my driver is high

i’m bloging from a pal’s house in laguna beach, but i wanted to throw open for coment the whole idea of how writers come up with charcters. this came home to me after my reading thursday night in san mateo. its a 45 minute cab ride back to the city, plenty of time for silence but i usually talk with the driver, figure i might learn something. anyway, i get into the cab and it’s about 9 pm and as i slide into the back seat of this mini-van taxi, i notice that he driver is a very skinny, middle aged guy with all kinds of scars on the inside of his forearms, which i recognize as the result of years of skinpopping. this is a condition where a junkie or speed freak after exhausting their veins, is forced to inject whatever into the REGION of their collapsed veins to get high. the result is a series of lesions in the afflicted area. so i setle into my seat and i’m asking myself if i really want to go on a evening drive with a former, and judging by his hollowed out cheeks and twitchy qualities, a current speedfreak. what the heck. i’ve driven with worse. so we’re cruising along and he’s talking a mile a minute and i’m actually enjoying the story of his life, how he was recently laid off and moved back to the area to live with a buddy, and i’m watching his hands clenching and unclenching on the wheel as he very badly drives the freeway. i mean, at first i thought maybe the shocks in the van were bad, but i quickly realized he had lost all fine motor control and was just guiding the thing as best he could. i asked him about family, and he took off on a whole tangent that made the trip worthwhile and made him a candidate for a future charcter in a book. he spoke with such kindness about his son, who is about twnety and a hellraiser, and how the driver had bought a muscle car about 20 years ago, a limited edition muscle car, that he had recently had appraised for 85k, and… this is the part i liked, he was planning on keeping the car, not selling it for money he clearly could use, bit keeping it to give to his son at the proper time. “I want to leave him a legacy,” he said, totally serious, “something to let him know that i love him and thought about him.” even beter, he was unwilling to give the kid the car anytime soon because the kid was too wild, “just like i was.” i think the confluence of a lifetime of bad choices — he clearly had no or little contact with his son — and a certain maturity, a purposefulness that was bel;ied by his present state, made him a very endearing character to me. i like seing the spark within all of us, particularly in the ones within whom the spark is deeply hidden. of course the driving scene would be nice, [particualrly if i had one of my tough guys stuck in the back side, terrified, gripping the armrest, tightening his seatbelt, while the car careens from one side of the road to the other. i would welcome hearing from any of you about experiences and people that you have transformed into characters, and ny techniques you use to improve them. with me, i hook into a few qualities to ground me, and then let my imagination go. what about you?