The Best Day Of Your Life

I wrote something in my book that already needs to be revised. 

It's what I consider to be my favorite type of ride. 

Favorite Type of Ride Number Two, I wrote, is the one with the "elderly active" passenger.  That's when you get someone in the cab who's way up there in years - like over eighty - but who's still enjoying living.  I find myself exhilarated, with hope renewed that I still have many more years to go with vitality and good health. 

And Favorite Type of Ride Number One was said to be the fare with someone who's coming in from the airport who, with great anticipation, is seeing Manhattan for the very first time.  Wide-eyed and agog, this person is like a pilgrim finally setting foot in the holy land.  His excitement is contagious - I assume the role of the embedded tour guide, but with the secret agenda of absorbing his thrill vicariously.

I had a passenger a few weeks ago, however, who brought me to the realization that there is another type of ride that trumps these other two.  It's a very specific kind of ride.  It has to have a hospital as its starting point.  It has to be a man.  And it has to be the first time this man has left the hospital after having been there for many hours.  You've probably guessed what it is - it's the father of a newborn infant returning home after the birth of his first-born son or daughter.

He hailed me at the entrance of Mt. Sinai at 5th Avenue and 101st Street a little before midnight, a thirtyish fellow en route to the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn.  Although I'm always curious, I'm usually hesitant about asking anyone about why they've been at the hospital.  After all, it could be something terrible and they may not want to discuss it with their cab driver.  So I just say hello, perhaps offer some small talk, and try to give them enough space so they know if they want to talk about it, I'm approachable.  But this guy looked happy, so I jumped in.

"Visiting hours over?" I asked.

That was all it took. 

Slowly at first, suppressing emotion, and then with an open faucet of joy, he told me the story of the birth of his daughter.  Surely there can be nothing in the realm of communication between humans that is more certain to create an instant, Krazy Glue kind of bonding than this. Here was a young man who had just been through what for many will be the most dramatic episode of their lives.  Would the baby be healthy?  Will the mother be okay?  So much of everyone's future depends on the outcome - and it had all turned out fine.  A newly minted father, if he's to be any kind of father at all, is a fountain of exuberance at a time like this. 

And my passenger was.

But it had not been easy.  In labor, the obstetrician observed that the baby's heartbeat was fluctuating between too fast and too slow, a danger sign.  He therefore bypassed the natural birth process and, with his team, performed an emergency C-section.  It worked.  And a brand new, eight pound member of the human race reported in for muster.

"What's her name?"

"Harper."

He went on to explain that all the names he and his wife liked were already the names of people they knew and they didn't want anyone to think they'd named the baby after them when in fact they hadn't.  But they liked the name "Harper" because it's the name of one of their favorite authors, Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill A Mockingbird, and no one they knew had that name.  Also because it has a nice sound - "Harper".  I agreed.

"And her middle name is Francesca," he added.  "After Dr. Francesco - the obstetrician.  Who saved her life."

Somebody tells you something like that, the beauty and the correctness of the acknowledgement is so profound - you may never forget having been told such a thing.  I guess it was that which made me realize that this was my very favorite kind of ride.

Along with one other thing.  It gives me the opportunity to spring on the new parent one of my favorite, albeit corny, jokes.

First I tell him that I'm the father of a grown-up daughter myself.  Then:

"I hope you don't make the same mistake we made."

"What?"

"Don't teach her how to talk.  Go with the deaf sign language.  It will save you a fortune in telephone bills."

Always gets a laugh.

It was a half-hour ride to his place in Brooklyn.  Along the way I was able to indoctrinate the Parent Club initiate with a few gems of observation and insight that I've gathered in my tenure as a father.  I told him there are few, if any, lines of demarcation that are as distinct in your life as the line that divides Before and After the time you became a parent. 

"In looking back, you will always see it that way."

Then I told him something about his daughter.  "That tiny little baby back there that you could pick up with one hand?  In about two years, three at the most, she's going to see you doing something.  Then she's going to tell you that you're doing it wrong.  And she will be right." 

He liked that, so I felt I'd been given a green light to expound on something else. 

"You know, there's only one kind of love that can really be called 'unconditional'," I offered, "and that's the love from parent to child.  That's the strongest love that there is. It's very powerful.  It will change you.  No matter how good a person you already are, it will  make you a better one."

I believe that to be true.

