Tao of Pauly

Restless

I had two consecutive nights of restless sleep as dark circles entrenched my eyes. I must have clocked about six or seven hours in the last two nights and that includes a forty minute nap that I took yesterday at 7pm. I tried to crash around 11pm, passed out around Midnight and I woke up at 1:30am. I was up until 4:30am during the Dead Zone where I desperately tried to sleep but tossed and turned instead. I tried smoking weed, wacking off, and listening to music from John Coltrane to the Grateful Dead. Nothing would put me out. I finally fell asleep as the alarm on my cell phone woke me up at 7am. I scheduled a car service to pick me up at 7:45am for a trip to LaGuardia Airport for my 9:40am flight to Florida.

I packed everything the night before and I'm traveling light to Florida. I took a few t-shirts and shorts and that's pretty much it, aside from my laptop. All I had to do this morning was get dressed and make sure I had a few things like cash, printed intineraries, directions to Jerry's house, and random concert tickets for the Langerado music festival.

My cab came five minutes late which I expected during the light flurries. A thin blanket of snow was on the ground but I was more worried about any gusting winds that would ground my flight. JetBlue fucked up during the Valentine's Day blizzard, so I have very little confidence. When I checked online, they said my flight to Ft. Lauderdale was going to be on time.

My cab driver was a trip. He was in his early fiftes with a thick Bronx accent. He never stopped talking the entire drive to the airport and chain smoked menthol cigarettes. At first he said he recognized me and admitted he lived right around the corner for over thirty years. I had seem him from time to time, and I recalled that he was in line with me at the post office just around Christmas time. He's one of those guys that you see all the time but never knew his name or what he did. I finally figured it out. He drove taxis for the local car service.

He asked me where I was going and I told him Florida.

"Fucking A!" he said, "Get out of the city while you still can. It's pretty fucking cold. Hope you're not flying JetBlue. You might never get out."

He grilled me about what I did for a living and told him I was a writer.

"Like magazines?"

I nodded and he told me that I need to write a book or a screenplay about the Pat Tillman friendly fire incident.

"That football player, he wasn't killed by friendly fire like they said," the cabbie said as he kept turning around to talk to me as he drove to the airport, "I heard from a friend of mine who is in the Marines that the football player was killed by his own men, but not from a fire fight. They flat out had him whacked."

He launched into his five minute pitch about how the same thing happened when he was in Vietnam.

"You had soldiers killing officers all the time. It was a crazy fucking place," he said.

I tipped him $15 and he said that he wanted a cut on the Tillman book. I agreed. It took less than ten minutes to go throughs ecurity which was a shocker especially at LaGuardia. Usually it takes thrity minutes and in my estimation is the second worst airport for security lines behind Las Vegas McCarran.

My gate got changed as soon as I walked over to B5. Now I'm sitting at B3 waiting to board my flight to Florida. The plane I'm supposed to get on just arrived and passengers are de-planiing. Nicky is fixin' to get on a 7am flight from LAX to Florida just about the same time as I take off. My flight gets in two hours earlier and I'll be putzing around the airport waiting for her flight to arrive before we pick up the rental, check into out hotel, and then head down to Miami to visit Jerry, Sarah, and the twins.

Another airport. Another restless night. Another cabbie pitching me a screenplay. It must be Wednesday.