The Weeknd

Tuesday nights at around 3 A.M. -- that's an interesting time of the night for a taxi driver in New York City.  It's the time when the streets are not only at their emptiest, but when the "creatures of the night", so to speak, are most likely to appear from the shadows -- and that could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the creature.  I was getting ready to end my shift at that time a few months ago, not in a creature-of-the-night mood, really, so when I saw a relatively normal-looking pair of humans hailing me at the corner of 54th Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan, it was a welcome sight.  The two of them -- an attractive, young white lady wearing a tight-fitting party dress and a hip-looking black guy carrying a guitar case -- jumped in and the guy said they wanted to go to the Affinia Hotel at 31st Street and 7th Avenue.  The doors closed and we were on our way, but we went barely a block when there was a problem.

The guy suddenly realized he'd left his card (credit card) in the bar.  This meant we had to loop around to 5th Avenue, cross over on 53rd Street back to 6th Avenue, and then make a right turn on 54th Street, where the bar, a place called Connolly's, was located.  This was okay with me, of course, as it meant more mileage on the ride, assuming he went into the bar, got his card, and we continued on to the hotel.  The young lady, however, was not comprehending the problem.  She thought he said that he'd left his card in his car and didn't understand how that could happen.  After a prolonged discussion, the guy finally realized her confusion and told her the card was in the bar, not in his car.  "My car's in LA," he said.  They both laughed.  Well, he laughed.  She guffawed.  This misunderstanding was not merely funny, it was hilarious, from her point of view.

Overhearing this little episode made me curious about this couple so I kept my attention on them as I made my way back to Connolly's Bar.  I took note of the way they were.  She was clearly a bit tipsy -- a happy, but not drunk, attractive female.  She spoke to the guy ebulliently, full of agreement, listening carefully to his every word, and sitting so close to the guy that a cab driver could only assume that they were more than friends -- or were about to be so.

The guy, though, was much more subdued, laid-back, cool and calm, but not in an off-putting way.  I could see that he liked the girl, liked the affinity and attention he was receiving from her, and was perhaps playing his cards a bit carefully, not wanting to blow what surely must have looked like a winning hand.  He wasn't doing a lot of talking, though.  The girl was the gabby one.

We circled around and in a couple of minutes we arrived at Connolly's on 54th Street.  The guy opened his door and stepped out onto the street, leaving his guitar in the cab.

"Be right back."

"Okay," she beamed back.

He gave her a half-smile and walked into the bar.

The moment the guy disappeared from sight she turned her attention to me.  With wide-eyed  enthusiasm she exclaimed:

"Do you know who he IS???!!!"

I, of course, had no idea who he was, so I said, "The guy who left his guitar in the cab?"

My quip went unnoticed by my passenger and continued on its journey into outer space.

"He's The Weeknd!" she squealed.

"What do you mean?  It's Tuesday."

"No, no, he calls himself 'The Weeknd'."  She became a bit serious for a moment.  "It's his stage name.  But it's not spelled the same.  You leave off the 'e' after 'week'.  So it's not like you say 'The Week End'.  It's more like you say 'The Weakened'.  It's like a double-meaning."

"Oh."

She lowered her voice a notch.  "His real name is 'L.J.', she said, "but he doesn't want anyone to know."  Suddenly she seemed worried.  "Don't tell him I told you who he is when he comes back, okay?"

"Oh, sure, don't worry.  It'll be our little secret."

Her smile returned.

"Okay, so who is The Weeknd?" I inquired (of course).

Her unbridled enthusiasm returned.   "Oh, he's a singer.  He's the hottest thing around right now!  He's HUGE!   I mean HUGE!!!  He's on all the radio stations!  He's all over the place on YouTube!  He's HUGE!"

"Really, wow!  So who are you, his girlfriend?"

"Well, ha-ha, not exactly... we just met in the bar."  She then giggled in the way that people often do  when they're about to engage in a guilty pleasure.  A "My Bad" grin appeared on her face and remained there.

"Ohh, I got it," I replied.  I smiled back, as if to say, "I'll be your secret coachman."

So now I did get it, indeed.  She was his Thank-You-For-Choosing-Me-Sir pick-up of the evening.  And the place they were on their way to is also known as the Shagalicious Hotel, by Marriott.

"So how did you and The Weeknd wind up in a bar at three in the morning?" I wanted to know.

"Ohhh, well, he just played at a big fund-raiser at MOMA," she said.  "$50,000 a plate!  Can you imagine that -- $50,000 a plate!  He was the entertainment."

It did make sense.  Although the main entrance to MOMA (the Museum of Modern Art) is on East 53rd Street, there's an open-air terrace that extends to 54th Street, right across the street from Connolly's Bar.  So I assumed The Weeknd and his people must have headed there after the show.

We continued to chat it up for a couple of minutes which meant that she went on bubbling all over the top about how big a star The Weeknd is while I pleasantly acknowledged whatever she said.  But then, suddenly, there was a hitch in the plan: the guy who calls himself "The Weeknd" returned to the cab, sat himself down, and announced to my passenger that he was having a problem with his card, so there would be a bit of a delay.  He suggested that instead of waiting for him in the cab that she come back into the bar until he could clear up the trouble.  The girl said, "Oh, okay," and took out her own credit card to pay the fare, which was up to $9.80 at that point.  She swiped her card, the transaction (including a $1.96 tip) went through, and they left the premises, he with his guitar in hand.

"Sorry," he called out to me, which I appreciated.  I like that in a celebrity, no attitude.  He seemed like a nice enough guy.

Well, there I sat in front of Connolly's Bar.  There were still quite a few people inside, so I thought I might as well hang out and see if I can get another fare, or better yet, maybe I could get the girl and this guy The Weeknd again.  It would no doubt be a fascinating eavesdropping situation, based on what she'd already told me.

But no.  Ten minutes ticked by and then finally a middle-aged couple, whose destination was the Roosevelt Hotel on Madison Avenue, came out of the bar and got in my cab.  As I pulled out from the curb I looked in my rearview mirror and saw the girl and The Weeknd re-emerge from the bar and get into another taxi.  I cursed my luck, missing them by just seconds, and drove my new passengers to their destination.  It turned out to be my last fare of the evening.

I was curious about The Weeknd, so the next day I decided to check him out online. I found that he is, indeed, quite the rising star.  He's got dozens of videos on YouTube, with many millions of views, and has performed at lots of major events.  His latest venture was doing the soundtrack for the movie Fifty Shades Of Grey -- very impressive!  I watched one of his videos and found (unusual for me) that I liked the sound of a new recording artist.  This guy was good.  So I clicked on another one, this time paying more attention to the images than I had before.  And then...

...hey, wait a minute...

I looked more closely.  Whoa, whoa, whoa, just a minute, there!

I watched the video again.  Could it be?

Oh my God, yes, it was true.

THE GUY I WAS LOOKING AT IN THE VIDEO WHO CALLS HIMSELF "THE WEEKND" WAS NOT THE GUY WHO'D BEEN IN MY CAB!

On further investigation, I found that there's a fellow called "L.J." in his band who plays the bass!  Aha!

At first my feeling about the attractive young lady in the tight-fitting party dress was one of sympathy.  Poor thing, she'd been duped by what may be the oldest band-member's trick in the book.  But then I became more critical.  I mean, what a disgrace to the good reputation of groupies everywhere.

Come on, honey.