He paid with a credit card and the meter spit out a receipt.  I held it out to him through the partition.

"Oh, no, that's okay," he said.

"Take it," I insisted, "it's got the date that your daughter was born on it."

Big smile. 

He took the receipt.

And we shook hands.

Good Time Charlie

What's always good in the taxi business is an immediate turnover of passengers - that is, a new one gets in as the old one gets out. That's what happened on a recent Tuesday night just before midnight on 69th between 1st and 2nd. Actually it wasn't really "immediate". There was a gap of about a minute and a half between the two fares as my passenger-to-be, a thirty-something male, stood on the sidewalk kissing a woman who was staying there on 69th. I was patient. It starts getting slow at that time of night on a Tuesday, so even with a delay it was good business for me. Finally he got in the cab, waving goodbye and blowing a final kiss or two at his beloved.

I drove west on the one-way 69th toward 2nd Avenue. "So... where are you heading?" I asked when no destination was forthcoming.

But instead of a location, I got this: "Man, that was the best make-out session I've had in, what? I don't know, man, a really long time!"

Right away I liked this guy. In his mind I wasn't being viewed as "taxi driver who's just there to take me someplace". I was being elevated into "my man". I was his buddy, his suddenly-appearing pal, his comrade-in-arms. I knew this was going to be a fun ride.

"Yeah, you two were really going at it," I said, smiling. "I was afraid you might get invited upstairs and I'd lose the fare!"

"Hah, yeah, I wish, but, you know, it was the first date."

"No sex on the first date, huh?"

"Well, it depends. Sometimes, maybe. But she wasn't a first-date-sex kind of girl."

"Is that good or bad?"

"I don't know... good, I guess. I don't know. Man, she can really kiss!"

We had hit a red light at 2nd which was now turning green. "So where are we going?" I asked.

"I don't know... go straight."

I drove to 3rd Avenue where another red light awaited us.

"So there'll be a second date?"

"Oh, yeah, she's definitely second date material. Maybe third and fourth date material."

"You think she might be 'the one', as the saying goes?"

"You know, it's not out of the realm of possibility."

The light turned green and I started driving toward Lex, still not knowing what our destination would be. "Could I ask you a personal question?" I inquired.

"Sure."

"Where the hell do you want to go?"

The guy seemed to be more interested in going anywhere than in actually going somewhere. As a general rule, I think that is fine as long as the passenger isn't semi-coherent. But we were going to run into the wall that surrounds Central Park at 5th Avenue if we couldn't decide to make a turn before we got there. So I pressed the issue a little.

"Well, there are basically two things we could do," I said. "We could go uptown or downtown. I know it's a tough call, but what do you think?"

He gave it some thought. "Where are the bars that are open?" he asked.

"They're all open. It's only midnight. The bars stay open 'til four, most of them."

"Well, let's go there."

I made a left on 5th and headed downtown, where most of the nightlife is found.

"Okay," I said, feeling like we were making progress, "so now out of the maybe two thousand bars that are open, all we've gotta do is figure out which one you want to go to."

"One where there's lots of girls," he said.

I was surprised. "You mean after your date and all that kissing you still want to go to a bar and try to pick up some girl?"

"Actually, man, you know what would be better? Just a hooker. Where can we go to find a hooker?"

"Craig's List," I replied, reminding him that since Giuliani had been mayor in the '90s there haven't been any hookers on the streets of the city.

"So should I take you there?" I asked.

"Where?"

"To Craig's List."

Well, this was just unmitigated hysteria for my passenger, who doubled over in laughter and jumped into the concept of the thing. "Yes, take me to Craig's List and make it fast!" he demanded.

"Next stop, Craig's List!" I joined in, and stepped on the gas a bit as if it was really a place we could drive to.

We continued rolling down 5th Avenue in great spirits. I asked him again which bar, or at least which part of town, he thought we ought to be heading toward, but it seemed that once he had actually let it out that he was thinking of looking for a hooker he began to think maybe it wasn't such a great idea, after all. He became reflective.

"You know, I've probably been on something like two hundred dates in the last two years," he said.

"No way," I replied, trying to do the math in my mind, "like two dates a week?"

"Oh, definitely, yeah, I've been dating like crazy."

"How do you find all these dates?"

"Match dot com."

"But no matches?"

"Well, there have been a few who looked like maybes, yeah, but they didn't pan out."

