Vaseline. Alley. Riding. Carrots.

Not too sure what a typical Valentine’s Day consists of… Bed. Breakfast. Chocolates. Flowers. Wining. Dining. Whining. Drunk. Lingerie. Hip hip hooray? Not too sure. Mine was similar enough to that. Ish. Kind of. Not at all. More like a typical Sunday. Back in the pre-cave days. Hand bags. Man bags. Russian. Riding. Chinese. Haggling. Dancing. Carrots. Juice. Mexican. Flowers. Bouncing. Drag. Puff. Vaseline. And. An. Alley. Typical enough.

Yesh Mesh Screws Yuuu!

Started off in San Fran. Shuttle cab to the airport. Driver. Russian. Fighter. Three fights en route. First. Concierge. Driver was robbing customers off the next driver. Staying over his allotted time outside the hotel. Arguing. Dismissive. Annoyed concierge. Driver being an idiot. Con pushes the driver. Slips. Trips. Stumbles against his own shuttle. Tries to go push the concierge back. Slips. Trips. Stumbles over the curb. Starts spitting out incoherent Russian/English/taxi language? 0 – 1.

Fight two. Driver #1 sees a guy running up the street with a suitcase. Tells him to jump in. Driver #2. Next driver in queue. Not happy. Had enough. Runs over. Shove. Push. Shove. Push. Grapple. Face pushing. Pushing. Faces. Upwards. Two middle aged Eastern European men. Each still holding a coffee in one hand. Spilling them all over themselves. Eventually shuttle driver #2 gives a little slap. Stunned the driver #1. Dude with the suitcase starts getting back out of the cab. In a rush. Driver #1 has two options. Lose another fight. Or lose a fare. Fight over. Finally drives on. 0-2.

En route, driver chats starts spitting out Russian. On the phone. Other couple in the cab are not happy that he’s on the phone. While driving. Stops. Starts texting instead. Dude with the suitcase starts freaking. Driver tells them to calm down. I’m too tired to speak. I can see the ridiculousness going on. Just can’t handle being both up so early and expected to engage. Driver sends another sneaky text. Dude with the suitcase starts freaking out big time. Get to the airport. All jump out. Suitcase dude and driver get into a heated argument. Hand bags. Man bags. I grab my bags. Corner of my eye. I see the dude punch the driver in the head. Side blow. Everyone freaking. Police come over. Take the cab driver away. 0 – 3.

Ride On

Get on my flight. Sleep. Wake up. LAX. Greeted with open arms by a big warm glowing sun. Good work L.A. Cab. Flagged. Directions. Clueless. Can’t speak English. Or else can’t understand my version. Hotel top of the street. Knows there. I’ll show you from there. Heat. Driving. Dozing. Asleep. Wake up. Cab man tries to charge me double the usual price. Double? How is it double? His English still not so good. Not paying double. Realises I’m not just a tourist who just got in. Not someone who wouldn’t know the price. His English is now full-on. Along with his normal American accent. No hope I’m paying that price. No. Yes. No. I don’t care if it’s Chinese New Year. How does that matter? Should we be pushing faces? Half is enough. And you recommend me tipping you another $10-$15? That’s nice. Thanks for the recommendation. Let me mull that over.

Bag Of Carats

Ridden all morning. Dancing all day. Porsche DJig down in Newport. Afterwards a girl comes up chatting. Asks what I’m getting her for Valentine’s Day. She would really like diamonds. Unfortunately. I half heartedly tell her. In Ireland. We don’t give diamonds as presents. We got mixed up years ago. And thought carrots were the presents. So a bag of carrots. Or ten carrots. Is a great gift to get on Valentine’s Day. If only I had carrots, it would make my day. I confuse her enough with gibberish that she leaves. Thirty minutes later. Returns. With a bag of carrots. Did not expect that. A mighty present in fairness. Although, if I had known I would’ve pushed the boat out a bit more. All about the 20 carrots.