If a guy tells you he's Mick Jagger, you've got to do a little vetting.  Does he know the words to "I Can't Get No Satisfaction"?  Can he at least hum the tune?

Come ON!

Public Lewd Versus Private Lewd

Quite often during the course of a ride a taxi driver gets to learn - either by being a fly on the wall or through direct conversation - something about a passenger’s interesting story that is still in progress. But then the ride ends, the passenger departs, and the driver is left wondering how the hell it will all turn out.

But of course he never gets to know this.

Well, almost never.

Recently I had a fare with a passenger who had a wild story that she was right smack dab in the middle of. And I did find out how it all turned out…

It started on a Tuesday evening around 8 p.m. when a nice-looking, twenty-something female hailed me in the East Village and said she wanted to go to Garden City. Now, two things were good here: first, I know where that is. It’s a town on Long Island quite near to where I grew up, about a forty-minute ride from Manhattan. And secondly, since it’s an OT (“out-of-town”) job, it’s lucrative.

Cha-ching!

I did some math and came up with $100 as a fair price - mostly fair to me as it’s more than an hour and twenty minutes of my time is worth. She agreed and we were on our way.

“So where in Garden City are we going?” I inquired.

“It’s a lawyer’s office. They’re waiting for me.”

Wow - intriguing! Anyone would have been curious to know what this was all about, but it would have been inappropriate for me to ask. After all, it was none of my business. I was merely providing a service here. If she wanted to tell me about it, she would. If not, not. So we drove on in silence through the Midtown Tunnel and out onto the Long Island Expressway while she stared out the window and I looked the highway.

But it was sitting there in the air between us.

Five more minutes of silence and it was really bothering me. This was so unusual. Could she be a lawyer herself and was going all the way out there to sign some document or something? I suppose, but, looking at her in the mirror, she didn’t have that sort of cocky professional demeanor that lawyers often have, even the female ones. She seemed worried about something, which might be expected if one were in some kind of trouble and the urgency of the situation required a hundred dollar cab ride and lawyers waiting for you in Garden City.

And there was that other thing, too - there was the distinct possibility that I could drive her all the way out there, drop her off, and then realize that not only would I never find out how it had turned out, I would never even know what it had been about. And I knew it was something, and that it just had to be a good one. It just had to be!

So I decided to put aside my professionalism and delve. I told her I was a writer, that I had a blog, even a book, and I knew it was none of my business but I just couldn’t help but be curious to know what was going on, if she didn’t mind. Now she could have just said, sorry, it’s a personal matter that she couldn’t talk about, or some such, but instead she was quite forthright, perhaps even glad to get it off her chest, and told me the story.

It concerned lewd behavior.

Definition: lewd adj. obscene; bawdy; indecent.
(Macmillan Dictionary for Students)


She was a kid from Vermont, whom we shall call Gloria. Her journey to New York City had begun a couple of years earlier when she took a job at a tech start-up company in Vermont and got to know the owner of the company, whom we shall call Jeff. Jeff was a nice young man who owned a particularly cool dog, whom we shall call Arthur. Gloria took an avid interest in Arthur, often dog-sitting for him, and so, in addition to their relationship in the workplace, they had become friendly outside of that environment.

Eventually Gloria left Jeff and Arthur for greener pastures in the Big Apple, taking a new job in a similar tech start-up. Within a year, however, Jeff, seeking greener pastures himself, moved his company to New York City and the two of them began seeing each other again. One night at about 1 a.m. they were seeing each other in Jeff’s car, parked in the busy-at-night Meat Packing District. And as often happens when nice young men and women find themselves alone in a car, they were soon in each other’s arms.

And legs.

Or at least that’s what the cops who saw them thought. In actuality what they had seen was Gloria straddling Jeff in a passionate embrace while kissing. Due to their position, however, it looked like outright public fornication, even though both were fully clothed.

There was a time in New York City when such behavior, even when it really had been outright public fornication, would have been handled with a blast of a siren and some flashing red lights. And then some chuckles as the miscreants scrambled to put their clothes back on. But that was then and this was now, an era when even minor sins must be handled with the full weight of the law, lest the pillars of civilization come tumbling down.

They were ordered out of the car, placed under arrest, handcuffed, charged with “public lewdness”, and driven to the precinct on West 20th Street, about half a mile from the scene of the crime.

Gloria was already shocked and humiliated, but her ordeal had just begun. At the precinct, after being separated from Jeff, she was handcuffed to a pole for two hours. Then she was transferred in a van to another precinct on West 54th Street and placed in a cell by herself. This cell had no running water other than a toilet which, if she used it, would make her fully visible to anyone who walked by. She was spoken to rudely by the police personnel. She was not allowed to call anyone. And for breakfast she was fed an orange soda and a Happy Meal (a taste of station house irony, there). Finally she was arraigned and released the next afternoon at 2 p.m. So making out in Jeff’s car had resulted in thirteen hours of incarceration and a sample of what it’s like to lose one’s freedom and be at the mercy of the police department.

That had been five weeks ago. And now she was in a taxicab heading to Garden City. The reason for the trip, I learned, was that a hearing before a judge was to take place the next day and at the last minute Gloria decided it might be a good idea to hire a private attorney rather than take her chances with a free public defender. It had suddenly dawned on her that a conviction of Public Lewdness might not look great on her resume. Or on the internet. And that getting a dismissal was worth the expense. So she called a friend who recommended her own family’s attorney, but she would have to go out to Garden City immediately to pay $1,500 for the service in advance.

So that’s what it was all about.

We found the attorney’s place, an office building on the periphery of the Roosevelt Field Mall, without too much trouble. I was about to head back to the city when Gloria realized she might have a problem getting back to the city herself, so she asked me to wait. Half an hour later she emerged and off we went to Williamsburg in Brooklyn, where she lived. The charge for the taxi ride came to $162, including the waiting time and the tip.

As she departed I told her I was dying to know how this story ended and gave her my card with my email address, asking her to drop me a line. She promised that she would, but I doubted I would ever hear from her. People who take your card rarely get back to you, even if they were sincere at the time. So I was delighted when her email arrived in my inbox a few weeks later.

What had happened? She and Jeff, who used a free public defender, were “put through the system” by their lawyers. Behind closed doors a deal was made by which they agreed to plead guilty to the charge of Public Lewdness and perform six hours of community service, picking up leaves and things in Tompkins Square Park on a Saturday at eight in the morning. They were given what’s called an “A.C.O.D.” (Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal), which means that after six months of “good behavior” the whole thing would be taken off their records, as if it never happened.

So it turned out to be a case of “all’s well that ends well”. No stocks or pillories in the town square. No rotten tomatoes being thrown at one by the outraged citizenry. No scarlet letters.

“Was it worth the expense of driving all the way out there and hiring your own attorney?” I asked.

“A complete waste of money,” Gloria replied. “But at least I get to feel that I’ve contributed to the economy.”

Indeed she did - my economy. That $162 certainly helped make my night.

But my night turned out to be not over regarding the subject of Lewd Behavior. As if being watched over by the gods of Lewd themselves on a break from a Bacchanalian ritual, I was shown that when it comes to this kind of activity there are right ways and there are wrong ways to go about it.

At three in the morning I was hailed by a young lady in tight clothing coming from the Penthouse Club at 45th Street and 11th Avenue who was heading out to Astoria in Queens. She was pleasant and conversational and I soon found out what I already knew: that she was a - what’s the right word? Dancer? Entertainer? Performer? Oh, all right, she was a stripper, okay? Which of course means that she’d just spent the entire evening strutting around naked, or almost naked, and sitting on men’s laps whom she didn’t even know in exchange for money.

