Chinese Call Girl

Isn't it amazing what can happen when you put your attention on something? Within 24 hours of writing in my last post that I sometimes suspect, but rarely find out, that certain female passengers are call girls, I had this ride:

I was cruising up 6th Avenue shortly after 3 am and picked up a woman at 54th Street. She was in the middle of a cell phone conversation as she entered the cab and, like many passengers who regard the phone call as being more important than the taxi ride, she merely told me the general direction in which she wanted to go (Queens via the upper level of the 59th Street Bridge) and then went back to the phone.

I made the right on 57th Street and headed toward the bridge. Since she hadn't told me exactly where we were going, I had a bit more attention on her than I normally would have had. I checked her out in the mirror. She was a tall Asian with a rather thin, long face and straight, black hair extending below her shoulders, about 35 years old. She had a rather exotic look to her, and it occurred to me that she could have been cast in an old movie as the wife of Dr. Fu Manchu.

Not that there was anything evil about her. In fact, she was quite nice.

It wasn't until we were over the bridge and driving down an empty street in Long Island City that her cell phone conversation finally ended. As she resumed giving me directions ("make a left on Borden Avenue"), she said, half to me and half to herself, "what a night!"

"Had a rough one?"

"Yeah."

"What happened?"

"You don't want to know."

Now whenever someone says, "You don't want to know", you do want to know. And I did.

"I do want to know, but I don't think you want to tell me," I said.

Apparently that was all I had to say for her to feel safe telling me what she really did want to tell me anyway. And this was her story...

She said she was Chinese and she and two other Chinese girls had gone to a hotel in Midtown to give "massages" to three gentlemen. But when they got to the hotel room, there weren't three gentlemen - there were six. And they weren't really "gentlemen" after all. This, to these professionals, was a dangerous situation. She told me that girls in her group have been beaten and raped in scenarios such as this one, especially if they go to a private residence. So now they only work in hotels. And even though this was a hotel, the unexpected additional men made her feel they had to get out of there. But how? Two of them were blocking the exit.

What she did, she said, was to take a big chance. She excused herself to the bathroom, locked the door, and called the police on her cell phone. The reason it was a big chance was that she couldn't be sure how the cops would react. She and the other two girls might be arrested for prostitution. But she felt so uneasy with the situation they were in that she did it anyway.

Luckily for her, the cops arrived quickly and were cool. She was the only one who spoke English, she said, so she did the talking. She said the cop interviewing her looked her in the eye and told her to tell him the truth. She told him they had come to give a "bachelor party" (a bit of a spin but pretty close to the truth) and were frightened by the additional men. Then the cop asked her if they had stolen anything and she truthfully replied that they had not. He believed her and sent them on their way.

A few minutes later she is getting into my taxi and heading back to Queens. And I am reminded once again of the "things you learn driving a taxicab".



Click here for Pictures From A Taxi.