006 educational year memories into my mouth. Taste the delay and feel the discomfort of your ass as you return to New York in traffic. Remember that you did it for a girl, and she thought you did it to pedicab. Recall that you are both better off apart, but sigh for the way she declined your friendship one year after the separation. Texting with Miranda and watching Richard Prior's standup made things better. He really tore into those white folks in Long Beach, and I watched him sweat so badly on stage, and thought, "Now this is a performance!" It seemed like 25% of it had been improvised, but all of it had the spirit of improvisation. His performances were possessed with himself on stage, deeply personal, unconscious always, done when he feels physically and mentally done. I internalized it and tried to bring it to the open mic in NYC, but only had 7 people left in the crowd for my performance, not a show I could read much into. Jay Lee attended, and had he stayed until the end, I would have made $45, enough to cover the several $7 Brooklyn Lagers I had been drinking and pay for my bus trip from Beantown, but he had to be some kind of working stiff and go personally train people very early the following morning, and so his responsible gain became my loss. Responsibility fucks me again, but irresponsibility only nets you short term gains. When you meet a struggler, watch for the clue of the one eminently irresponsible behavior that could be bringing them down. Their fatal flaw and/or their achillies heel, everyone has one, and sometimes they are not easy to spot, and are always even harder to overcome.

Being back at home, I got to see my Ma and dear grandmother, and the rest of our family who were coming in for the week, my cousins Lisa and Mark, and my Aunt Sharon and Uncle Mike, their parents and my mother's brother. We had family time. It was nice. We caught up and talked about everything, and I deftly avoided being drawn into terribly polarized politcal discussions with my Uncle who differs from me in national security issues mostly, and this stemming from a desire for Israel's defense and a distaste for Islamic extremism, positions I understand, yet extending into a wider array of topics that we have discovered are untouchable material when we spend family time together. And so as it went with my pro-Dubya senior year roommate at BC, we got along great by pretending we didn't think about those things, and agreeing on the "purple issues". The bridge of youth to adulthood energized my presence at home since I got to joke around with my cousins, not terribly far off from me in age, family folks now, but largely free for the week from the encompassing duties of parenting. It put me more at ease to divulge and play, when on an average visit I must produce interesting detail about goings on in my world. Not that it is laborious, or at all a trial, but the jazz of improvisation is absent. It's as if I were playing a game of "Questions" versus performing a long form scene. In "Questions" the two players continue a scene with questions and drop new information in the form of questions and ultimately the game ends when the action or fluidity of the scene stalls, and can be played past exhaustion, at which point the game continues, but no substance is gained. In long form, two people volunteer information and take what is spoken and acted upon and build upon it, sometimes creating masterpieces of visuals or absurd thought. There are no limits except for patience to sit and listen, and the pressing need that ultimately, we will all have to sleep at some point. Both are fully capable of being fun, and tedious, it all depends on the energy of the participants matching up with each other.

So much travel and pedicabbing stifled me from writing anything for two weeks, so I had planned to write the second full day I stayed at home. The desire to do it nearly drove me to pathetic angry glass smashing. We went to my grandmother's house and for almost an hour and a half tried to DECIDE on a suitable place to go eat somewhere, settling on some prissy tea room for sandwiches. It took nearly an hour for our server to log our orders and serve us sandwiches. I started getting a little caffeinated and really antsy to get out of that place, and I thought horrible thoughts of disrupting the tea service with broken glass, a few choice words into the air or to a child, or nudity, but kept my cool by venting frustrations to an available Miranda. I felt like nobody at the table really understood the need for me to go get writing done, how much importance it held for me, as if pouring things out could happen any time when family wasn't in town, that my commitment to it seemed frivolous and surely it could wait. This plus hunger plus overly decorated suffocating atmosphere had me boiling. I swear, if a door had started bleeding in there, I would have found an axe and gone Shining on everyone. It says a lot that on this day New Jersey ended up being the refuge I needed to take. Starbucks in an A&P. Holy shit, I never needed Jersey so much, and now I feel dirty for having typed that. Interesting New Jersey beers at my grandmother's helped me celebrate the escape from the tea room, the productivity, and lubricated potentially janky family social interaction. And now when someone is seriously getting under my skin, I say that he is "sending me to the tea room."