Uh, I believe that would be defined as “lewd” according to Mr. Macmillan.

What I didn’t know, but found out from her, was that she didn’t live in Astoria. She was on her way to the apartment of one of the laps she’d been sitting on in the Penthouse Club where, I assumed, some further lewd behavior was about to take place.

So what have we learned? Sit on your lover’s lap in a car, you go to jail and pay a lawyer fifteen hundred bucks to get you off. Sit on a stranger’s lap in the Penthouse Club and he pays you fifteen hundred bucks to come over to his place to get him off.

It’s all about location.

The Hotel Room

I have wondered from time to time if it's just because I'm getting older or if it's because the mores of our society have changed or if it's simply that I don't drive on Friday or Saturday nights anymore that have caused a particularly outrageous activity to vanish from the back seat of my taxi. No, not slopping up the upholstery with cheese nachos.

Sex.

It's been something like four or five years since it last went down. And then it annoyed me so much I threw them out of the cab in the middle of Times Square. Maybe that's what did it. But it finally happened again a couple of nights ago after such a long intermission - a throwback, it was, to the good old days.

Enter the stars of our show at exactly 1:52 a.m. at 2nd Avenue and 84th Street. She, an attractive brunette and he a not unattractive guy with a normal haircut and a bit of a beard, both twenty-somethings. There was nothing over the top about their appearance, nothing that would have made you think that defects in their character were showing up in the way they carried themselves or by the way they looked. In fact, they struck me as a couple of nice kids as they climbed in and told me their destination, 117th Street and 8th Avenue in Harlem. The girl, in particular, greeted me with a warm hello and a smile which gave me a sense of inclusion in their world, something that is appreciated by a cab driver in the middle of the night. It can be a lonely profession.

But that sense of inclusion quickly evaporated when I made a right on 83rd and headed crosstown. Their togetherness was too together for me to feel anything but excluded as she cuddled up on his chest and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. This would be another purely functional ride after all, the driver a mute extension of the taxicab itself, the passengers in their own space and bubble. So be it.

We stopped at a red light at Park Avenue. Having the chance to take my eyes off the road and glance around at the environment, I sensed that something was wrong here. Looking in the mirror, the girl had disappeared. Could she be taking a quick snooze on the guy's lap? Not unless she talks in her sleep, as her little female giggles were loud enough to carry over into the front of the cab. I feared the worst but carried on, turning right on Madison in the direction of the 97th Street transverse. Before we had progressed a block on the avenue the giggles had morphed into murmurs and there were some upper body movements of the guy which gave a further indication that what was going on in the back was an activity of the oral variety that is actually illegal in a public place.

No, not brushing your teeth.

Now, what is a cab driver supposed to do in this situation? Stick his head through the partition's window to catch the perpetrators red-handed (all right, perhaps "handed" is not the correct word here)? And if you do that, then what do you do? It's just too awkward to be confrontable. Besides, what if I poked my head through the partition and found that nothing untoward was actually going on, after all? Wouldn't that make me out to be the jackass?

So to hell with it. I would endure it all the way to Harlem if I had to. I made the left on 97th.

But then, as we began our trek across the Central Park transverse, they crossed the line. Looking in the mirror, they had assumed the "Taxicab Position" - the male sitting normally, facing forward, the female straddling him, facing the rear window. It means their activity had gone from "presumed innocent" to "you've got to be kidding" in the mind of the taxi driver. It was over the top, right in your face, and for the sake of one's dignity it begs for some kind of response.

I have two forms of retaliation to the appearance of the Taxicab Position and I immediately put the first one into motion. It is to attempt, by means of hard braking and sharp turning, to knock the female off her joystick. It's kind of like a party game like "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" - "Knock the Girl Off the Penis". So when I came to the next red light at Central Park West I slowed, then hit the brake with a noticeable thump. No good, she remained attached and continued to sway gently in place. When the light turned green I made the right on CPW as sharply as I could without putting the cab into a spin, but again it was to no avail. This girl could have a career in the rodeo.

By the time we came to the next red at 106th Street the party had ended, at least for the time being. She had dismounted somewhere around 101st and the two of them sat tight together, smiling and cooing at each other the rest of the way up to their destination at 117th. Still, it was not over as far as I was concerned. You simply cannot do this in the space of another human and not expect a settlement of accounts. This is my taxicab. This is my workplace. To fail to respond would be a humiliation in itself, an admission to myself that I was, in fact, just a mute extension of the taxicab. Something needed to be said, so the second form of retaliation was begun.

As I brought the cab to a stop at 117th and awaited payment of the $14.50 fare, I began a little end-of-ride conversation. "You know, the taxi rates just went up," I said in the general direction of the back seat. It was a true statement. There was a fare increase on September 4th.

"They did?" the girl responded.

"Yeah, there's a $10 surcharge now for the hotel room."

The guy laughed but his partner in crime did not get the joke. "I hope you're kidding," she said as she handed me a $20 bill.

I took the bill and held it in the air. "Yes... I am..." I replied, in a not unfriendly way.

"We're going to a hotel room!" she exclaimed, happy-faced, as if it were quite a coincidence that I happened to mention that.

"You've just been in one," I zapped back. Touche.

"Can I have three dollars back?" she asked, her smile still in place.

"Three dollars back," I repeated, with just the slightest hint of sarcasm. I slowly counted out the bills from my roll and offered them through the partition to whomever would take them. She moved forward to accept the money but as she did so her boyfriend interceded.

"Tell him to keep it," he told her, sotto voce style.

She paused a moment as the suggestion was processed. "Oh, you can keep the change!" she said with just the slightest hint of airhead.

"Gee, thanks," I replied in pretended surprise. I didn't need their three bucks. But this gesture in the fragile territory of Manners, Lack Of, at least did do something to compensate for their transgression.

They stepped out of the cab and closed the door. I looked over at them for a final mental snapshot and found that the girl was waving me goodbye, still smiling.

"Thanks for the hotel room!" she called back.

The Caveman Lullaby

Anyone who lives in a big city is familiar with the Caveman Lullaby. It's that melody that can be heard when a female, or a group of them - always unaccompanied by a male - walk by a neo-Neanderthal, or a group of them, on the street.

"Eww-eey, eww-eyy, eww-eyy!" they chime.

"Momma!" they groan in utmost pain.

"Baby, baby, baby!" they squeal, with visions of ecstatic copulation reeling them back to the glory days of Homo erectus.

Painting with the broadest of strokes, let me say, there are only two kinds of men in this world: a) those who would engage in this kind of behavior, even once, and b) those who would never so much as consider doing such a thing. I, of course, belong to the latter category and hold in justifiable disdain all the cavemen with whom I have the misfortune of sharing my gender. Unfortunately, as a taxi driver, I am occasionally forced to render my services to these morons and, worse, to overhear their pathetic conversations.

I had just such a ride recently.

Four of them piled into my cab on a Friday night around 10:30 - three in the back and one up front with me - and told me to drive them to a certain club on East 21st Street. This turned out to be one of those four-passenger rides in which you wind up feeling like you're the Invisible Man. They just carry on with whatever they were talking about exactly as if you weren't there. It's one thing if they're all in the back and there's at least a semblance of you're-over-there-and-I'm-over-here. But with one of them up front, you feel like you've been hijacked and forced to join the gang, even if they see you as nothing more than a temporary robot-guy. The best thing to do is to just grit your teeth and bear it. I pulled out from the curb and the endurance began.