"Too bad."

"Or maybe I didn't pan out," he added, laughing.

The thought crossed my mind that a guy who could go out on what he thought was a great date and then want to go looking for hookers after that date might, in fact, be the one who didn't pan out. But of course I kept my mouth shut, only asking him again for some kind of a destination. We were still on 5th, down in the thirties now.

"You know what, tomorrow's a work day, I think I'll just call it a night."

I expected him to say that. It often happens that someone in a party mode comes down to Earth after riding aimlessly in a cab for a few minutes.

"So where's home?"

"39th between 2nd and 3rd," he said, and then made the faux pas of giving me directions to a simple destination. "Just cut across 32nd to 3rd, then go up to 40th and cut over to 2nd," he said.

I gave him a painful look through the mirror and, being an astute observer of taxi driver attitudes, he realized his mistake. "I guess you knew that already," he apologized.

I searched for the proper analogy and came up with this little gem:

"It's like telling a kindergarten teacher what a crayon is."

Well, I hit another bull's eye with that one. He again doubled over in laughter and the rest of our ride was spent in Glee Land. That's a place where anything that's seen or heard is hilarious simply because it's there. I decided right then that if I ever became a stand-up comedian I would want to order a couple hundred duplicates of this guy and bring them with me to every show. He was a perfect audience.

When I got him to his building, a luxury high rise, I was given a twenty dollar bill for a $12.70 fare and was informed that I was the best cab driver who ever lived. The door of the cab was opened by Johnnie, the best doorman who ever lived, and as I drove off my final glimpse of my passenger was of him and Johnnie, his new comrade-in-arms, laughing uproariously together about something. Or anything.

It occurred to me later that if the woman I wrote about in my last post might be considered typical of what a female goes through in her search for a mate, Good Time Charlie might be nominated as a candidate for the quintessential male.

As a taxi driver, particularly as one who's been doing it for quite a while, I see them from a distance. And I find a kind of beauty in their bumbling around.

********

And if you happen to be looking for a place to bumble around, might I suggest clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi.

What She Did For Love

There are certain people who stand there on the street looking like they want a cab, yet they do not raise their hand up as you approach them. The instant dilemma for the cabbie is to stop or not to stop. If you stop and it turns out they don't want you, you feel like an idiot. But if you don't stop and then look through your rear-view mirror and see them hailing the next cab coming up the avenue, you really kick yourself for not having stopped. So what do you do?

A young lady was standing just off the curb in front of the Skyline Hotel on 10th Avenue between 49th and 50th on a recent Sunday night at around 1:30 a.m. She sure looked like she wanted a cab, but she didn't raise her hand up.

I stopped anyway.

She paused momentarily, looking around. Then she reached for the handle, opened the door, and got in. It gave me that feeling you get when your instinct in your area of expertise is validated. I knew she wanted a cab, even if she didn't say so, and now I had the reward of a passenger sitting in the back seat. I applauded myself mentally.

I pulled out onto 10th, a one-way avenue that runs uptown.

"So, where are you heading?" I asked, when her destination was not forthcoming.

There was a further pause, and then, "Just keep driving on this, please," meaning 10th Avenue.

That's the kind of thing people say when they know they're headed in the right direction but aren't sure of exactly where their point of departure will be. But then she added this: "Could you drive slowly, please?"

That's the kind of thing people say when they're a vomit candidate. But I could see that she was alert and looking out the window, and that's definitely not the way people carry themselves when they're holding back an urge to regurge. So I was relieved, but I knew something was going on.

Finally she told me she was going to the Upper East Side, but didn't say exactly where. Then - suddenly - she asked me to make a right turn just as we approached 60th Street, then another right turn onto 9th Avenue. We were now headed downtown, the opposite direction from her stated destination. We hit the automatic red at 59th and then, when it turned green, there were further instructions.

"Could you stay on the right side of the avenue, please?" she asked, kind of meekly.

"Sure."

"And could you drive slowly, please?"

"I am driving slowly."

"I know, I mean, if you could continue to drive slowly, please."

"Sure," I replied, thinking how easy it is to get me to do almost anything if the word "please" is used.

We drove down 9th for a few blocks, her eyes searching intently at people on the sidewalks.

"What street did you pick me up at?" she asked as were approaching 51st Street.

"49th."