All the visiting west coasters wanted to get into New York City, and so did I, so I led us on a bit of a go round. The sun shone and we walked a lot. Jay caught up with us at Lincoln Center and we walked to The Carnegie Deli for an authentic New York experience, which amounts to, "Overeat here because we serve you piles of meat, you fat tourists." It's funny since everyone on this side of my family is particularly fit. So nearly everyone but me ordered giant meat piles, while I had secured a modest sandwich from a personal New York favorite, "The Lunch Box" and ordered a side of steamed veggies claiming I had dietary restrictions, but mostly desiring the sandwich of my choosing from a familiar place, and also feeling the Jewish guilt for entering an establishment with little intent to purchase. Small gains in healthy choices compensate for gaping errors of indulgence, maybe, I can pretend to agree with, sometimes.

We walked through Times Square, sat in its new closed off Broadway fold up chairs, saw the weirdos, and had a moment of "Well this is nice." As the sun lit up my skin, I screened on my interior the memories of my life in Times Square: Selling tickets to comedy clubs, driving a seven human powered circular machine entitled "The Party Bike" and shows and Thai food and working on 47th in a Broadway theatre for almost a year, these things that hurled me towards, and back towards pedicabbing. And when a memory or trigger of a sequence of events illuminates, the gun of causation goes off and you get the floating opportunity to play the game of "If" and/or "Why" until you are satisfied or too frustrated to continue, or perhaps just distracted by a Haitian man dressed up as the Statue of Liberty.

Texas weighed on me in the midst of family and New York City, most of which was devising some way to impress Violet from afar. I might have steered the entourage South into the Lower East Side, or maybe there existed in them a sort of desire to see it anyhow. My cousin Mark starting making passing references at obtaining a beer somewhere, and I certainly had a hard time disagreeing with him. We perused the shops on St. Mark's and, since the inspiration caught me in the knowledge of Vioet's car having only a tape deck, I made a point of popping in to a few music shops and asking them if they had any cassette tapes. I walked down a few steps into the cove of a music shop, and saw a tray of tapes that a large bearded man walked his fingers over. I became instantaneously competetive over the tapes. It turned into a race to see who could be most decisive about wanting certain music in the index, the fastest. I saw his taste in music as he plucked gems from the collection. I struck. Bowie. Talking Heads. Stones. Solid stuff for driving, stuff I knew Violet could make good use of on her drives up to Dallas or wherever to sustain her promising career. Think of me when Bowie gives you the chills and you love it. Victorious, I shelled out for the retro tunes, and settled in to a beer around the corner at what was, to my surprise in New York City, an Irish style pub.

We hashed out logistics for the group to get back to their car effectively, which boiled down to me hailing a cab because I knew the New York secret of how to signal to foreign drivers that us Americans of a different city needed transportation to some set of mysterious coordinates. I wished the family well and sent them off, and would remain in Manhattan to see my pops and his girlfriend, and then meet up with Lindsey, a girl that makes me ponder that there is, in some mysterious form, a universal law of interpersonal magneticism.

When I met Lindsey, the longest relationship I ever maintained had recently been severed after two and a half years. I was a wreck, and my friends urged me to go out and forget about the old and talk up something new. I wore a "uniform" which means a button down collared shirt, and rode downtown on the piece of shit single speed I had picked up earlier that summer, once known as "Hot Streak" but ultimately she had come to be known as "The Time Bomb". I rode with my shirt off so as not to sweat through the black to an even darker, damper, black. I remember talking to a few girls that night and as it always went for me in Boston, no matter how grody or cleaned up, the phone numbers I collected were generally utterly useless. Shane, a pedicabber and friend, tipped me off that a party still plodded on in Allston. I'm in Fanieul Hall, but I have a bike and a day to keep my eyes closed to follow, so I go even though I know I'll ultimately need to return to North Cambridge, a large triangle by Boston area standards. I locked my bike up to some sketchy fence in unfamiliar Lower Allston, and inside I became acquainted with Lindsey. The night played out to a fade, with the exception of a guy, Dave, who I found out had taken an interest in Lindsey for a while, randomly fell onto the table, I suspect to gain attention and sympathy, but his ploy was made of saran wrap; see through, too clingy, and ultimately disposed of, if even used. He lingered as I painstakingly explained to Lindsey why I wore "the uniform" and that I really wasn't a douchebag. She certainly took a hard line, but my story held water and as Dave sat around being annoying, we kissed and started a two week thing that involved a lot of ridiculous Cambridge to Brookline cab rides, and some cute dates. It fit the bill that termination would come with her moving to New York, just as I had suspected termination would come in my time with Meghan when I moved to New York. I visited her when I went to New York, and there existed the straw to grasp at, that just maybe, it was all happening again, that long distance nightmare worth dozing off for. But faded, it went the way of the buffalo, and went out of touch for a while.