The topic of conversation had moved from which parties they'd been to lately, to how fucked-up some guy named Schmizel was, to who supposedly got laid last week, when we pulled up next to another taxi at a red light. Sitting in the back seat of the cab was a blond, a party girl type, who was busy texting. The guy in the back on the left was directly across from her and rolled down his window.

"Hey, baby," he brayed.

She looked over at him.

There was a brief pause of anticipation on her part, as if to say, "Yeah?"

"Hey, baby," the guy regurgitated.

She immediately turned back to her smartphone as if the annoyance had never taken place.

I thought this rejection would be pounced upon by his buddies, but there was nothing. It was as if this was just part of the expected flow of the evening: you stop at red lights and grunt at whichever female happens to be beside you in the next car, your advance is denied, and you move on. Nothing personal, just business.

The topic of conversation then turned to a girl named Lorraine, who apparently was well known to all of them.

"You did Lorraine?" a voice in the back asked.

"Fuckin' uh-huh!" the guy sitting next to me said enthusiastically.

"Whoa, when ja do her, dude?"

"At Lenny's party, like, what, three weeks ago?"

"Oh, Lenny's party, shit, yeah, there was some crazy shit at that party! I remember that!"

There was some talk about how crazy the shit had actually been at Lenny's party, but the subject soon turned back to Lorraine. The information shared included:

a) what a super hot fuckin' slut she was;

b) how her left tit was bigger than her right tit, or maybe it was the other way around;

c) the vast extent of her bush and how the guy sitting up front with me needed a weed whacker to get through it;

d) the surprising discovery of some dried-up little pieces of fecal matter when he finally was able to make his way down there.

As the three guys in the back roared in laughter at this foray into the realm of gross-you-out-with-something-you-never-thought-of-before-dude, we arrived at our destination on East 21st. Keeping in harmony with the tone of the evening, they each cried out, "You pay!" at the guy sitting next to me, sticking him with the fare, as they hurriedly filed out onto the street.

"Motherfuckers!" the guy in the front yelled back, realizing too late that the last person leaving the taxi is the one who has to pay. It's an urban form of musical chairs.

"Motherfuckers," he then said in my direction, the first communication that was even slightly meant to be received by me. I felt honored.

"Motherfuckers," I agreed.

He paid me the fare, promising some sort of vengeance to be wreaked upon his buddies in the near future, and exited the premises. Noting the details of the ride on my trip sheet, I turned off the meter, looked up, and noticed an elderly gentleman hailing me a short distance down the street. I started to move in his direction, but before I could go ten feet I was surprised to see the four guys who'd just been my passengers coming back toward me with an attractive brunette in tow. They barreled right past the elderly gentleman, opened the door of the cab, and with some exaggerated and uncalled-for chivalry presented her with this handsome prize, my taxicab. As it was tough to find an available cab at this particular time, she showed her gratitude by giving them a smile and a thank you in return.

My first instinct was to tell the brunette sorry, but the elderly gentleman had already hailed me, but then I thought better of it. The four merry cavemen had just paid me and given me a decent tip, so it would have been perceived as a dis on my part to do so, even though their "chivalry" was nothing more than Neanderthal dressed in lambswool. And besides, it wasn't the brunette's fault. She probably hadn't even noticed the elderly gentleman. I shrugged my shoulders and pulled out from the curb. Horatio and Washington was her destination, in the West Village.

Well, she turned out to be quite a nice person and a ready conversationalist. After a couple of minutes of benign chit-chat, I turned the subject to what was really on my mind.

"Those guys who got this cab for you..."

"Yeah?"

"...what did you think of them?"

"Seemed like nice guys. I'd been trying to get a cab for ten minutes, so they really helped me out back there."

"Have you ever walked by some guys on the street and had them start whistling and making kissing sounds at you?"

"Sure... God, I hate that. It's so degrading."

"Well, those guys were those guys."

"They were? How do you know?"

I gave her a censored version of their conversation about Lorraine and went on to tell her about the "hey, baby" guy in the back seat.

"Men are such pigs," she said, smiling.

It was turning out to be one of those great rides in which a female passenger is so free and open in talking to her driver about relationships between the sexes that you'd think the cabbie was a trusted female friend and not a guy she'd met five minutes ago who was just driving her someplace. I take it as a feather in my cap when I am accorded this honor. It's right out of Taxicab Confessions.

"What amazes me," I said, "is that guys who do this haven't noticed that it never works."

"Never works!" she echoed, laughing.

"It's true," I continued, "never once in the history of Men and Women has a guy gone into that "hey, baby" routine and gotten even a smile, much less gotten laid. It's automatic rejection."

"Automatic!" she agreed. "Why can't they ever learn this?"

When she departed the taxi at Horatio and Washington, she left me with not only an above-average tip, but an afterglow. I drove around for the next fifteen minutes with a smile I just couldn't get off my face from thinking about how funny and satisfying my last two fares had been. "Never once in the history of Men and Women" I replayed in my mind. How hysterical was that?...

And then it hit me.

"Oh my God!" I cried out loud as a certain almost-forgotten incident knocked on the door of my consciousness.

"Oh my God!"

On a Saturday night many years ago, sometime back in the '80s, a not unattractive girl, a twenty-something, got into my cab. She was particularly friendly, full of smiles and chatter, and was on her way to some disco (as clubs were still called in those days) on the West Side. After a few minutes of conversation she surprised me - no, hell, she shocked me - by suddenly asking if I wanted to be her date and come into the disco with her. This startled me because, for one thing, I have never been in the Brad Pitt category of boy-toy taxi driver. I am the Woody Allen knockoff, so this kind of proposition never happens to me. And for another thing, I was married at the time, and unless you happen to have been Nastasia Kinski, my fantasy sexpot in those days, I was not to be so easily swayed into tiptoeing around on my marriage vows.

So I was in the process of saying gee, thanks, that's so sweet of you, but I've gotta work, you know, so no thanks, when an incredible thing happened. A car with four guys in it pulled up next to us at a red light. The guy closest to my passenger rolled down his window.

"Hey, baby," he blurted out at her.

The Rules of Sexual Etiquette clearly state that she is required to ignore the barbarian, but that's not what she did. Instead, she smiled back at him.

"Hey, how ya doin'?" she replied.

That was all it took. In less than ten seconds she had shoved some money in my hand, opened her door, and gotten into the car with the four guys. Off they drove with the girl and disappeared into the kaleidoscope of traffic on the West Side, leaving me stupefied and alone in my empty cab. The incident was so contrary to anything I'd ever seen before that it became one of those mile markers on the highway of life that every once in a while jumps out at you in memory.

"How in the hell could that have ever happened?" you ask yourself, never expecting to receive an answer. Well, only now, twenty-five years later, do I finally have an explanation for the phenomenon.

It's like this. There are forces in the physical universe that we know exist, but we cannot see them. Magnetism, for example. Or microwaves. Or even the wind, for that matter. And then there are forces that we suspect must exist, but we don't really know what they are. Like bird migration. How do those birds know how to fly in formation and go to some exact location every year that's five hundred miles away? How do some animals seem to know a couple of days in advance that an earthquake is coming?

