Free Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey by Oliver Markus

with them being black or
white. They could have been yellow and purple. The simple truth was
that white people usually tipped the driver, and black people
usually didn't. And if you depend on tips for your survival, of
course you're going to try to pick up as many tippers as
possible.
     
    Most of the other drivers drove 12 hours
shifts, from 6 at night until 6 in the morning. And then they slept
all day. But since I drew cartoons in the day time, and I had to
get some sleep at some point, I only worked until 2 am. Those
missing 4 hours made a big difference, because I still had to pay
the same expensive rental fee for the two-way radio as everyone
else. Some nights I came home with $20 or less. Things were so bad
that I actually had to resort to eating dog food one day. That was
probably the lowest point of my life.
     
    Donna's dad owned the house we lived in, and
he gave us a break on the rent, because he knew we didn't have any
money. But even the little bit of rent that we did have to pay was
hard to come by. And then there were the bills. After everything
was paid, there usually was almost no money left for food. And when
I applied for my green card, Donna and I had to waive our rights to
getting any kind of public assistance for the next few years. So we
couldn't even apply for food stamps.
     
    I couldn't ask my parents for help, because
they thought I was the black sheep of the family and I was nuts for
moving to New York. I didn't even talk to my parents at all for the
first two or three years after moving to the States. Donna was
worried that if I talked to them, they would try to talk me out of
being with her and convince me to move back to Germany, so she
didn't want me to talk to them at all. And we didn't want to ask
Donna's parents for any more help, because they were already
helping us out by charging very little rent, and they thought I was
some sort of nutjob for trying to make a living drawing silly
little pictures.
     
    Donna and I usually didn't eat anything
during the day, and when I got off work at 2 am, I stopped by a
24-hour grocery store on my way home. I picked up two cans of Dinty
Moore beef stew and that was all we ate. Occasionally Donna's mom
gave her $20 to babysit her senile grandmother for a few hours.
Those days were like Christmas, because we used that money to buy a
family bucket of fried chicken and french fries. On those days we
feasted like kings!
     
    Whenever I came home with almost no money
after work, we tried to find quarters between the couch cushions or
in the change jar her parents had in their apartment above ours. If
we were lucky, we could find enough quarters to buy two cans of
stew. We didn't want her parents to know how bad things really
were, because we were ashamed and embarrassed. And we didn't want
to hear them lecture us.
     
    One night there were no quarters left
between the couch cushions or in the kitchen drawer. And Donna had
already taken the last few quarters her parents had lying around
upstairs a few days earlier. So we literally had no money. Zero.
But we were starving. This situation would be unthinkable in
Germany, because they have a much better social safety net over
there. Nobody ever goes hungry.
     
    I looked through the kitchen cabinets to
find anything edible. I didn't care if it was stale Doritos, or
dried up old bread. I just needed something to eat. Anything. There
was nothing. And then I found a few cans of dog food in the bottom
cabinet. I grabbed one of the cans and stared at the picture on the
label. I was so hungry, the picture of dog slop started to look a
lot like beef stew. And the dog in the picture looked pretty happy
with it. I figured, hey, meat is meat, so how much worse than Dinty
Moore beef stew could this can of dog food possibly be? Turns out
it can be a lot worse. A lot.
     
    When I told Donna I was going to eat the can
of dog food, she started to laugh, because she thought I was
kidding. Then, when I pulled a can opener out of