Then I think there came a text conversation. If I could ever explain to you how fully and profoundly texting has changed our lives, let me simply serve you my stories as an archetypal example. In texts, we did a little catch up cat and mouse, and finally, on the second of January in 2009, the night before my canceled New Year's Day flight was rescheduled to depart for LA at 7:20 am, we managed to put ourselves in the same place at the same time. I think it really only took a few looks at each other's eyes to remember, and when she looks at me, I feel like there's a joke I'm telling that she gets, but always harbors some playful hostility for. We remembered that we liked the way both looked to each other, and we smiled like dopes until we kissed again. We left the bar together and I got into a cab with her, and the cab took us up to her apartment. Along the way we kissed and I explained about my flight, and how I could only catch one train to get to the airport on time. We arrived, paid the cab driver and she deepened her eyes somehow to request, "Just miss your flight."
"I can't, I'm sorry. I'll come see you as soon as I get back, I promise."

This was right around the time that I started meaning everything I said that isn't a joke. So I changed my return flight from San Francisco to go back to New York instead of Boston. The gesture was too bold. She kind of freaked out about it, and as I hurtled towards NYC on the LIRR, she stopped answering my messages, and I got hung up. Stranded in New York City, until the bus can cart me off. I don't blame her for it, I knew that once the shock of it had subsided, it still impressed as a gesture. The gears of time went round and we spoke again, and now, we meet when I'm around, and go drink together for the sake of a Wednesday, or whatever, and tease the embers of the thing that never turned the corner, and I think that suits us both fine, and we are friends from it all. So that night wrapped up with us sharing an armchair in Fatcat, drinking beer and listening to jazz, playing some table game, and I got that final bus home at 1:40, to turn around and head back to NYC to Beantown the next day, because there were 12 more days to work. And in case you were curious, when I went back to Kenmore to see if the Timebomb was still locked up outside of the Commonwealth Hotel, it had been removed. I hope someone rode it away fromthere, or better yet, a police auction and goes, "Awwww, fuck."

The freedom of a pedicab shift without a Red Sox game is special, there's an unrestricted feeling as you kick your feet up in Copley Square, beat up, hung over, tight, silly, or dour. You have tiiime. Six hours or twelve, you can spend a whole one or two or three out there mocking people. My favorite is when I spot ladies with Victoria's Secret bags and ask them, "Hey, what'd you get at Victoria's Secret?" Usually I get a sneer, often a wry smile, and one time a lady said to me, "Wouldn't YOU like to know?" It's this kind of fun that you can have with people to put yourself in a good mood. Not putting anyone down, per se, but simply giving them a good Boston style hard time. On seeing two girls with matching striped adornments, I quipped, "Is that skirt made of her bag, or is her bag made of your skirt?" Maybe lunch, maybe you suck down a coffee, maybe you make a business call, or pop into the library to drop a deuce, or maybe you are thrown into a work ethic by someone accosting you and plain old asking you if you'll take them to the North End. And you accept and start thinking about those good cheap slices of pizza you can nab if it's before 1:30, and act grateful whether they give you $15 or $40, but it's probably $20. You talk over the Nextel radios and ask how many bikes are at the flower shop, and see if anyone else is making money, or you watch the guy on a scooter windsail through Copley, and try to avoid eye contact with him. Best of all, you're never disappointed if the shift gets called due to rain, you just get your weekend night back.

