Your record collection is making me depressed.

Picked up this fairly young woman at her home. She did not have any family around. She was quite drunk but coherent. Man did she look sick. She was basically nothing but little skinny arms and legs and a huge swollen liver.

Let me explain something. My record collection is badass. It's all about that "three chords and the truth" thing. Lotta different kinds of music. All of them puro punk as far as I'm concerned.

My client has thoughtfully brought along a plastic bag so she can vomit as needed. She has many opinions. She doesn't like the route I've chosen. She doesn't like people in the other cars. She really doesn't like the music I'm playing.

"Don't you have any headbanging music?" she asks me.

"Like what", I reply.

"The Clash or Green Day". Those are the only two bands she can name.

I love The Clash and I don't mind Green Day but we won't be listening to either one of them today.

The client starts throwing up in her bag. I ask if she needs me to pull over. She says she's fine. She keeps telling me about things that she hates. I had forgotten about being a wildly opinionated drunk who can continue to complain even while vomiting into a plastic bag. This is fucking great! I mean it!

We listen to Charlie Feathers. She hates him. We listen to The Flaming Groovies. She hates them. We listen to Curtis Mayfield. I warn her. Do not diss Curtis Mayfield in my presence. She quiets down.

Finally she admits that she can see why I like Curtis Mayfield  but the other bands don't have enough "Tude".  I ask her who has enough "Tude".

"The Clash and Green Day".

Then she tells me she used to live in a particularly bad part of town. I ask her where and she names a bad intersection. I name the intersection I lived at in that neighborhood. It was much worse. She tells me she loved the neighborhood. I hated it. I explain. I've lived in plenty of poor neighborhoods but I hated that neighborhood because the people there weren't poor. They were fucked up. Hoodlums, dope fiends and people who just couldn't get their shit together.

I tell her, "I minded my own business when I lived there. I kept my head down and I kept a gun in my waistband."

She doesn't like that. "You carried a gun in that neighborhood? You're a fuckin' punk ass". She is about 4'10".

I explain to her that I wasn't a punk ass. I was a fucking fool.

She doesn't like that. "You were a coward. If you weren't a coward you would have been willing to get hit from whatever direction the next punch was coming from."

I don't really follow her logic. Mind you, she was vomiting into a plastic bag the whole time.

By now we are out of the city. She says, "You're really dragging me into the middle of nowhere." We are in fact passing by some very small ranches on the edge of suburban towns. She hates the middle of nowhere. She grew up in Texas. She hated Texas.

I like it here. I like the city too. She thinks it's got to be one or the other. Then she starts telling me that I don't know much about farm life but she does.

Finally I get her to the facility. She says, "I didn't throw up on the interior of your car." I thank her and she hands me the bag of vomit to throw out.

What I really liked about her is that she is just like me 20 years ago.