"Could you take me back to where you picked me up, and then drive across 50th Street?"

"Sure."

In a few moments we were back where we'd started. I made the right onto 50th as she'd requested, heading east. I drove even slower than I'd been driving on 9th Avenue and, as before, she continued to look carefully at anyone who happened to be walking in the area. Whomever she was looking for was not to be found on 50th between 10th and 9th, so we continued to 8th Avenue, but she still didn't find what she was looking for. I decided to play an experienced hunch.

"This is about some guy, isn't it?" I asked.

Her smile told me I was right. "Yeah," she replied softly and with just a touch of self-deprecation.

"You had a fight with your boyfriend?" I asked. You have to be careful as a taxi driver when you decide to pry into a passenger's world. But with her I had a sense that she would welcome having someone to talk to at this particular time.

"No..." she said, "it's not that." She paused, wondering if she should tell me the whole story. I waited quietly for her reply, giving her the space she needed to make up her own mind. Then she dove right into it.

What had happened had been that she'd been sitting at the bar in the Skyline Hotel and had struck up a conversation with a man who'd also been in there. This man had been part of a group of people who were with a well-known actor, Paul Rudd, who was also in the bar. He was professionally associated with Paul Rudd in some way, perhaps his agent or manager, she wasn't sure. They had sat at the bar talking for a little while and then his party was leaving and it was time for him to go. They said goodbye and he rejoined his group, which soon left the place. She saw them disperse and watched him walk away, perhaps heading east on 50th Street, or maybe walking uptown on 10th Avenue, she wasn't sure. She didn't know his name. He didn't know hers. They had not exchanged phone numbers.

A few moments later she also left the bar. Not being sure what to do, but thinking she should probably catch a cab and go home, she walked out onto 10th Avenue. She stood there looking like she wanted a cab, but she had this man on her mind and she wasn't sure what to do and so she didn't raise her hand to hail a taxi that was coming up the avenue. But the taxi stopped anyway. And she got in.

And so now we were searching the streets for this man.

We went up 8th Avenue until we reached Columbus Circle at 59th Street, but we both knew he couldn't have gotten that far in that amount of time. So we turned around and went back down 9th and zig-zagged several blocks in the fifties, to no avail. She was about ready to admit defeat and head home, but decided to give it one more try and go down Broadway into Times Square - maybe he'd decided to walk a few blocks and catch a subway over there. It was a long shot but worth a try, she thought, so we drove up 8th again to 57th Street and then down Broadway toward 50th.

"So what's so special about this guy?" I asked. By this time we were teammates and I felt no sense of inappropriateness in posing this kind of question to her. She confided that it was the feeling she had when she was talking with him. In her words, she just felt comfortable being with him. It felt "right". And then she made this comment:

"You have to understand," she confessed sadly, "I don't like anyone!"

But she liked him.

But by my own analysis, after over thirty years of studying Homo sapiens, what she was really saying was this: this fellow had passed through an internal, kind of genetic, filter. The qualities she was searching for in a mate, consciously and unconsciously, he possessed. His physical appearance, his smile, the way he looked at her, the way he tilted his head when he reached for his drink, her perception of his kindness, his confidence, his hands, his strength, the hair on his arms... these and other nuances had passed through the filter. He just possibly might be "the one". And she had let him slip away.

Men and women are clearly different in this regard. Due to the biological clock, females tend to be much more serious and even businesslike about locating, corralling, and branding (marrying) their potential mates than are their male counterparts. They may say it's something else, but what's really going on here is the mysterious and somewhat magnificent imperative to procreate the species. It's serious business. A few years ago I had a guy and a girl in my cab who'd just been out on their first date. The young man got out first, giving her a polite kiss and a non-specific suggestion that they should get together again soon. "The search goes on," she said to me with some resignation as we drove away. There would be no second date. He had not made it through the filter.

After scrutinizing the relatively empty streets of Times Square for a bit longer, my passenger had finally had enough and I was directed to head back uptown to the Upper East Side. I tried to cheer her up by pointing out that there was still a way she might be able to find this guy. Her window of opportunity was that she knew he was associated with Paul Rudd. What she had to do, I said, was find out where Paul Rudd was located, show up there, and find him.

"Wouldn't that be like stalking him?" she wondered.

"It would only be stalking him if he didn't want you to be there," I said. "What I'm talking about is being true to your own reality and following the dictates of your heart."

