Close Cousin - 1998

On my maternal side, I have no first cousins. I have cousins, second cousins, first cousins once removed, second cousins twice removes, and cousins who aren't cousins, but just friends of the family.

On my paternal side, I have many first cousins. So many that some of them I confuse for uncles.

I would speak about many of them, but since this is an Ub3rmem I will direct attention to only one.

In the spirit of anonymity, let's call him Aldo. We are one year apart, with my birth coming a bit over 365 days before his. As kids, we would play Sega Genesis for hours, trying to beat the last level so bad our thumbs would get blisters. I remember getting the Game Genie with him and looking through the code book trying to find the code to skip all the levels and reach the final stage of Thunder Force III. We would flip through these pages back and forth, fighting over who could find it first. We would then slam the Game Genie into the Sega, blow the dust out of the bottom of the game cartridge, slam that bad boy onto the Game Genie, and let the code load. The thought of being able to skip about 4 hours of heavy game play was mind blowing. To be able to skip forward and reach the last stage by putting in a secret code was something our 10 year old brains couldn't grasp. We just said f-ck it let's do it.

Back and forth, we would try again and again trying to beat the last level. Always in constant competition telling each other what we were doing wrong and saying how stupid the other person was and calling each other profane words. Eventually we would hear the familiar honk of the neighborhood corn on the cob on a stick salesman. We would hit Pause on the game, rush down the 18 steps, jump over some railings, and make it onto the sidewalk. We would each get a full corn on the cob, drenched in synthetic butter, grated Mexican dry cheese, cayenne pepper, on a bed of heavy mayonnaise. We would ignore each other and we delved into the warm clusters of corn, then we would lick out lips because the pepper never reached anything but our lips and it would burn and turn out mouths red. We'd litter the street with the empty cob and run back up, this time with less energy as the cholesterol was clogging us up.

We'd said f-ck it and see what the other kids in the neighborhood were up to.

That was almost 20 years ago. Since then, Aldo and I have grown apart. He has two sons, a baby mama who hates him, and he moved back into living in the same building in MacArthur Park that we spent years fighting over. His job has taken a bit of a plunge, after the company downsized and his position was one of the ones deemed expendable.

He called me a few days ago asking me if I was still doing Ub3r. I said I wasn't, but that if I had the time and the need I would probably look into again. His tone was somber, mentioning how things in his life are going a bit out of control. He asked me about my wife, my mom, my sister, and our dog. Funny thing is, Aldo was always very scared of dogs, to the point he would literally shiver if a dog was barking at us as we ran down the street trying to catch up to the corn on the cob entrepreneurs. My dog was the first dog he ever trusted and he eventually over came his fear. Now that our dog is on her way out, he is very thankful for her and her example that helped him heal.

Aldo said he was looking into additional sources of income, as his sons' needs are becoming more and more expensive. He asked me if I though Ub3r or Lyft were a good option. I said as long as he could fit it into his schedule, he should do it.

We stayed on the phone for maybe 20 minutes, ignoring the fact we really don't speak the way we used to. Like a silent barber, or someone on the elevator who does everything to avoid making eye contact, we avoided speaking about the real us. I never got over the fact I made him cry one day in front of his girlfriend.

Without going into detail, my mother and his father have had hellacious arguments that stem from traumatic incidents they experienced as children in Latin America. These are things they never over came and never out grew. Suffice to say that Aldo inherited some of his father's hatred for my mother, and this one particular time I couldn't take it anymore. So I snapped and started sh-t to him, the same way I would when we would try to see who could beat Thunder Force III first. Except this time I actually meant what I was saying, "fuck you."

We never outgrew that argument and it poisoned our relationship.

I don't have brothers, only a sister, and I am not too close to any of my male relatives. Aldo was always someone who was dealt the wrong card in life. He was born very humble, shy, and sweet. Through his father's anger and abuse, he turned into a very bitter and implosive young man. But he needs income, and that's where Uber and Lyft come in.

Uber drivers carry a lot of stories with them. If you ever have a moment, try and speak to your next driver and see what they're really about. Try and see if they open up about their past. Don't just slam the proverbial Game Genie into the conversation and try to rush the convo. You just never know...

You might just run into Aldo... And if he's honest, he will tell you about how he always beat me at every video game we played... And how he looks up to me even though he never says it... Tell him sorry for me... I didn't mean to call him out that way... 1998

The 1st Night

Thursday...

Starting a new job can be nerve-wracking. You spent weeks, maybe months trying to land something good and you finally do. Your boss, your coworkers, your subordinates (if you're lucky to have any), and your clients all seem like pieces of the puzzle you're struggling to put together.

Ub3r is no different, except you spend 1 week waiting for your background to clear and voila! You get an iPhone 4 in the mail and a nice suede box welcoming you to the family.

My first night I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd heard horror stories of drivers being robbed, stabbed, raped, and almost being murdered. But this was LA, this is my home city that I left for almost 6 years only to come back and find myself in the driver seat of a lost path.

So I sign in to my Ub3r driver app and hit the road. Within a couple of minutes I get a call to an address at a dead end. I hit the "Arrived" button on the cell phone and two guys jump in.

"Make a left on Ohio, left on Santa Monica, and a right on Westwood. It'll be on the left hand side, don't speed, and don't kills us."

$5.50

I made $5.50 in 10 minutes. This can't be too bad can it? Taking orders from someone in the back seat?

The next couple of rides were quick, Point A to Point B locations, small talk here and there.

The down time spent in between rides waiting for a dispatch, I spent mainly looking out my driver side window at the city night. Here I am, 26 years old, with a graduate degree, driving people around to their boutiques and lavish lives. 

I noticed that almost every other car I saw on the road had the Ub3r placard in the windshield: the competition was fierce.

At the end of the night, my gross earnings amount to $122.32 (7pm to 1 am). The catch with this is that only 80% is mine and at the end of the tax year I am responsible for reporting this income for deduction purposes. As a single male in California with no dependents, I am looking at a 25-30% tax rate, taken from the already lowered 80% earnings of every ride. 

Account for the gas spent on Ub3r and I end up looking like a chump.

The night life can bring out interesting layers of human behavior and I couldn't wait to see what was in store the next day.

Introduction

Things are different in the dark. Sometimes the shadows of the night play games on you. What seems to be a dog turns out being a black plastic bag blowing down an alley. Walking into a 7-Eleven after 2AM in California is like walking into a movie that started 30 minutes ago. You're trying to figure out what the f-ck is happening and why only bits and pieces of the characters make any sense.

This darkness brings the worst out of some people, specially those who make a career out of victimizing others. 

But for others, things aren't so grim.

Human behavior also looks and feels different after dark, when the nightlife opens up endless possibilities.

This small blog is a recollection of past, current, and future observations I've made of human behavior after dark.

Join me, as we take a small ride in the back seat of my memory, and as I tell you what it's like to work as an Ub3r driver.

- Crenshaw