In a similar way - I'm sure of it now - there is a force at work that affects only the neo-Neanderthal, and not the rest of the men on the planet. You see, whenever a "hey, baby" is met with a "hey, how ya doin'?", even if it's once every twenty-five years, it sets off a carrier wave that only the caveman can perceive. He knows, on the deepest instinctual level, that she's out there somewhere. It's just a matter of finding her.

So what this means is that my supposition - "it never works!" - turns out to be not true. Actually, every once in a rare while it does work, as we have seen with that girl in my cab. And that's what keeps the whole damn thing going.

So there's no fighting it, the Caveman Lullaby is here to stay. In fact, I'm thinking maybe even I, the Mister Well-Mannered, Intellectual Taxi Guy, should give it a try. I mean, it's a numbers game, lots of people read this blog, and, who knows, the "hey, how ya doin'?" female could be reading this post at this very moment.

I'm gonna roll my window down right now.

Here goes.

Hey, baby...

********

Why dontcha come over to my place and we could, you know, look at some Pictures From A Taxi, or somethin'? Just click here.

The No Sex Zone

I was waiting in the taxi line at Flashdancer's at 4 am recently when a young woman and a guy hurried out of the place and got into my cab. She wasn't one of the strippers - the girls who work there never get into cabs with customers - she was the girlfriend of this particular guy and they had just spent some together-time in the club. Their destination was the West Village, a two-mile trip from our Times Square starting point.

They immediately snuggled up close together and started laughing and were kind of pecking at each other, so I knew that these two were strictly into their own world and that this would be a non-conversational ride. That was all right with me because I'd already been driving for over ten hours and was hitting my post-4-am-wall, that mental/physical barrier which says that this will be the last ride of the night. So I just turned up the radio a bit and put my proverbial eyes on the road.

But before we'd gone ten blocks I noticed in the mirror an unmistakable shift in their positions. The girl had moved down in the seat and the guy was straight out on top of her. There was no question about it - they were about to start fucking. I drove for about another block and then actually surprised myself at my own reaction. I suddenly pulled over to the side of the street, right next to the Hard Rock Cafe, and stopped the taxi.

"I don't have to put up with this," I barked. "Take another cab!"

They had already straightened themselves up, and the guy started to say something in protest. But I cut him off before he could get a syllable out of his mouth.

"Don't give me a hard time," I said, "just get out and take another cab!"

The girl, who had one of those classic shit-eating smiles on her face, gave him a little shove and they both immediately exited the premises without any further words being exchanged.

I drove off a bit in a daze, wondering if I should look for another fare or just call it a night. As I moved down 7th Avenue, I found that my attention was stuck not on the fact that two people were about to have sex right there in the seat behind me - that has happened a number of times - it was on the way I had handled it. That had never happened before.

In the past I must admit I have always found the titillation factor to have outweighed the indignity factor. I have been more interested in voyeuristic aspect of this weird social situation than in keeping my own dignity intact by not allowing ill-mannered people to get away with pretending that I don't exist.

For several days I found myself mentally returning to the incident and wondering what had changed with me. And then it hit me like a slap in the face. Oh my god, I am over 50 years old and have gone through male menopause without even knowing it!

Shit!

I'm getting old!

My fears were confirmed when I remembered what had happened about a week before I had had the two would-be fuckers in my taxi. I had picked up a young guy from this very same strip club and gotten into a lively discussion with him about breasts, something that was not hard to do considering he was coming from the Double D capital of the west side of town.

Why, I had beseeched him, did men almost uniformly have such an obsession with breasts, anyway? A breast is a gland for God's sake, right up there next to the thyroid and the pituitary. In fact, it's not even a part of the reproductive system. It really belongs to the digestive system, if you think about it. I mean, it secretes milk! What's the big deal?

Of course, he looked at me like I was out of my mind and said he didn't care if they belonged to the digestive system or the solar system - he just wanted to get his hands on as many of them as possible.

Now I realize the only reason I could even say such a thing to this perfectly normal guy is that I am on a steep slope that winds up in a nursing home. There I lie in my bed watching The O'Reilly Factor on an overhead television and wondering when the nurse will show up to change my diapers. It's depressing as hell.

So depressing, in fact, that the only way I can think of to cheer myself up is to publish some pictures of dogs that have recently been in my cab. And here they are...

Pictured here is Pippen, a three year-old King Charles Cavalier Spaniel who was named after a character is Lord of the Rings. According to his owners (whose names I didn't get) Pippen is a big eater and can "almost talk".

And this is Phoebe, a four year-old French bulldog, with owners Ruben and Eric. Phoebe barks when she sees an animal on tv; she fetches like crazy; and if someone is being loud or is upset, she will actually climb up on that person and put her paw on his or her mouth or chest.

There you go, it worked... I'm cheered up already!

And you can cheer up, too, by clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Running The Gamut

You know, one of the truly great things about driving a cab in New York City is that on any given night you will encounter individuals who are from totally opposite ends of the social spectrum. People sort of carry their own worlds around with them, so a taxi driver has this opportunity to get up close and personal with people who are so dissimilar, one from the other, that they might as well be from different planets.

To illustrate my point, I had these two fares a few days ago in the same night...

At 11 pm I was hailed by a blonde at 64th and West End Avenue. She said she wanted to go to a building that was somewhere in the 30s on 1st Avenue, so I went up to 65th Street and we headed across the Central Park transverse to the East Side. She was talking to someone on her cell phone and I wasn't really paying too much attention to her, but then when her conversation ended she suddenly says, "Hey, could you tell me something? How do you spell 'first'?"

"You mean like, first, second, third...?"

"Yeah, is it f-r-i-s-t or f-i-r-s-t?"

"You know, I charge extra for consultations."

"Ha, ha, come on!"

"Okay. It's f-i-r-s-t."

"Thanks!"

Why she needed to know how to spell a word in the middle of a cab ride I did not know, but I liked her easygoing attitude. No airs here. Just a friendly person who was grammatically challenged. I guess she was a little embarrassed by her inability to spell a simple word because she then admitted that she wasn't the brightest starfish in the sea.

"You weren't cut out to be one of those nerdy kids in a spelling bee, huh?" I said.

"Nah, but I'll tell you something - they may know how to spell but they don't know how to fuck."

Whoa. If she didn't have it already, she now had my full attention. There are only three ways a female would ever say that to a cab driver: 1) she's with two or three other girls and she's showing off by trying to create an effect, 2) she's totally shitfaced, or 3) she's a professional. My passenger was alone and she wasn't drunk, so it had to be number 3.

I was trying to figure out a way of asking her about this, but as it turned out the answer was given to me in the most unlikely of ways. She had found out from the person she was talking to on her cell phone that the building she was going to was on the corner of 33rd and 1st and then for some reason added that this person who lived there made great chicken soup.

33rd and 1st... chicken soup... It rang a bell.

"Hey, wait a minute," I said, "I once picked up a woman coming from that building who told me she had gone there to see her friend because she was sick and her friend made great chicken soup."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, it was on New Year's Eve. "

"I wonder if I know her."

"She told me she was an adult film performer," I said, carefully glancing in the mirror to catch her reaction.

"Oh, I must know her!"

"She was in her thirties, I think, with blonde hair. She said she was going to LA to be in a film the next day and had to get better because she couldn't give blow jobs with a stuffed nose."

"Oh, I know who it was! Her name is Houston!"