Well, those words of wisdom may or may not have made an impression on her. She did seem to be considering it, but most of the rest of our time together was spent chit-chatting about other, more mundane, things. When we finally arrived at her destination, what should have been a ten-minute cab ride had stretched out into twenty-six minutes, and what should have been a ten-dollar fare had turned into twenty-eight, including the tip.

As I watched her walk up the steps of her brownstone and look through her bag for her keys, I had one of those time-progression visions that you get sometimes. I could see her in my mind's eye as a much older woman, long since settled in with whatever her searching may have ultimately brought her, reminiscing with a perhaps wistful smile about the things she had done for love.

Her name was Gina.

She lived at 341 East 85th Street.

********

And I'd like to think that one of the things she did was to click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

The Case of the Missing Beard

It was busy as hell last Saturday night. One of those nights when, even though all of the city's 13,087 cabs were out on the streets, demand still exceeded supply. So when I dropped off a passenger at Waverly Place and 6th Avenue in Greenwich Village at 1 AM, I wasn't particularly surprised to find two people, both females, desperately trying to gain possession of my cab. 

They arrived simultaneously from both sides and I found myself suddenly playing the role of referee. I chose the girl on the left as she had arrived a moment before the other, and the girl on the right didn't take it well, calling me an anal aperture and threatening to report me to the taxi police. But I chose well because the girl on the left turned out to be a sweetheart and left me with a story. 

But the ride didn't start out well at all. She directed me to drive just a block away and stop in front of a three-story apartment building. Which I did. She then got on her cell phone and began a conversation that went something like this: 

GOTL (Girl On The Left): Hey, it's me. 

(pause) 

GOTL: C'mon down. I'm right here. I've got a cab. 

(pause) 

GOTL: Come on, honey! I'm right downstairs. I'm right here! 

(pause) 

GOTL: Pleeease! 

(pause) 

GOTL: Dammit, come on, please! 

(pause) 

GOTL: ...please...please...please...please... 

It went on like this for two or three minutes, and I'm thinking I could have been to Midtown already with the girl on the right. One thing you do not want to do when the city is super-busy is sit around and wait. A cab driver makes very little money sitting still in New York City. So I began to express my discontent to my passenger - and then she did something I really didn't like. She suddenly opened the door, said she'd be right back, got out of the cab and went into the apartment building. Without paying me what was already on the meter. 

Not okay!

Three more minutes went by. I was just about to drive away and write it off as five minutes and a few dollars lost to a whacky girl who had no regard for the rights of others when, to my surprise, she reappeared. Looking downcast and dejected, she asked me to drive her to a bar on 30th Street and 3rd Avenue. By this time my curiosity had been aroused, so I began asking questions. And this was the story... 

My passenger, whose name was Jamie, had been talking to Jed, her boyfriend, on the cell phone. She wanted him to come out with her to this bar, but he wanted to stay inside. When she wasn't able to convince him to come downstairs, she went up to his apartment to try to persuade him. But Jed wouldn't budge. Both Jamie and Jed are twenty-one years old. They both go to Pace University, and they've been dating for about a year. Well, the guy sounded to me like a jerk. Here was his girlfriend begging him to come out with her on a Saturday night, and he won't go. Not what you'd call creating the relationship. 

But there was more to the story. Jamie told me that for as long as she's known him, Jed had always had a full-grown, thick, red beard. In fact, she'd never seen him without it. And neither had any of their friends. Then, a couple of days earlier, Jed suddenly went and shaved it off. And now no one, including Jamie, recognizes him anymore. She'd always related to him as a guy with a beard - it was his main identifying characteristic - and, now that the beard was gone, it was like he was a different person. Not really. But sort of. 

Apparently it was all too much for Jed. He'd decided to stay in his apartment and watch the Discovery and History Channels, perhaps forever. But Jamie couldn't stand the idea of sitting there and looking at another documentary about World War II, so she was going to that bar on 30th and 3rd by herself. 

After learning the whole story I found myself softening up on Jed. He now seemed to me to be something like a Woody Allen character, and I mentioned this to Jamie. She brightened up and agreed that he was, in fact, Woody Allen-ish, and spoke adoringly of him. So she really does like this guy, with or without a beard. 

Which just goes to show that true love is stronger than whiskers.