You say, "What you got open?"
They say, "Still need a Left B-Pillar Lookout." They say, "You got gas money?"
Some teams looking for a member, they'll ask you to show can you turn your head around fast and smooth with no popping sound. No point in having a lookout with whiplash or cervical damage from some past crack-up. Having gas money isn't a must, but it shows your level of commitment.
Tina Something: Gimps with fused vertebrae, losers known to be night-blind or farsighted, you'll see them on the curb all night. Maybe some team will take pity and give them a nothing position. In a big car, a loser might get what people call the «mascot» position, the middle of the backseat, where you can't do much but talk to keep up the mood. Otherwise, they're totally Misfit Toys.
You have a short neck or bad eyes and you'd better bring lots of gas money and pray for a nice team with a big backseat. Cultivate your jokes and people skills.
Echo Lawrence: The «window» is the determined time a game begins, until the time it ends. You might have a Saturday four-hour window. Or you might play a Monday all-night window, from eight to eight.
Shot Dunyun: The night we met Rant, he'd escaped some voucher hotel, waiting for assignment to transitional Nighttimer housing. In a city where most people are either working jobs or boosting peaks, for a guy without work, a guy whose port won't boost shit, it's no wonder he wandered at night.
Rant climbs into the car and gives me a quarter. How lame is that? An asswipe quarter for gas money. Except it's gold and dated 1887. I don't know what that coin was, but Echo dropped the car into gear, and we slipped into the traffic stream. Rant climbed into our backseat like he'd been waiting on that corner, waiting his whole bullshit life for us to pull up. And Green, twisting to reach back, he says, "Might I have a closer look at that coin?"
Echo Lawrence: A good driver shouldn't have to look anywhere but forward. Good backseat lookouts shouldn't look anywhere but backward and sideways. It's not their job to see where the car's headed. A good shotgun handles his side and half the windshield.
You're not just looking for cars to hit. You're looking for cars headed to hit you. You're looking for cars already on someone's tail. You're looking for police. Not just during a chase, but all the time, parked or baiting or trolling. Or stalking. «Baiting» means to steer something cherry, virgin-perfect, clean, and polished down the middle of the boulevard, the «field» or «route» or "maze." You see a showroom two-door purr bright red down that center lane, flying a game flag: just-married cans or soccer-mom paint—to prove they're playing, and you'd be a fool to chase after.
Not to say a lot of rookies don't—peel off for a piece of that fresh red paint.
The veterans, teams that know "bait," they'll wait a second look. A block back always come the shadow cars, spread out in a wide dragnet, the teams in league with the bait car, ready to slam the rookies flushed out. Next time you hear a Graphic Traffic report about a plague of bad drivers, this is the shadow cars scoring on rookies.
From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic: Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Whatever your team mascot, watch out for a flood of soccer fans this evening. It seems every proud parent is driving a crew around with their team colors flying. Go, Cougars! At the Post Circle, along the north side, watch out for a six-car pile-up. No telling who the winner is, but they all appear to be amateur sport teams. No injuries, but the traffic cams show a lot of people arguing in the breakdown lane.
Echo Lawrence: Next time you come across a bad pile-up, you look forward enough, fast enough, and you might see the bait car, that still-pretty redster, disappear around a side corner way, way up ahead.
Tina Something: Your really light kind of tagging, we call that "flirting." You just nudge somebody's rear with your front wheel well. And if the target looks and likes you, if he likes what he sees, you drive away and he comes after you. Your average person will Party Crash so she can be around other people. It's very social, a way to meet people, and you sit around telling stories for a few hours. You could sit at home, but even boosting a party is still being alone. You come to the end of a party boost and you've still spent all night by yourself.
Even Party Crashing can get boring if you can't find another team flying the designated flag, but at least it's a communal boredom. Like a family.
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): Party Crashing appeals primarily to people too poor or too rich to be engaged in the middle-class pursuit of monetary success. Mr. Dunyun and Miss Lawrence didn't consider they had anything to lose.
Shot Dunyun: We're not two bullshit blocks before our car jerks forward, the tires bark, pushed across pavement. A Shark's bitten paint-deep into our seven o'clock, ready to repeat-tag our left rear quarter-panel.
Still holding his bouquet of silk flowers, Rant whips around, saying, "Fella hit us!" Shouting, "He hit us!"
Into her rearview mirror, Echo says, "Why'd you let him?" She says, "Mind your field fucking quadrant…"
Green holds the gold quarter between two fingers, just touching the edges, saying, "Where did you acquire this extraordinary coin?"
And Echo hits the gas, throws us around the next right, the Shark still chewing our paint.
Tina Something: Everybody knows a full moon means a Newlywed event. A Honeymoon free-for-all. Doing this every month for a couple years, you pile up racks of wedding gowns. Racks. Ruffled shirts and penguin tuxedos. My favorites are pretty sherbet-pink bridesmaid dresses. But it's wedding gowns most Party Crashers wear: the big full skirt, the poofy veil. Half the time, one team plows into the back end of another team, and between the two cars eight brides pile out to scream at each other in the emergency lane. Some brides with hairy arms and Adam's apples jumping under their square, stubbly chins. The knuckles of one hairy hand holding the train of a dress, to show greasy work boots underneath. All the teams in gowns and veils, black people, white people, women or men, all brides look alike.
Echo Lawrence: The full moon is the best night for starters. The flag is so easy to spot. You write "Just Married" in shaving cream down the car doors and across the trunk and hood. You tie some white streamers to the top of the radio antenna and put on your best Sunday clothes. A starter team is out ten dollars, tops, to get into the game.
Veteran newlyweds, they have to count back on their fingers. Toyota, Buick, Mazda, Dodge, Pontiac. Red, blue, silver, black. This month, this honeymoon might make a vet's fifth car, ready to get pounded with dents.
Shot Dunyun: Any Honeymoon Night, you'll see another "Just Married" car in every block. Brides stand on street corners, looking for loose grooms. Grooms wait on curbs, wearing top hats, hoping to wave down a bride with her own wheels.
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: A crucial aspect of dressing for any Honeymoon Night is to fasten your boutonniere with a portion of double-stick adhesive tape. In the event of a car accident, you do not want a long straight pin stuck anywhere adjacent to your heart.
Echo Lawrence: Another piece of advice: Scotchgard your seats. Before Tina Something, we had a newby lookout in the backseat during the pulse. A Shark plows into us, tags our right rear corner so hard we're spun sideways, traffic and headlights coming at us from every direction, horns blaring, and this newby lookout, she takes a leak. Damage from the tag was nothing Bondo won't fill. But we were sponging that girl's piss out of the backseat for weeks.