When you are a pedicabber in Boston, it's perfunctory to be a baller when you are off work. My good friend Linda who I met a few years ago while playing the puppeteer for Audrey II in "Little Shop of Horrors" is a power player, corporate style. When I'm in town, she does like to go out to dinner, and it's turned into a special occasion date for us every now and again, and she asks me, "Where do you want to go?" I run a few places by her and they are all more costly than the best suit I own, and she tells me what she thinks, but mostly we try to come to an agreement on where it should be, and the agreement is that it will be damned good. I think that she makes in one day what it costs to go to Menton or L'Espalier, and my jaw drops every time the check comes, but some of my standard 12 hour Saturdays will also gobble up that dinner debt. Dinner is often a three hour affair, and it is course after course with wines and beers, obscure and fine stuff, some beer that you need a map to discover, followed by a code, a beer Dan Brown would write a novel about, as easy to drink as it would be to read, but in an intelligent way. The least I can do, even knowing her car isn't far off, and having found out that she has plans to attend to after the affair, is have a pedicab waiting outside for us to ride her to her car. I sent specifically for the rookie phenom who pulled some extreme number for the Red Sox home opener since I desired to process what he does that makes him so damned good, something I could clearly do in my post-deliciousness euphoria. He gave me a good enough ride, one that is just weird to think about, from Fort Point Channel through Southie to the pedicab shop in the South End. I gave him $50 including an old school $10 bill that he sold me a few days before for a new $10 bill. I like to collect that stuff.

I took myself back to Boston for this weekend to fit these kinds of things in to the rigorous schedule set in place by the Red Sox. A driver meeting had been planned for on Sunday evening, and we all thought that a local Italian restaurant would cater our event, but a major water pipeline had burst, and Governor Deval Patrick issued a boil order on all water before drinking. Of course, fancy restaurants like Menton were either boiling everything, or using bottled water to cook everything, since I'm sure their profit margins are vastly above their overhead, but not so for Maggiano's. They just couldn't whip up a few trays of chicken and pasta for us in this emergency. The disappointment came with understanding, and a collective helpless shrug, and so we drank for dinner. Pedicab trivia hosted by Carl "Hot Carl" Foss, with a fridge so full of beer, it looked like my old wallet after a doubleheader, you just couldn't believe so much had been collected in one little place! I know for sure Jon Simmons and I played on the same team, and we came up with a pretty great name for our trivia team, "Late Night With Sean Bailey," honoring the surly style with which Mr. Sean Bailey would manage a shift, and that it could only get worse as time progressed into severe drunken disasters of $3 hot-girl rides, broken chains across town, and a mysterious, mutable shop opening time that might be cryptically 20 minutes later than promised. And any good trivia name goes through a metamorphosis of meaning, and playful manipulations of the title are acceptable to the host once you've established your base name. "Early Morning With Rich Mather" was a title that evoked a similarly unpleasant experience for pedicabbers who have encountered the personality in reference, but for those without the knowledge, imagine the attempt to have a conversation with someone that seems to be listening but will not respond and is actually actively ignoring you. It makes you feel like you've violated some basic human law of behavior. It is utterly confusing and altogether unpleasant, especially when regular interaction with this person is necessary, and you come to only expect monosyllabic responses, if anything. And so went our team title for comic emphasis. The question that really won it for us was the big bet we made on knowing the title of the musical "No, No, Nanette" that was financed by the trade of Babe Ruth from the Red Sox to the Yankees. In the middle of the trivia game I suggested a beer run, since we had run out of beer, a feat that only a set of pedicabbers could make easy. A few guys started talking about taking the pedicabs on the beer run. The GM explicitly warned them not to, but they did it anyway. They brought beer back and were then sent home. The next day, those two guys who took the trikes, both veteran managers, were fired. After they were sent home, we recorded our victory. We won Supersoakers, brilliant, neon-colored trophies of our trivia expertise, but the victory felt incomplete with the fate of the jobs of personalities we loved in the balance. I left mine in the shop, and I don't know who has it now. I hope he or she correctly answers the question of, "Should I supersoak that ho?" The answer, of course, being "Supersoak that ho." Relax, it's a rap lyric reference.