Driving home. Happy as Larry. Back in L-Hey. Gig went well. Eating a bag of carrots. Happy days. Until I realised. I’ve no clue where I am. Figured my way down to Newport easily enough in the daytime hours. Dark time was a different story. Although maybe I’m ok. I’ll just take this exit. Keep driving. Turn around. Drive a few blocks. Turn back. Drive twenty more over. Up. Down. Over. Back again. Yup. That should do it. Now I’m well and truly lost. Good work by me. And according to these signs, I’m south and central. As in, South Central? Lost in the hood? Ahh, very good.

No Country For An Irish Man

Thought it was fine. Until I realised people next to me in traffic weren’t merely glancing left and right into cars next to them at traffic. Eye-balling. Staring. Then again they might’ve been jealous of the carrots I was munching on. Reindeer like. Lost got tedious. So pulled into a dodgy looking petrol station. The fifth dodgy one in a row. Had to be one of them. Big stand of flowers and balloons being sold by Mexican ladies. Asked them for directions. No English. Unless I wanted to buy something? Perfect English then. No thanks. Back to no English. Only other option was the gang of dudes chilling on the wall. Tried inside at the shop but no one showed up after a 6 minute wait. Back outside to the dudes. Some late 20′s. 30′s. One was well into his 40′s. All hanging around on a wall. On a Sunday night. At about 9 o’clock. Drinking orange juice. 

All got a bit hood movie like. Suddenly they all hopped off the wall. Started heading in my direction. Oh Jesus. Did I offend one of the Mexican ladies? Oh Jésus. Thankfully. They strode past me. Towards the car that came bouncing into the petrol station. Hydraulics. Bouncing. Hopping. Doing the robot. I’d like to say for effect that Snoop was blaring out of the car. Unfortunately, only a radio station. Blaring out ads. Some warehouse clearance. Cool. Suited the robot look. Dude in his 40′s stopped as he walked by. Asked me was I ok. Not in a ‘Hey essa, are you ok? You know where you are?!’ More of a ‘Hi. Are you ok? Can I be of assistance?‘ way. Kind of. Just with a gang twang. And yes, indeed you can. I’m lost.

Well. I know where I am. Know where I want to be. Trying to figure out how to get there. Had a little life moment with my new buddy. The tired gibberish kicked in. He hooked me up. Gave me directions. So I gave him a carrot. And then he gave me a look as if he knew there was more than this just being a carrot… ‘Ehh, just a carrot, (wink) I know you Irish, not just a carrot. (Wink nudge wink)’ Obviously. I did not tell him it was just a carrot. He offered me some juice. I declined. Not just juice, ehh, I know you gangstas, nudge nudge. Didn’t appreciate my nudges as much as I thought. Nor my winks. I do have a laced wink though. Maybe I just blinked hard at him. Either way. I left. And finally got home.

What Happens Down An Alley...

Really should have slept. Tired. Delirious. Hindsight. Instead got hunger pangs. Went to buy food. Met my friend. And she must also have been delirious. As I’m not sure how exactly. But somehow. We ended up. Figuring out a place very nearby. Which goes by the name Vaseline Alley. If this blogaruu wasn’t so long and gibberish full already. Or if I didn’t just have to re-write it all after my computer just crashed. I would go on. However. Might be better for the book. Must cut this loose. Vaseline Alley. Screams a thousand dodgy thoughts. Then again. So does Puff the Magic Drag Queen. Dodge. Off.

On the upside, it at least supplied me with another book title possibility… How I Ended Up In Vaseline Alley. A work in progress. All in all. Just your typical Vaseline’s day. Gibber off. Song on.

Excuses – The Morning Benders

Tags: DJ, Dodgy, Excuses, Fighting, Flying, Gibberish, Juice, L.A, Riding, San Francisco, South Central, Taxis, The Morning Benders, Valentine's Day, West Hollywood