 Living in a city, you'd think every moment would be an immersion in the melting pot; an unavoidable full-frontal with Humanity in all its forms. But the truth is, you can avoid the pot, most of the time.
There are different bars for different sorts: the metro bars, the dive bars, the frat bars, the wine bars. There are different neighborhoods: the gay district, the hipster ‘hood, the yuppie precinct. You can select a home in your zone of choice, frequent the most categorically predictable restaurants and bars on that same block, and for nearly all of your day, avoid those parts of humanity that make you feel uneasy or self-conscious or, simply, not quite cool enough. (For me, tattoos inspire all aforementioned emotions. They make me excited and envious and threatened, all at once.) You can stay within your tidy little box of human experience, no problem. Most of the time.
However, there are a few places where the smell of urine permeates even
the most privileged nostrils, where muttering men and women of
nondescript ages in indeterminate layers of clothing will bowl right
over you if you don't acknowledge them, where the beautiful people meet
the real people and no one has any choice but to stick out the
resultant pandemonium.
Yes, the subway. But really, how cliche. I'm referring to the less
obvious melting pot. Right at your neighborhood Department of Motor
Vehicles.
Oh, the DMV. I decided to get my car all up to regulation and
registration immediately upon moving to San Francisco, because I'll be
damned if I knick somebody's Porsche and don't have up-to-date state
insurance, license and registration on my side when the judge throws
the book at me and bleeds me dry for a touch-up on the Porsche's
mystic-eggplant paint job.
So, on a beautiful Friday morning, sun shining and temperature
hovering in the mid-70s, I eased my car up the hill and over to the
sole Department of Motor Vehicles in the entire city of San Francisco.
That's right. The most densely populated city in the United States has one DMV. Brilliant.
That should have been red flag enough. If I was sensible, I'd
driven my Texas plates right past and saved myself from a new version
of hell. But I'm an optimist. It was morning, and I was sure I'd beat
the rush. I factored in a generous two hours to take care of getting my
California license and registering Lola (my car), and figured I'd be
treating myself to a congratulatory super veggie burrito by lunch.
Delicious.
It was a nice plan.
I spent four and half hours at the DMV. Now, this would be an easy
thing to exaggerate. But I'm not. Four and half hours is not hyperbole,
it's no fish tale; it's truth. By the time I reached hour three, there
were fireworks popping in front of my eyes from hunger. By hour four, I
was weak with dehydration. By the time I left at four hours and thirty
minutes - head hung low, eyes hollowed and listless - I was completely
demoralized.
The DMV will do that, anywhere. In a city, though, it was more than
just the forms. The paperwork. The ornery employees. The inefficiency
of the whole machine.
It was all the people. While waiting for stage 1 of my
license (eye exam), the gentleman in the seat to my right was noting
loudly that he'd just been released from jail and was only here to get
his f***** ID card. In the seat behind me, another guy advertised that
he was only here to pick up bitches. While in line for stage 2 of my
license (picture), I met a man who informed me that he was allowed to
go in front of me, in the Handicap line, because of his mental
imbalance. But actually, he wasn't even here to get his license. He was
just hanging out. So he stayed in the regular line with me. Lucky me.
At some point between this and waiting in line for stage 3 of the
license (written test), I stopped trying to look like I was reading my
book and began staring into space instead, reflecting on what an
interesting form of education - and purgatory - this was.
I was starting to think romantic (read: delirious), intellectual,
liberal-arts thoughts about how great it was: No matter what your lot
in life, no matter how many figures in your salary, no matter your
state of mental balance or lack thereof, at some point you had to wait through the ineptitude and clusterfuck of the DMV.
I was meditating on this while waiting for stage 1 of registering my
car (inspection). The inspection officer on duty was nowhere to be
found, and I'd been sitting on the sidewalk waiting for approximately
45 minutes. My only consolation was this newfound notion of the DMV as
The Great Equalizer... and that I was first in a line of four cars. A crisply pressed yuppie in a glistening black Hummer was second. Sucker.
Hummer Guy disappeared, and I smiled to myself, presuming he was checking in on the inspection officer's whereabouts. As if that would help, I laughed privately, jovially. I was so Zen, in that moment. Just live and let live, man. There's a time to wait, whether you're a broke newcomer with a car named Lola or you're a rich yuppie with a Hummer.
Then Hummer Guy reappeared with a DMV employee. The employee walked
around his car once, nodded, and they returned inside. Hummer Guy came
back out a few minutes later. Alone.
Of course, I blocked the beeline path he was taking to his car, and asked.
"Was that the inspection officer?"
He avoided my gaze. "Yes."
"Is he coming back?" I was incredulous.
"He's on break. I had to pay him like a thousand dollars to do my car."
I was speechless.
"I told him you were here first!" he blurted out, then whipped
around me back to his Hummer, wriggled it out of line and peeled off
into Freedom.
DMV. The Great Equalizer.
My ass.
So my hippie-love theories about mingling with Humanity are
considerably less sweet, now. But at least when I maliciously rear-end
Hummer Guy some day, I'll have the appropriate license and
registration.
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Quirkee Voices 
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