“I Won”

Graduation weekend was always the busiest in the cab. Everyone partying hard before they left for the semester. All the families in town for commencement. You could really clean up before the summer lull.

It was also one of the most self-reflective weekends in the cab, looking back on my own graduations – Revere High School, Sarah Lawrence College (BA), Naropa University (MFA) and how with all that education I was still somehow a taxi driver. I knew I’d purposely chosen the path of noble loser poet, but still there was a temptation to feel at times as if I was there was actually little noble or poetic about it.

One graduation weekend I remember picking up this guy and before he even told me where he was going he just goes, “I won.”

“Won what?” I asked.

“My daughter graduated today, last of the three kids, she’s got a job lined up and she’s engaged. We bought her a house here when she was a freshman and it’s quadrupled in value since. I won.”

I wanted to see what someone who won looked like so I checked the mirror. 

Instead of a guy in the backseat tho it was actually a bottle. A glass container meant to hold liquid. And you could tell by its brownness, the distinct-font label, and the red wax on the cap exactly what kinda liquid was in there. Maker’s Mark. Semi-high end bourbon I’d sometimes get for special occasions. 

It made me even more curious about its “win.”

“Quadruple the value?” I asked The Maker’s Mark. “How can a bottle of liquor achieve such a thing?”

The bottle didn’t answer tho cuz it had already passed out from all the premium bourbon it held.

I was then left to figure out what to do with it. The drink was too silent for me to know where to drop it off. But just leaving it in the cab didn’t seem right.

“Alright” I went to the backseat to rouse the bottle, “get up or else someone will probably drink you.”

But it was no use. It was 750 ml. It was 90 proof. It was the first week of May.

All I could think to do was worry about my life. I will probably never have a daughter, let alone one who graduates college, I thought and felt bad.

Then I couldn’t help myself. I twisted open the red wax cap, lifted the bottle to my mouth, and took a long, deep swig. And I quickly felt my blood-Maker’s level rising.

“Ahh,” I said. “Now I’ve won.”