We all partied at T.C.'s Lounge after abdicating the shop. People started going after the porn DVD's in the skill crane, and with astounding success. Five separate drivers obtained raunchily titled video discs, a few of which I recall being, "Young Girls Luv Cum," and another called "Black Virgins". Simple and eloquent, we know what we'll get in these films, and it's not skilled editing, or special effects, and it's likely not virgins either. My trivia compadre, Jon scored the latter of the two masterpieces of American cinema, and subsequently a group of six or so pedicab drivers all feeding dollar bills into the machine, elevated Jon, and carried him about a half mile down to the Charles as he drunkenly screamed obscenities about his sexy, and racially charged victory, his second and more glorious trophy of the evening, realizing a little too late that he was going to be put in the Charles River, yet submitting and allowing it to happen like a champ.

There were a significant amount of hangovers when the second ten game Red Sox homestand began the next day. Somebody who missed the prior evenings proceedings asked Jeremy how trivia went, and his immediate answer started with, "Welp, two guys got fired..." Fortunately for the bereaved of lost drunkeness, it was hot enough to sweat it out after half a dozen rides, and I had until about 3:30 to make the knuckle dragging entrance to the shop, so I had already almost completed the recovery checklist. I cannot procure any useful information about this day, except to say that I worked, made money, I probably made someone laugh. The days washed over like the late night, salty showers after the shift, where you lean on the wall and just hope you don't knock the beer over when you reach for it, because you are fried. I stayed two nights out in Brighton, where I used to live. It might have been more, since hanging out with Jeremy is always enjoyable, but returning to Bennett St has its drawbacks. The aforementioned Rich lives there, and he's as bad with dogs as he is with humans, and you could tell that if Rich could talk to others like most normal people can release words and ideas, he'd be a real dick, just like his dog. He thinks anyone that doesn't like his dick of a dog is a dick because they don't like dogs in general. What a dick. And his major qualm with me is all the mail that still goes to that address for me. I'm not saying it's a clean thing, really, but having my mail still sent there so that my insurance company believes I'm still a Massachusetts resident is important to me, but Rich make obnoxious rusty nail complaints about how I really need to get my mail forwarded. It's not like I'm a Scientologist and I told them I'd host meetings at the house, and moved away, and they come trying to convert the remaining humans, and kids in guy Faukes masks hang out outside the house, although once Jeremy moves out, this might be a good practical joke. I left my bag in the front hallway, it wasn't hurting anybody, but Rich says things like, "What does Dan think this is, his hotel?" No Rich, I think I have a friend that resides in this house and he said I could rest my bones there for a night or two, on the leather couch I went and acquired that you still use. Didn't you get the text message about it being OK if I crashed for a night? You did, but you didn't respond? Please eat some mild poison. I still have stuff there, I'm trying to ditch it through craigslist remotely. With any luck, that will go smoothly, and I'll eliminate Rich from my life entirely. He seemed harmless at first, hurt that we almost got an apartment without him, and we all felt a little sorry, but then he turned pissy and passive aggresive. Sometimes Facebook tells me I should reconnect with him. When I hit 1000 friends, I'll defriend him. I'm actively convincing strangers to add me on Facebook so I can celebrate that day sooner. 935 and counting... The best parts about staying there was that I discovered I had left a towel in the bathroom, and so could shower and be dry, and obtained the set of jumper cables I was lent by a stranger in too much of a hurry to give me a second jump in a row. The details of this come later. My exit came with a particular glory of not just going, but bending the MBTA to my whims, and traveling from Brighton Center to Davis Square in 21 minutes. I felt like I was surfing the big one, except I had paid $1.70, and read the Metro along the way. Alas, it had little to compare to surfing, my bad, but I keep track of these things, and make silly comparisons.

I just played patient for the all day bender, that annual beast of a day where Kyle Crand and I go to a Red Sox game and ostentatiously display that we are having a special event. Jeremy planned to join us this year, and for all the threats I've made to the general manager of walking into the Capital Grille to have dinner, this time I meant business, and business equals steak. The GM and I established a relationship a few years ago where he gives me a ring from his phone when he has a pick up from his restaurant. He'd call me before calling the company. Typically it went like this.