When she said it, it totally clicked in my mind. That was her name. I had actually written about this person in a post. (Here.)

"So you're in the same business?" I asked.

"Well, kind of," she said with a smile. "I've done some porn but now I'm mostly working on my own."

"You mean, like, as an escort?" An "escort", of course, is another word for "hooker".

"Uh-huhhh..." she replied, the tone of her voice suggesting that now we both shared in her little secret.

Now I'm not an expert on the subject, but I have observed over the years that there seem to be two broad categories of hookers (pun intended). There are the street hookers ("hos") and there are the indoor "call girls" or "escorts". The street hookers, who have almost disappeared from the streets of New York over the last ten years, by the way, are usually drug addicts and are desperate and pathetic. But the call girls, who are frequently ex-strippers, tend to be smart, witty, and charmingly candid about what they do for a living.

So what followed with my passenger was an informative conversation about her life and her profession. She had gone to L.A. after finishing high school in Texas, with the idea of becoming an actress. She wound up working in strip clubs, then did some porno movies, and now is an escort. She travels around the country building up a list of clients using a website (eros.com) and a cell phone. A cell phone which rang several times during our ride together.

One of the calls she ignored. It was from someone she described as a "stalker". Another one was from a steady client from Argentina whom she had to sadly inform that she wasn't available tonight but that tomorrow a little after 1 pm would be good.

"I like foreign men," she confided. "They don't want to talk."

"How many calls do you get per day on the average?" I asked.

"Around seventy."

"Seventy!"

"Yeah, but when they find out how much I charge, they're usually not interested."

"How much do you charge?"

"$350 for half an hour."

Which just shows you the relative worth to society of the services I offer compared to the services she offers. Not that her business doesn't have its pitfalls. She told me that screening out crazies is a definite skill. And that there is always the possibility that someone who appears to be a client is actually a police officer. But the solution to that, she said, was to have a good lawyer. "For five thousand dollars the only thing you're found guilty of is jaywalking."

As she departed the cab on 33rd Street, I suddenly realized I had a question that she would surely know the answer to. "What does MILF stand for?" I called out to her. This was an acronym I'd seen on certain websites but I'd never had a definition for it. I knew it had something to do with "older" women.

"Mothers I'd Like to Fuck!" she called back with a smile.

So we were even. I told her how to spell "first" and she told me this. I guess we all have our own areas of expertise.


Now compare her to the passenger I picked up at 2:45 am...


He was a middle-aged man in a business suit, no tie, well-groomed, standing on the corner of 8th Avenue and 55th Street. He had the appearance of someone who is considered to be "successful" in our world. His clothing, haircut, and demeanor all would give the casual observer the impression that here was someone who was a professional at something and was doing well in life.

Now I'm not saying that to lead you into discovering that he actually was not what he seemed to be. He was quite successful, as it turned out. But he was also quite drunk. Not incoherently drunk. But rambling on and on drunk. A happy and very overly talkative drunk.

What I normally do with drunks, once I realize that that's what they are, is to patronize them. I agree with almost anything they say, listen to their tales, and acknowledge them so they know that they have actually been heard. There's no sense in arguing or originating my own ideas to them. Because they are in digression mode.

The first thing we had to handle was where he was going. Did I know the location of such and such a bar, he asked. I did not. Then, after a bit more deliberation, he decided he might as well go home. And he gave me his address, a very prestigious apartment building on Central Park South.

As I headed in that direction, he began his dissertation. It was the kind of thing in which he was going to talk half to me and half to himself or to whomever he mentally conceived might be there with him. But I was free to jump into the conversation at any time. The truth was I wasn't really paying that much attention to exactly what he was saying until he said this...

"...and the call comes through early in the morning and I'm still in my bloody pajamas and they tell me he wants me! So what the hell am I supposed to do, I've got to get up and get my ass out the door, because the man wants me!"

It aroused my curiosity. "Who wanted you?" I asked.

"The president!"

"The president of what?"

He looked at me like I should have understood. "Of the United States!"

"Bush?"

"Yes!"

"Wanted you?"

"Yes!"

"For what?"

It turned out that the inebriated gentleman in the back seat was a deputy Secretary General of the United Nations. President Bush had been in the city that day to address the General Assembly of the U.N. and apparently the protocol calls for a high-ranking official there to act as a host for visiting dignitaries. He said he had served in that capacity on one other occasion for President Bush and it turned out Bush remembered him, liked him, and requested him. So he had spent the day kind of hanging out with the President of the United States.

"So what kind of guy is President Bush?" I asked.

"He's the kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with," my passenger said, "but, you know, it's kind of like you're leading a child around."

"Yeah, I think I know what you mean," I chimed in. "I've always thought he was probably a nice guy on a personal level but that when it comes to being the president he's in way over his head."

"Yeah, now take Clinton," he said, "there's a guy who knows what he's doing."

We soon finished the short ride by arriving in front of his building on Central Park South. As he staggered out of the cab he told me what a wonderful cab driver I was, but then he had some trouble finding his money. Finally he yanked some bills out of his pocket and handed them to me and I was on my way. When I got to the traffic light and counted them I found he had neglected to give me a tip on the five dollar fare. But that was all right. It wasn't a mean or a cheap thing, it was a drunk thing.

Later on in the night I reflected on the diversity of these two memorable rides and what different worlds these two people came from. A woman who had spent the day having sex with people for money and a man who had spent the day playing host to the President of the United States.

Why, I wondered, did she get to be the lucky one?




And you can get to be the lucky one, too, by clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi.

One Of Those Great Nights

Last Tuesday I had one of those rare nights that actually live up to the romanticized hype of the glory of being a New York City taxi driver. Now as you know if you've been reading this blog that for me driving a taxi is not just a job but borders on being a calling. It's sort of an ongoing exercise in "what realities am I going to encounter tonight?" The theory is that the more I can confront and understand the better the person I will be.

Or something like that.

Anyway, most nights fall short even though they almost always have something memorable about them. You run into one moron too many and the tendency is to come down emotionally a notch or two from enthusiasm. But then there's a night like Tuesday...

What started things off on the right foot was that I was given a brand new cab to drive at the garage. I mean a cab that had literally never been driven before. I have earned some brownie points at the garage and every once in awhile I am thrown a bone like this.

Look at her, the new 1M42. Isn't she a beauty? You know, driving a car - any car - where everything is new at the same time is quite an aesthetic experience. No wonder people keep buying them even if they can't afford them.

So I knew I would be telling every passenger who got in my cab that night that, "You know, you are riding in the newest taxi in New York City!" This is a special game I love to play whenever I am given the honor of breaking in a new cab. Most people, especially if they are veteran taxi riders, realize this is a rare treat ("Just think - no one has ever puked in this cab!") and are really into the experience. But it is the very first passenger that I really look forward to. Because I have figured out the odds.

The odds against being the very first passenger to ever ride in a New York City taxi are approximately 75,000 to 1. By city law yellow, medallion cabs are allowed to be on the road for only 3 years before they are required to be replaced. A cab will take about 25,000 fares (not people) a year, so it's 3 x 25,000, and there you go. This means that if you live in New York City all your life and take a taxi every day, this is a once in a lifetime occurrence. (Actually, once in every three lifetimes.)

I was hoping to get someone who was worthy of this experience. Someone who had been a loyal taxi rider for, say, 25 years or so. Unfortunately it turned out to be a couple of Japanese tourists who could barely speak English and had no appreciation whatsoever of the inadvertent honor that had been bestowed upon them. In fact they didn't even know that tipping taxi drivers is customary in NYC and stiffed me on a $7.10 fare. Ouch.

