it was 10pm. it’s the end of December. do you know where your dreams are? 9,000 people were scheduled to arrive at the airport either coming back from Christmas with family, or jetting to LA for New Years Eve.

lyft was offering a bonus bribe of $10 on any trip out of LAX, bc its a shitshow and surely they added that to the fare.

the rideshare waiting lot is usually filled with 100 cars of chainsmoking men who dont really wanna drive but for sure dont wanna be home with their families. so they sit there for an hour for a $20 ride to hollywood which will take them another hour. so sit there an make $10 an hour gross?

gross indeed.

upstairs in the horseshoe it was bumper to bumper because lots of people’s friends came to pick them up like good friends do. but do us all a favor. just pay for your friends’ uber. youre making things worse.

so i had this plan to drive just barely outside of area that would get me into the uber waiting lot queue. over by the rental car places. this way i could get all the pings that weren’t coming solely from the airport, and maybe someone dropping off a car.

it’s hard to explain but these little scraps of trips can turn out very profitable around the airport bc, well, the airport is where you get fucked. the hotels the rental cars the terminals itself. everyone is trying to suck as much out of you because you had the nerve to use an airplane to gtfo. cabs busses uber and lyft are no different and there was a time airport rides were The ride to get with rideshare but the companies made damn sure to end that gravy train real quick, maybe in hopes people wouldnt camp out in the waiting lots and drive around.

but control is an illusion. these drivers fucked up and got married too young or to the wrong woman or they hate their kids or they hate driving in LA so now they sit in that lot as pollutants rain down on them and time drains through the hourglass.

i sat in the benz for about twenty minutes on a dirty side road littered with potholes next to a couple of guys putting together their homeless tent and bedding for the night while it drizzled. i declined one bad offer after another. $5 to go to inglewood, $7 to go to hawthorne, $15 to go to dtla. love you too uber you so and so.

because it was so slow ,i only wanted long trips for big money, which is the only thing that woulda gotten the angry dads out of the lot too, so it was a stalemate of sorts.

which is why when alice’s ping came through for $45 to go to ontario i said hell yeah and nearly knocked over my super big gulp.

is ontario far? yes. but at that hour the eta was just over an hour. for reference, sometimes it takes me an hour to get from LAX to hollywood for $25, so… hell yes.

alice was peppy, sweet, borderline adorable and so full of life. she flew down here from frisco to go to a rave with some of her friends who would meet her at their airbnb

why was she at the dennys? uber wanted to charge her $400 when she opened her app up in the airport. so she figured she’d walk out of the airport and past all the hotels to the dennys.

as denzel washington said in training day: my n word

she was talkative and vulnerable and we were getting deep even before i made it over the 405 via the century freeway east

i asked sheepishly, so when you say you’re going to a rave, alice, are you one of those straight edge girls who are just there for the music and the plur or are you down to lose your mind on party drugs and dress up skimpy?

she giggled and admitted she is not at all straight edge.

“gosh do i look that innocent?” she said turning the light on her iphone and checking herself out in my backseat window.

before we got to the 110 we had already agreed on several things. the top was she should definitely move to australia to get away from all the dramas happening in her life, namely her demanding family. weird friend group. and lack of a mans.

if i was a million years younger i woulda humorously cleared my throat, but come on america, alice was sneaky hot.

then she told me about this rare condition she has and i was all i wish we were driving to ontario canada because it became so interesting as she told me about

aphantasia

she admitted with zero energy that she has no inner monologue and she cannot visualize anything.

“so if i say, ‘think of an apple,’ you can picture one, but i can’t. i know it’s green or red, but i can’t see it. stupid, right?”

alice, this is precisely why i drive a car in the middle of the night to the middle of nowhere in the LA winter rain. do not stop telling me everything.

she said, i also can’t solve problems in my head. so if i am at work, and someone asks me something hard, i will say, let me think about that, and i will put my head down but nothing happens. i shut down. im not thinking. im not feeling. im nothing. like a computer that has been unplugged. or a playstation on pause.

i said, alice, how can i phrase this, first of all, you’re incredible. i’m bursting with questions. my head throws raves normally, but now you have poured a bucket of lsd on it.

so my question is, have you ever had a boyfriend?

yes.

so when you kissed him, what would go through your mind?

nothing.

do you dream?

yes but i cant see anything.

so you’ve never had a nightmare?

i’ve had nightmares.

you’re amazing i told her.

i am happy you think that. so many people don’t take me seriously and i haven’t been able to find a therapist who can help me with issues that are unique to this condition, because only 6% of people have this.

way too quickly we got to the oddest airbnb because it was in a little suburban neighborhood with no trees because it was all new, row after row of the same looking tall narrow homes

i gave her my card and said,

take me with you to australia when you go. i’ll bring snacks.

—
$11 tip