Tiffany Harris, Black Collar, taxi driver

The fairs had been treating me strange all morning, giving me looks and some asking me if I was okay to drive. It was annoying and slowly getting on my nerves. For three years I had been driving this cab and it looked like it was going to be one of those days.

*BEEP BEEP BEEP*

Looking at the center dash screen showed me someone just ordered a pickup to the airport and I was the closest. Four minutes later and a middle aged man was putting two large rolling suitcases in the trunk I unlocked for him, then getting in the backseat himself.

He looked at me blinked in a stunned manner that all my fairs had done that morning, before speaking. “Can you wait for a few moments? My husband will be down shortly.”

“No problem.”

After awhile he started to creep me out. He couldn’t keep his eyes off me. Sure, he would avert his gaze every so often, but they always went back to the back of my head from what I could see in the rear view. I was thankful when a man who was at least ten years his junior entered the cab and thankfully took charge.

“Alright, let’s get going. This is going to be a great anniversary! You still haven’t told me where we’re going, mi Chico!”

That seemed to knock the sense back into him as I pulled into traffic.

“Don’t give me that look,” he said in a joking manner. “you will find out on soon enough!” And they bantered back and forth for the next three quarters of an hour until we arrived at JFK and they retrieved their luggage.

After I stopped the meter and they gave me a nice tip, which for some reason the screen said for in the comments section, and I quote, ‘Being such a good girl’. It struck me a really condescending. It’s not like I’m a dog or something. Or one of those petgirls that started showing up seven years ago.

Ignoring the comment, I pulled into the line of taxis to wait for another fair and check my makeup. Looking, I noticed there was nothing wrong with it, the glittery eyeshadow still calling attention to my emerald eyes. My light brunette hair was fine, only being a little messy which is what I was going for. ‘Nope, it was him.’

The rest of the days fairs followed along the lines of the previous weirdos, with all the tips I received with comments about how I was ‘a good girl’ or ‘how behaved I was’, either through the comments section or voiced allowed in polite condescension.

I even snapped a photo of a wild petgirl I saw, as any good citizen would, with my Petgirl Spotter app. The fact that several of my fairs had done the same was lost on me. Some people were still uncomfortable with petgirls, but I didn’t see why. They are just so cute!

It was because of these interactions that once I parked in front of my apartment block, a tiny hair thin green line had appeared along the black collar I knew nothing about.