But I was not deterred, not even a little. I knew this would be a great tipping night, and my very next passenger - who should have been the first - was a lovely lady who went from 49th Street and 5th Avenue to 60th and Amsterdam, had full appreciation of the magnitude of the event, and tipped me $5.90 on a $9.10 fare.

And the next fare, a group of four - two young guys, a pretty girl, and a furball en route to the 79th Street Boat Basin - brought me the first taxi dog I've had in my cab in several weeks.

Meet Pablo (l) and Alice (r). Pablo, I'm told, is a "Havanese", a breed of dog from Cuba (thus, "Pablo", although "Fidel", "Che", or even "Desi" would have worked, as well). Pablo is a year and a half old and was found online and then bought from a breeder in Woodstock, NY. Alice tells me Pablo is a bit hyper and does the "usual tricks" - sits, gives his paw, etc. But let me tell you, when the camera is on, Pablo is a pro. I think this dog is a born model. You just can't get any cuter than that.

So the night went on in this upbeat way. But, of course, this is New York City so the law of averages says for every 12 people or so that get into a taxi, there will be one that is rather odd. Or maybe "offbeat" is a better word, unless "weird", "strange", "obnoxious", or "off the wall" would be a better fit. Anyway, at 8:30 this person got in the cab at Penn Station. He was a fifty-something man, in good shape, travelling all the way uptown to a restaurant at 133rd Street and 12th Avenue (right on the Hudson River) with a twenty-something guy who I thought was his son.

Right away things got off to a bad start when he lit a cigarette without asking permission. Since in today's world this is rude, I immediately told him to put it out, it was against the law, I could get a ticket, blah, blah, blah. But the guy was persuasive and convinced me that since he'd just come in from a long train ride from Long Island he would die if he didn't have that cigarette, so I let him smoke it as long as he agreed to keep it out of sight.

Well apparently this was enough for him to make us both pals from his point of view and he went on to tell me all kinds of details about a six-year divorce cycle which had just ended favorably for him. It was completely inappropriate conversation to have with a stranger, especially with his son sitting there. But he was, as I said, that one in twelve.

I had entered patronizing mode as we got onto the Henry Hudson Parkway and was just acknowledging anything he said when the conversation between us ended rather suddenly and was replaced by a new activity. It was the two of them making out fervently in the back seat.

Now I am quite accustomed to gay guys being attracted to one another back there, but not with this age difference and with me thinking they were father and son! It really threw me but, always the professional, I gave not the slightest sign that I found anything unusual about their behavior. In fact, as we arrived at their destination, I gave them the news that they were riding in the newest taxicab in New York City just as I had been doing with all my other passengers.

Now you know you are on a roll when even a fare like this turns out to be a winner. The guy gives me a $9 tip on an $11 fare, for some reason tells me he is from the Grucci fireworks family, and then signs a $5 bill with instructions to keep it on the visor of the cab for good luck. I thanked him, drove off, and then, in the immortal words of Harry Chapin, I stuffed the bill in my shirt. Why tell him I get a different cab every night?

So you get the idea. The night just went on and on like this until it appeared to me that all of New York City was celebrating the arrival of its newest family member, a spanking new Ford Crown Vic with extra leg room in the back. What could possibly make the night even better?

Why, driving through Times Square at 2:30 am and suddenly seeing the "Cash Cab" people shooting a scene on the little island that separates Broadway from 7th Avenue at 44th Street! For those who don't know it, "Cash Cab" is a quiz show on the Discovery Channel in which passengers in this one particular taxi (1G12) find themselves suddenly answering general knowledge questions to win money. It's hosted by a guy named Ben Bailey (my hero) who is actually a cab driver. Well, I felt compelled to stop and take some pictures. Of course!

After hanging around for a few minutes taking these shots, I approached one of the crew and asked this all-important question:

"Excuse me, I was just wondering - will you be needing any passengers?"

"Oh, no, sorry," she said with a smile.

Damn!

I returned to my own 1M42 and continued on into the night. At 3:15 I took a fare to Queens and then, driving along on Northern Boulevard, picked up four stranded, well-mannered teenagers in Astoria who'd been at a high school graduation party but had no ride back to the city. This meant I actually got a return ride to Manhattan at 3:37 on a Tuesday night, something unheard of in the history of taxi-driving. When you're hot, you're hot.

Finally, to end off what had become a night of beginnings, I picked up a sixtyish man in the middle of Park Avenue at 63rd Street at 4:36 and drove him up to Lenox Hill Hospital on 77th Street. He was going to the hospital for the best of all reasons: his daughter was giving birth to her first child and his eighth grandchild. When I told him he was in the newest taxicab in the city, he proclaimed with great enthusiasm, "Then two babies are being born in New York tonight!"

Yesss... two babies on what was just one of those really great nights.

Of course clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi might also help make it a great night. Just a thought...

The Dwindling Spiral

"The dwindling spiral" - it's a figure of speech used to describe a situation in which someone is headed on a path toward inevitable destruction. It's as if there's a force in the universe, like a whirlpool, that is attracted to someone due to a flaw in that person's character and, once it has him in its grip, the journey to extinction is unstoppable. 

What can be fascinating is that this process can be so obvious to you but remain completely unseen by the person who is actually heading down the drain. I had such a person in my cab a few days ago. He was a guy, about 35 years old, whom I picked up in the Upper East Side late last Tuesday night headed to Battery Park City, an upscale apartment complex way downtown in the Financial District. He had curly blond hair that went down almost to his shoulders, eyelids that looked like he was having difficulty keeping opened, and the glazed-over demeanor of someone who'd been doing a lot of drinking. But this is a good late-night fare, so I was glad to have the guy aboard. And what made it better was that although he was obviously a party-animal kind of dude, he was quite talkative and not arrogant or rude as many of these people tend to be. So this was going to be a fun ride. 

We whizzed down 5th Avenue without any traffic and there wasn't yet much more than aimless chit-chat between us until we were approaching 33rd Street, just past the Empire State Building. At this point he suddenly had a big idea. He asked me to slow down, make a right turn on 33rd, and stop. His object of attention was a place called "Joy" which was a short distance down the street. He told me if this joint was open he would be getting out right there (a shortened ride and a disappointment to me), but on inspection it was clear that the establishment was shut down for the night. 

So what was "Joy", I wanted to know. He told me it was a massage parlor where for a hundred bucks you could get an hour-long massage from an Asian lovely with a "happy ending" if you wanted it. Well, I knew these places were around town but what I found intriguing were two things: 1) that it was on the ground floor with a sign on the front door, and 2) that this guy was ready to go into it on a whim. I mean, a minute ago he was all set to go home to Battery Park City and then, out of the blue it's, hey, let's have some wang with Miss Wong. 

This was an action that opened a window into character. Here was a guy who was living on the edge of something. He was not your normal working stiff having a big night out. He was different. I wanted to know more about him, so I delved. And this was his story...

He had been a Wall Street trader for a number of years and had made quite a bit of money. His business had brought him to Brazil several times and he'd even lived there for a while. During the time he was in that country he discovered something that really appealed to him - that he could live like a king there for relatively little money. So he had recently decided to move to Brazil. He bought a house on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, hired two servants, and all it costs him is a thousand dollars a month, total. But my passenger didn't make this move to set up a business or pursue some kind of inner calling. He made the move to party. He'd had enough of the Wall Street game. Now it was time to get down. He hadn't taken the trouble to learn the language (Portuguese). He had no involvement in the community of his adopted country. This was going to be an endless run of sex, drugs, and the Samba.