"Hello," I'd answer in the middle of my ride, ignoring my fare.
"Dan man."
"Hey!"
"Hey, it's Chris at the Capital Grille," he'd state with a gentleman's subtle pride in who he is.
"Hey Chris," I knew who it was when I said hello. Hell, I have him programmed in, and he knew it too.
"I need two bikes in about ten minutes," he flatly stated, knowing I'd be there, there was never unavailability.
"I'll make it happen," I might have panted. "See you soon," turning to my passengers, "So where can I put you guys?"
He called me a few times while I dicked around in Texas, looking for bikes at the Grille. I had to call the company for him and arrange the bikes to go, wistful of working the Red Sox game.

So that Thursday we had a reservation for three at 5:30, and we went in looking good, but casual, except me, I wore my Red Sox shirt, and that gnarly beard that got me called homeless, and we ordered and prepared to dish out the big paper. I had my old money in my pocket, and you know what that means, and no, I wasn't broke. We ate more than our stomachs could really handle. Adam, our server brought us some recommended selections of wine to go with our steaks, and Jeremy even tried some, or I imagined him to, but I think he did. I think we ordered too much, and afterwards I understood when people would waddle out of the door that the valet opened for them, and decline a ride, burping out, "I need to walk," and nodding as if I knew what they meant. But we planned on the ride no matter what, we had to be bigshots. We usually request our driver by bike number. We try to pick out the bike that sucks the worst to ride, and our tip makes their tardiness to work and bad fortune a sudden positive. This time, we just thought Nate Gomes deserved a gift, and he arrived, and for a ride to Jerry Remy's that any pedicabber would probably get $10 from, be happy to see $15, but would most likely earn $20, we dropped $64 on the guy. Playin' like pimps, were we. Kyle threw the extra $4 just for emphasis and to make the tip amount quirky, I suspect.

There we met Jack, my host at the time, friend I met through Mike Marshall a few summers ago, and he worked the deal out for our tickets, cheap enough that we need not deal with those glorious citizens, the Fenway scalpers. We took a beer down at Jerry Remy's as the Sox started getting pummeled right away-Daisuke getting into early trouble, to settle down later, as per usual. After the bottom of the 1st, we felt the urge to actually enter the staidum. I don't entertain much in the way of religious feelings, but for me, entering Fenway Park is as close as it gets, apart from those spontaneous moments of feeling like I'm experiencing too much coincidence, or luck, or beauty. I figure only Red Sox fans will understand, or perhaps sports fanatics, and as sports fanatics go, I'm tame, not fanatical, yet fervent. It is the way religion, if there were one that is true, ought to feel: Excitement to arrive, observation is crucial, the sensation of belonging to a large crowd in one space, one world and universe, the ability for a single person to influence nearly 40,000 others with a slow start to a commonly executed chant of "Let's Go Red Sox," five particularly syncopated claps following, and the crowd allowing itself to be influenced for everyone's enjoyment and in the name of supporting what we believe in, a few guys down there playing a game so we will be entertained. And that crowd is overheard on TV, the jolt to the chant unbeknownst to potentially millions of viewers, and yet the chant so familiar, the nails still being bitten, the hope that God will reward the faithful never muted until all hope is lost. What church do you join to get that? I guess if they lose, it could be any church you feel like picking, since in my opinion, you just don't win with organized religion, only in sports. This, or I am the delusional one, or it is one and the same, any number can play. Any way you look at it you lose if you don't do for yourself. I won that day. We surreptitiously improved our seats, the Red Sox came back to win, and we scored John Nolan in a Mainstreet to return.

The bender headed to 80's night, and we were denied access in a blaze of argument. How else should it go? The best part of it was after that we went to a different bar, then Kyle left, and I thought that since I knew the name of the bouncer who refused our entry, I could go back to try again. It was an action that wore the mark of the all day bender. I'm pretty sure I ended up at the Model for "the unnecessary drink" where there's really no reason to have that last one at all.

