A penny for your intimate thoughts

I was dispatched to a big building in the Tenderloin, Jones and Eddy. A man was sitting in an enclosed area in the lobby. I said to him "Hi. I have a taxi for number 242." The man looked past me and said "Here is yours, Jack!" I turned around and saw a casually dressed man hurrying towards the door and said "You called DeSoto?" And he said yes. He asked me where I got my dress. I said at a thrift store. He was eccentric, had glasses and oily hair and appeared to be in his 40's.

"Is this all you do?" he asked as we made a left on Golden Gate.

"Driving a cab? Do I do this full-time? No."

"What else do you do?" There was something childlike about the way he asked his questions.

"I'm an intuitive counselor and--"

"A what?"

"An in-tu-i-tive coun-se-lor."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that I am a life counselor and I help people with their challenges in life. And I listen to them talk about their feelings."

"What if somebody has really...personal feelings?"

"Then I listen to them too. All feelings are personal. What's wrong with really personal feelings?"

"Nothing!"

"Okay."

"But what if somebody has really...intimate feelings?"

"Intimate?"

"Yeah."

"Then I listen to those too. I try not to judge anything anybody is feeling. Those feelings are there, and if they are there, there is a reason for it."

"Ah."

[...]

"Where are you from?" he continued asking.

"Germany."

"How long have you been here?"

"Ten years?" I answered like a question.

"You married?"

"No."

"Got a boyfriend?"

"No. Working on that."

"I'm available!"

"Oh. Thanks." I laughed.

"Wanna have dinner sometime?"

"No. Thanks."

"Why not?"

"I don't know..."

"I know a couple of good German restaurants."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, there is one off of Polk Street. But I can never pronounce the name because it's in German."

"Is it Suppenküche? That's on Hayes and Laguna."

"Yeah, that's it."

"There is also one on 9th and Folsom."

"Yeah. So do you wanna go sometime?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Honestly, because I think that you are too old for me."

"What! Why? How old are you?"

"30."

"And how old do you think I am?"

"40?"

"That's only ten years!"

"Yeah, well, that's too much for me."

"That's nothing."

"So how old are you?"

"45."

"See, that's 15 years!"

"So?"