The Fine Line Between Working and Stalking

After a night of underage drinking in a dive bar in the city and crashing on a friend of a friend’s couch, I hopped a commuter train back home in the morning and called a cab to meet me at the train station. That’s the safe way to get smashed in your late teens, right? Maybe if you call the right cab.

The wild-haired driver invited me to sit in the front seat. Never having been in a cab alone before, I thought maybe that was normal procedure if there was only one passenger. At least, that’s what I thought for the first half mile or so. I started to doubt it when the driver said, “Do you mind if I just stare at you until I drop you off?”

I told him I’d rather he kept his eyes on the road, but apparently I’d been worried about nothing. He let me know that he was a very safe driver, and even reassured me that he wasn’t on any drugs. Seems he’d seen “too many drugs go through the streets and through his system” and that was why he “didn’t mess around with that many drugs anymore.”

It’s only a few miles from the train station to my house, but the ride seemed to take forever, and as the end neared he asked if he could call me some time. I told him that I thought he was too old for me (he’d shared that he was 28). “Hell,” he said, “age don’t mean nothing. My ex-wife was a lot younger than me.”

I’m sure it was just a coincidence that for weeks afterward, I’d see a cab parked across the street from my house late at night.