The next day I arrived egregiously late for my day shift before my night shift, but if you're paying, you're paying, and if you're not working, you're still paying. I must admit, the details are scant about this weekend except for some numbers. I lost my phone in Vancouver, and with it, lost were many notes I made on actions I took and beers I drank. You'd be surprised how much one small record of where I had a PBR can conjure to a human mind, the location written, the people, the jokes, the time of it all available from that reminder. What a shame. All I have to use as reminders are the updates I made to my Facebook status, and in this all I find are statements like, "Dan Kerrigan: The Science of Punching Testicles." How useful. I guess back in May I didn't realize there were more important things than punching testicles, and the scientific explanations for such behavior. And truly, I had this conversation about the best direction in which to punch at the testes, and explained that it should be downward to the left OR right, as to trap the balls in their own sack, against the greater, more solid mass of the human body, perhaps hitting them so that the penis, if slightly to one side, might even be avoided entirely by the force of the knuckles, not that your penis would really care. I mean, its all very elementary.

You can't go to Boston for a month in the spring and expect to get out of it without getting the classic $5 ride, or feeling just 35 degrees Fahrenheit on your face at some point. The annoyance of it reminded me I'd left and swam in warm water on Easter, and returned to Boston for business way more than pleasure. The entirety of the second ten game set did not surpass the profitability of the first, but the feat of sustaining functionality throughout all of the games I obtained through scheduling was still no small feat. I am curious, if it existed, how close 22 shifts out of 27 days would come on a scale of difficulty where the top would be represented by respectably completing the Tour de France. I know the least of my shifts stretches about 25 miles traveled on a pedicab that is up to twenty times as heavy as your typical "tour" bike, before you stack some fatties on the back to tow around. How long are those stages? I might have some French people to sweat on soon. I used to placate my father with cycling in lieu of running as a child in need of exercise, and I'd mention the Tour as a far off goal, but the work ethic involved in attaining that kind of physical ability eluded me as a chunky, reluctant-to-exercise 11 year old SNES addict. Until my pedicabbing days, the closest I ever really came was beating Uniracers.

Time slips out from under your hands when you start paying attention, like a housefly you try to smash against a table. The moment you try to stop it, it goes just a little faster. I believe that's why dumb horses just let them fly around while they chew hay, but I don't eat hay, nor does my ass stink as badly as a horses, or so I've been told by passengers in my pedicab, or so I've told them, and they've politely agreed, regardless of the truth. The homestand drew to a close and I tried to grasp at those last chances to see my Boston friends and leave everything "perfectly". And as fantastic a last night as I had with Phil, Melissa, and Phil's sister Leah, perfect is really never an option unless you have no expectations, and this personal truth always makes me feel like I've missed someone and will inevitably have to apologize to someone. This time it fell on my very last Boston host, a guy who for all our differences and arguments has been a truly solid friend, one of the poor guys who got fired from the "Trivia Incident." Without getting a chance to say goodbye, I took the borrowed jumpers and made the meeting of myself and "Anne With The Jumpers" happen. She worked down in the financial district, so I rode Keith's bike on its last errand, and hand delivered the cables to her as she popped out of work for a moment. She asked me about Longshot and I remember being touched that she remembered the name. I took off for Game On! with a new Facebook friend and a last name to fill in for "With The Jumpers".

After fulfilling the tradition of eating a massive plate of nachos with Jeremy, I got a few beers I thought Keith would enjoy, a small thank you for the lend of his mountain horse for the month, and placed the bike with the "gift bag" in the shop bike rack. Of course, I had also purchased myself a little present since I had put a few mediocre beers in the pipes during the nacho session. I sat there in the shop joking around with Melissa, Boston Pedicab's under-appreciated adhesive, the month just processing out, relieved, and a tiny buzz on to enjoy the work well done, and the friends I'd miss. Then suddenly I realized I might be testing the punctuality of my chosen airline. I left pleasantly before I began my freak out. I walked down Tremont Street, my eyes darting wildly to find a taxi, now checking my phone compulsively and fretting for every lost minute. I had to return to my host's house and grab my belongings before going to the airport. I got all the way to Mass Ave before getting a guy to turn around for me, and he waited while I ran for the apartment, my stuff, and my flight. I got to the airport, and slid right in through the typically choked and lagging security lines of Logan International, this time not letting my Sigg water bottle fall victim to a small amount of liquid still living inside. A nap to Chicago later, I sat down for my layover at the bar to watch the Celtics take on the Cavs, talking to someone from Texas, still holding enough Boston inside to yell at a television.

