Soccer Dad and the People in Your Neighborhood: True Tales of an SLC Cabbie

Episode #7: Free Jaegermeister
By The Incredulous Gadianton
vicdic66@hotmail.com

The Outdoor Retailer Convention is the biggest convention to come to Salt Lake City annually, and the cabbies speak of it with a reverence, probably not unlike that of rural bumpkins speaking of the circus. I mean, the money is truly ungodly, and the first official night of the convention (Thursday), I took home roughly three hundred dollars cash money. Not only that, but the patrons were generally drunk, friendly and just happy to be here; good vibes all around as twenty to thirty thousand (estimates vary) people all networked and tried to get into the very exclusive, very private Black Eyed Peas show upstairs at Port O’ Call, among other events. Yep, I was actually looking forward to going to work on Friday night.

I got to headquarters around three in the afternoon and quickly learned that the car that I had signed up for, #46, had broken down during the day shift. Bad, bad news considering that all available cabs had been spoken for on the sign-up sheet. I was going to have to wait, perhaps hours, to see if I could get into something via cancellation. I slouched into a shoddy chair in the lobby and began reading a book I had checked out earlier in the day, Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman (he’s that guy who wrote Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs and I was the first one to get his new book at the library). I am a patient boy, I’ll wait, I’ll wait, I’ll wait, I’ll wait… As I read about Chuck’s journey across America to visit the various sites where various rock stars had met their untimely demises, I could feel my feet getting rather itchy. Yeah, fuck waiting. I got up and bolted, but I figured that I had better go out and have three hundred dollars worth of fun if I was going to have any fun at all.

I made it to my friend Raemie’s house, and we had some uum, beer. Yeah, beer, that’s it. With cotton in our mouths, we decided to go to the liquor store- Jack Daniel’s and a sensibly priced bottle of cabernet sauvignon. After a few shots of whiskey and a couple of episodes of Sex in the City (Season Three), we called a cab and went to The Urban Lounge. It was Localized, and SLUG had a two-hundred-dollar tab. Free Jaegermeister!!!! I sat in the corner with Raemie and Rob and I was totally swimming. The first band, AODL, was merely a boy with an amp and lots of noise. It was excruciating. Plus I’ve been listening to a buttload of Godspeed, You Black Emperor and their various side projects lately, so perhaps I just wasn’t in the mood. The three of us decided to go to Burt’s to see The Red Bennies and Starmy instead.

I should mention that we walked there. I should also mention that I did a brief calculation of how much fun I was having, and I decided that I needed to step it up. I mean, I was drunk and all, but nothing crazy had happened yet. I debated various acts of vandalism along the way, but couldn’t pull the trigger. What a pussy.

The Red Bennies were toward the end of their set when we stumbled into Burt’s. I hadn’t seen them in nearly six months, which is the longest I’ve gone without seeing them since 1994. They sounded magnificent, of course. As I swayed like an old tree on the side of the stage and rocked out slightly, my old friend, Joel, came up and said hi. He took me to the bar and bought me a shot and informed me that his band, Broke, had just been signed to Maverick Records and that he was celebrating. I was genuinely happy for him. Joel is cool. And after that shot he bought me, and over the course of our conversation, I started to really fade out and I could feel myself turning into that guy. Starmy started to play, and they sounded awesome, but I had to get out. I was going to spew.

I didn’t find Rob, but Raemie and I decided to walk to Denny’s. I don’t remember the walk there, but I do remember sitting at our table and trying to keep the spins at bay. I ordered my buffalo chicken strips and put my chin to the table. I think Raemie might have been making fun of me. She’s good at that and I actually like it when she does. Right when the food showed up, I reached my end.

“Dude, I’m going to go take a nap out back. Here’s a twenty. Find me when you’re done.”

Ok, Raemie said, thinking I was crazy.

I bobbed and weaved out the door and found a nice patch of dirt next to some bushes behind a fence. It looked nice enough. I decided to just lie down for a second.

“Hey, you can’t sleep here,” the voice said as it yanked me out of dreamland.

The flashlight in my face was disconcerting enough, but then the realization that a security guard was waking me up behind Denny’s was truly a rude fucking awakening. I stood up, apologized, and began walking. I checked my phone three in the morning: eight missed calls. Jesus; a two-hour nap behind Denny’s, what a dork. As I walked home, I felt waves of abstract happiness radiating me. I could’ve been mugged, beaten, raped, arrested and/or killed. And none of it happened because of luck. Or maybe the universe still thinks I’m cool. Whatever the reason, it felt good to know that I can still pull off irresponsible shenanigans and get off scott fucking free. Life was good. I called my voicemail and scoffed at the oncoming hangover. And the city was quiet, quiet, quiet.