shawn

*

Shawn wants to know if I’m willing to make a stop. I’m only a week in, so I don’t know if I’m allowed. I see myself getting fired from Lyft. I’ve been fired for breaking rules without realizing I was breaking them. I tell him I don’t know. He says that’s okay. We can do the ride, and when that’s done, we can just do the extra stops off the app, and I’ll pay you cash. I say okay. We exchange numbers for future reference. Shawn used to do this with another driver, a young girl, but for some reason—he doesn’t know—she stopped doing it. 

“Whatever,” he says.

Shawn’s opening a new dispensary, where he’ll grow and sell his super-premium strains, targeting specific medical conditions. He’s got narrow-set, ice-blue eyes, wavy gray hair, and a bit of stubble. He’s wearing faded flared jeans and a sky blue puffy coat. Shawn is 69, and—he knows—he looks a lot younger than that. 

“I’m ‘53. What are you?” he asks me. “‘69?” I can’t hear the apostrophe, so I think he means age. 

“57,” I say.

“No way! ’57? You’re 65?”

“No, no! I’m 57 years old.”  

We sort out the confusion. I think it’s funnier than he does. He laughs briefly, but then his face glazes over as he looks out the window. I think of Jeff Spicoli, the Sean Penn character from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Maybe it’s the eyes. Maybe it’s the weed. 

“What are you,” he asks, “Puerto Rican?”

“No, my parents were from Spain.”

“Ahhhh, Spain. I love Spain. What part? Barcelona?”

“No, Zaragoza, but I have family in Barcelona.”

“I lived in Barcelona for years. I loved Barcelona. The women. They’d do anything. They’re not like here. So masculine here. The women there. I tell you what. I kid you not. I was fucking a 33-year-old and a 21-year-old at the same time. I’m thinking about American women: I gotta keep this a secret. Then, for my birthday, what do you think they did? They talked to each other and planned a threesome. Can you believe that?

I gotta get the fuck outta here and get back to Europe, to the women. I tell you what, I had this girl lately. 26 years old. Unbelievable. I would say she was an 8 or 9, or maybe a 7, not a 10, but unbelievable. Un-be-lieve-a-ble. And normally, I’m aggressive. In Europe, I always had girls in my office at the club. They’d come in and practically beg me. I’d tear their clothes off, grab ‘em by the neck, fuck ‘em right on the desk. They loved that. I kid you not, I’ve probably fucked 1,000 women. But this one, for some reason, I don’t know. I tried to be nice; I showed her my softer side, and she fucking broke my heart; she said I was too nice. What the fuck? Can you believe that? Fuck her. Fuck American women.”

* *

Next time, we’d arranged for me to pick him up to go to Petsmart for dog food. But I was already out and driving in the area, so I asked him if he wanted me to pick it up for him. He said sure and placed the order, insisting that I make sure they give him food for LARGE dogs. He’s got two Dogos Argentinos, and—he kids you not—they’ll tear you to fuckin’ pieces. Fuckers at Petsmart sometimes give him food for SMALL dogs. You wanna see my “small” dogs? Fuck them. Whatever.

I picked up the dog food and drove it to his place and picked him up. 

On the way to our destination, he told me about a girl who dumped him because he was short. But she didn’t know he had a big dick because she believed that stupid myth about short guys. Fucking idiot. Her loss. In Brazil, he explains, they do this thing with their thumbs and forefingers. He holds his hands up so I can see them in the mirror, making a tall L with one hand and a short L with the other. I suppose they represent a tall guy with a short dick and a short guy with a big dick. Shawn likes women 20-35. 

“Older than that, no interest, too uptight. And I like European women,” he tells me. Again. 

“Maybe,” I muse, “you’d be happier with someone closer to your age.”

“Maybe,” he says, and loses interest immediately, eyes again glazing over. 

Then, suddenly, he switches back on and starts talking about Only Fans and TikTok. Stupid sluts will do anything. They’re whores. Easy scores. I don’t quite understand what he’s talking about. Is he talking about porn? No, he explains. Just random girls, college girls, whatever. They’ll take their shirts off, get themselves off. Once, one of ‘em messaged me, did I want to hook up? I was like, “You’re dreamin’! At best, you’re a 4, maybe a 5.”

I say nothing. I feel sad about the girls. I feel sad about Shawn. I feel sad about this world. 

* * *

The last time I drove Shawn, I had just returned from five days in a cabin.

“Where’d you go again?”

“Mohawk Trail State Forest.”

“I didn’t know they had cabins up there. What kinda cabin?”

“Yeah, 75 bucks a night. It’s beautiful and basic: electricity, but no heat besides the fireplace and no running water or kitchen.”

“That’s petty rustic.”

“Yeah, sometimes I like that. A few years ago, I did this long solo camping road —”

“I was in a shack once in the middle of the Sinai. Nothing but sand outside. But inside: cushions, rugs, special tea. Girls were beautiful. Arab girls, Jewish girls. Incredible bodies. Unbelievable eyes. They’d do anything. Two, three, four girls at a time. I kid you not.”

When we get to his dispensary, I help him unload floor tiles. He gives me a tour and tells me again how great the weed will be. But he can’t wait to get back to Europe and the women there. He’s too deep into this dispensary right now, but once it’s up and running, he’ll leave it with a manager. Because Shawn’s a financial genius. Speaking of, his parents are shit. He gave them incredible advice. It would’ve made them millions. They ignored him. They can drop dead. Fuck them.

“That seems kinda harsh, no?” I push back. 

Normally, he just looks out the window when I talk. But now he swivels his head back toward the front, gets hold of my eyes in the rearview mirror, and gives me a hard stare. I hold it for a second. I almost wish Anthony—the ex-boxer with the shoelaces—was there. He’d show Shawn.  

“Don’t give me that,” he says and looks away. 

“Sometimes,” he says after a minute of silence, “I get into trouble, you know? Like when you get in a fight because someone elbows you in the grocery store? Once in Stop n Shop, I laid out a teenager. But he was black. So when the cops came, they didn’t want to hear about the elbow he threw. They came for me. What the fuck?” 

Another time, in Israel, after that time in the desert with the women, he was in Jerusalem and these three guys—huge guys, IDF, each with a girl, came at him because he’s short. He laid them all out. One is unconscious. Another is holding his broken nose, bleeding and moaning and crying while his girlfriend stands over him bitching him out for being a pussy.

“They thought I was short. But when I take my shirt off, I’m a monster. “

“No doubt,” I say. 

When he gets out of the car, I never see him again.

****

That’s not quite true.  One day, about a year and a half after that last ride, I saw Shawn emerge from a dispensary and walk up the sidewalk toward me, knees bowed out slightly, wearing cargo shorts and a faded burgundy tee shirt. He was shorter than I remember. As he drew closer, I heard him sigh deeply, eyes raised toward the sky. I considered saying hello. But then, I didn’t want to talk to him. 

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