The odds and ends between drinks and friends and bike rides and trike rides fell to keeping lines with Violet and Miranda. I guess for all of my absence, and for how short a stint we three have had in any one capacity up until this time mentioned, maintenance of long distance relationships is undeniably difficult, not that any long distance item in the history could possibly be summarized as easy. And to illustrate, simply read the phrase, "Oh yeah, dating that girl in Seattle while I went to school in New York was easy." Sounds foolish, right? Maybe less foolish if you suddenly make those kids rich, but please give me the license to feel singularly correct about how hard long distance can be, at least for me, as much as I've tried. Even a one week vacation from your best girl can give you the taste of what it could be. The abyss of togetherness stung more softly since my return was imminent but the stress of distance made me evaluate things in a starker light. I thought of the distance and the energy I had committed to both of these girls, and I considered the actions I took, and carefully deliberated the two different personalities that I bonded with. I talked so much with Miranda over that month, and only occasionally with Violet. Nothing about all the traded words got very deep, except the connections. I sent Violet those tapes, and a post card with a map of Boston. It was raw and cute, and didn't mention missing her, but was made of the fun we have of the childish way we interact with each other. I hoped she'd be reminded I'm awesome, because I feared losing that special thing with her. In the next moment I could trust in Miranda to talk about anything, tell her any secrets or trivialities. Miranda would mention to me once in a while that we were very different people and I knew, but we both knew that just liking each other and being open and understanding was strong enough to keep something. And retrospectively, I do see the hints that Violet dropped about the nature of our relationship, and chose to focus on the laughing, the fun, the creativity and encouragement we had for each other. To me, the things we built in conversation, in ideas, in pointless improvisations were so great that I guess I missed her hesitance to bring it along further. I started to get uncomfortable with the idea of going back and forth from one to another, and I decided, in specifically important and fundamental ways, that Violet and I were more compatible long term. It was all this self-instigated thought that led me to do what I thought would be the right thing for me, and for Miranda, and I hoped, for Violet. Sometime late at night during my stay at home, I tried to let Miranda down easy, and told her how I felt. I explained in gentle terms, and she got it, and I cried. I told her how hard it was, and how much I wanted our friendship to continue, and we kept talking nearly every day. We broke the would-be boundaries of the new terms just a few days later in how familiar we were through texts and talks, she told me how much it sucks that she actually likes me, and the pet names of "feo" and "fea" never really disappeared. I asked Violet to pick me up at the airport, a request that seemed to ask forgiveness for putting Miranda on the task last time, and Violet agreed to come. She didn't yet know that I laid a line down for Miranda, and I didn't know when I was going to tell her. Of course, for a twist of fate, something came up and Violet couldn't pick me up anymore, and Miranda was willing and free to come get me. When I walked out of the terminal to where she waited, I saw her standing there almost laughing just to see my face again, her smile giving away too much, and I knew she didn't know what to expect. Man, I was so happy to be back in Texas, I went right up to her and kissed her. The kiss slowed, and I knew I had missed her pretty bad. Was I really going to leave in a month?

Statistics:
1,955 mi from my apartment in Austin, TX to The Boston Pedicab shop, roughly.
19 Red Sox Games worked out of 20
22 shifts worked out of 27 days.
$190+ spent on the All Day Bender (A relative steal considering we went to Capital Grille)
$150 tip left at Capital Grill-Quoth our server Adam, "Guys, this is over the top."
$0 + tip for three meals at Capital Grille with sides and whatever.
13 drinks, I believe, on the All Day Bender
Red Sox 11-Angels 6 on Thursday, May 6th
7 cassette tapes sent to Violet
14 times Lugo called me a homeless man because of my beard (or thereabouts)
$5500 approximately to show for the homestand, returning to Texas.

No drink list until about Day 180 due to the theft of my phone after having been assaulted in Vancouver. Yup.