pass

after many bouts of very good luck waiting for rides at LAX, i came up with a saying
good things happen at the airport.
i had just dropped off a very curt man with something mysterious in a half opened box in culver city and decided to head over to nearby LAX to see what was what.
if you drop off someone at LAX, they’ll put you in the Priority line to pick up people there. the wait is usually less than 10 minutes.
but if you just cruise over, like i did, you be placed in the back of the line, which at that time was 265 cars.
fret not, a few things can happen.
any time someone at the front of the line refuses a ping (you get to refuse 3 before getting booted to the back of the line), their rejected offer could get flashed to you and several others.
first person who says yes gets it. but warning, there’s usually a reason the person originally said no.
im easy. as long as the trip doesnt send me south to the beach communities or OC, i’ll take it. fuck it. no ones getting rich at the airport any more.
after a few minutes of getting zero offers, i headed east to inglewood. but before i could even make it to the 405 i got an offer from one of the hotels to get someone there and take them to pasadena for $40.
lets just say i have been known to take $20 trips to dtla from lax – which is subpar – and i should be ashamed of myself for whoring myself out for that low, but they dont call it a grind for nothing.
so this offer is double that to just get to dtla and scoot up the curvy 110 to pass? done.
she seemed armenian. was! she was flying out tomorrow to crash with her parents in oregon who had retired up there.
but when she got to the lax hotel she had forgotten something and needed to get back to pass to get it. then since she was out there, planned on having dinner with a friend.
what do you do up there? i asked.
im a student. was a student. just graduated. unemployed now.
what’d you major in?
finance.
oh you’ll be fine.
i dont know.
oh please, i said, what do you wanna do with your degree?
i really don’t know. anything, she said. i’ll work for whoever will hire me.
ok but when you were studying all those years you didnt have a dream, a goal, a vision in your head of cooking the books for a small amalgam of liquor stores? or working in a skyscraper? or pretending to use an abacus when people passed by your cubby?
she laughed and admitted she had never planned ahead to what to do once she got her diploma.
ive been playing a lot of classic rock lately. the sirius station Lithium never seems to be the right vibe in the car. and they play too much dave matthews and Live. so ive been toggling between the three classic rock stations. i figure if the kids dont know these essentials, imma teach em.
the doors’ Peace Frog was the groove at the moment. i tapped my gloved hand on the steering wheel as we crept along the 110 near staples
ever do shrooms
she laughed, no!
where you from?
torrance
so youre a native angelena and youve never shroomed?
ive led a sheltered life she sang and i coulda sworn twirled her hair
youre in luck. youre going to one of the only states that have legalized magic mushrooms, and you have the perfect question to ask them, wtf should i do next?
my parents would kill me. they’re very strict.
ray manzareks organ swirled in the background and my mind tried to weigh her options: prob shouldnt shroom around parents, or alone, or in the beautiful woods of oregon next to that cold umpqua river
exactly how strict are they? i asked.
im 23 and they just started being ok with me drinking wine at the table.
have you never smoked weed?
oh god no.
then thats what you do. go buy a joint, when your parents go to sleep, walk around the neighborhood, puff puff puff. come home, wash your clothes if you want, wash your hair. actually showers are really nice sometimes. do they have a hot tub?
yes.
omg jump in that bad boy, soak, get out, dry off. put on pajamas and open your computer and go into gmail
Gmail?
yes, it autosaves really well. and type: what do i want to do. and then under that just type as fast as you can. i wanna dance i wanna sing i wanna twirl a baton i wanna fly to the moon. just all the things. for a few minutes type the most ridiculous things. youre just releasing the energy.
ahhh
and then type but what i really, truly, omg secretly want to do is
$15.20 tip