Now it probably wouldn't surprise you too much to learn that someone in this situation had pulled in the following: only three weeks prior to his being in my cab, he'd been driving his own car in his town in Brazil at night and was pulled over by some kind of military police outfit. They proceeded to search him and his car and, according to my passenger, he actually witnessed them dropping a packet of cocaine into the trunk. But they didn't arrest him and haul him down to the police station. They let him get on his cell phone with his lawyer and conducted a thinly-veiled extortion in which a price (several thousand dollars) was agreed upon to have the charges dropped. They then accompanied him to his house to get their money, but he only had enough cash for part of the amount they demanded. So they gave him a bank account number and directed him to deposit the rest of the money into it the next day, which he agreed to do. 

And then they left. 

However, when he tried to make the cash transfer the next day, for reasons he did not understand, the bank account number he was given was said to be invalid. Very shortly after that, he left Brazil and came back to the USA. But my passenger, who told me he thought at the time that these cops might take his money and then just kill him, knows they're still back there and are expecting to get more out of him. 

"Well," I said, "so much for the Brazil experiment," thinking there was no way in the world he would ever return there. 

"Oh, no," he said, "I'm going back next week." 

 "You mean to sell your house?" 

 "No, I'm not leavin' there." 

 "But what about these guys? They know where you live!" 

He just shrugged his shoulders and made an expression on his face as if to say, "Whatever will be, will be." 

I was amazed by his response, but before I had a chance to ask him why he would decide to return to living in such a dangerous environment when he didn't have to, we had arrived at his destination and the only other thing I had the time to say was, "Good luck." 

I thought quite a bit about what his reasons for returning to Brazil could be as I drove around Manhattan that night, but after a while I realized that whatever he would have said would certainly not have been the truth. Because he couldn't see it himself even though it was so glaringly obvious to me. This guy had a character flaw - his only purpose for living was to get laid and to get high. And the lure of that lifestyle and the grip that it had on him made his confront of his environment too low to observe that he was a sitting duck for predators who, like snakes moving in on an easy kill, could put the bite on him at any time. 

He was in a dwindling spiral.

********

Nothing dangerous about clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi, however.

Just Another Saturday Night

It's hard to drive a cab in New York on a Saturday night without seeing something or hearing about something that's basically outrageous. Here are last Saturday's entrees.

11:50 pm - I was taking a fare up 1st Avenue and we hit traffic at 56th Street. This isn't unusual because there's often a back-up here for the 59th Street Bridge, so I wasn't taking much notice of what was going on. But after we moved inch-by-inch for a couple of minutes I finally noticed some flashing police lights up ahead at 58th Street. And then, as I approached the intersection, I discovered the actual cause of the jam-up.

Two police cars were parked in the right two lanes, and all the other vehicles had to merge to the left to get by them. So what was the emergency? Someone on the 3rd or 4th floor of a townhouse had rigged up the pay-per-view broadcast of the Mayweather/De La Hoya fight so it projected onto the wall of an adjoining building. It could be seen from the street and a small crowd had gathered at the corner to watch it. Were the cops monitoring the crowd? Policing the traffic flow? No, they were standing there next to their patrol cars, wide-eyed, watching the fight. All that was missing were their bags of popcorn.

Add that one to the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame.

2:14 am - In the field of humor, there's a difference between a funny thing happening to a normal person and a someone who is a "funny person". For example, if Betty wore a fruit basket hat on her head to a costume party, it would be funny. But if Betty wore it on the street because she thought it looked pretty good and at the same time would remind her to pick up some peaches at the supermarket, she would be a "funny person". She would not think of herself as being funny, but others, seeing the outpoints in her behavior of which she was not aware, would laugh.

I had a "funny person" in my cab on Saturday. He was a twenty-something guy en route from 33rd Street and 11th Avenue to 60th and Amsterdam. He was a cheerful and pleasant person, but not the brightest star in the sky. The first thing that happened was that he noticed that I was a white-skinned, American guy driving a cab.

"Oh, wow, you're white!" he said.

Observations like this from passengers are so mundane to me by this time that, to try to keep it interesting, I feel compelled to play around with it whenever someone mentions it. I looked at my arm in mock surprise.

"You're right! I am white!" I said. My sarcasm went right over his head and out the window. He continued on in the same way.

"You know how long it's been since I've had a white cab driver? Like... years!"

"Really!"

"Yeah! All these guys are from Pakistan or someplace."

"They are?" I thought for sure he would pick up on my attitude, but he absolutely didn't get it.

"Yeah! I don't know, maybe India, I don't know, but, man, you are like the first American driver I've had in a really long, long time, man!"

"Wow!"

"Yeah, serious, man."

I found myself smiling at his profound inability to understand that, of course, how could I not know this extremely well. Not to be unkind, but the guy was stupid in a charming sort of way. He was funny. I decided to change the subject as it was hopeless to keep on being sarcastic with him.

"Where are you coming from, the Copa?" I asked.

"No, I was at Stereo," he said.

Now this was a huge surprise to me. There are two clubs right next to each other at 33rd and 11th, the Copacabana and Stereo. The Copa gets a primarily Hispanic, hetero crowd and Stereo is hardcore gay. Although this guy wasn't Hispanic, I figured he had been at the Copa as he didn't fit the gay mold at all.

"Oh... so how was Stereo? Big crowd in there?"

"I don't know, I didn't get in," he said.

"Why not?"

"I was supposed to meet a friend of mine in there, " he said. "So what they do is, first they make you wait outside. Then they finally let you come into this entranceway they have before you can actually get into the place. And then these two guys frisk you to see if you have any weapons."

This is standard operating procedure at clubs in New York. The police department is very tough on club owners if there's ever any violence inside the premises.

"So what was the problem?"

"Well, when they frisked me, they felt me up," he said flatly. "They touched me all over. They even touched my dick. And then they tell me I'm not on 'the list', so I don't get in anyway."

I was shocked. "They touched your dick!" I blurted back to him.

"Yeah."

Actually the incident struck me as being not only outrageous, but humorous, too. The idea that gay security guys get to molest the customers in a gay club as a normal function of their job seemed highly comical to me. And that they could do this and still not even let the guy into the club made it seem like their real function wasn't to find weapons, but to feel everybody up. But my passenger wasn't reacting like it was either outrageous or funny. To him it was just something that happened, like receiving change at the check-out counter of the deli.

I tried to delve a little to see if I could get more of a response to the incident from him. "Maybe you should look at this as a bonus," I said. "You got felt up for free."

"But I'm not gay," he said.

"You're not?"

"No, I'm straight. It's my friend who's gay."

"Oh... uh, okay... so... what are you going to do now?"

"Go see my girlfriend."

Just another Saturday night.




Nothing funny about clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi.

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.

Contact

Contact - some would say it's the most basic of human needs, perhaps even more important than food. As a taxi driver I am often witness to the permutations that arise from the attempt to obtain it...

Saturday, April 14th, 4:35 am - my last fare of a long, busy night is a 40ish white male with some kind of a European accent which I could not decipher. He enters my cab at 77th Street and Columbus Avenue with a plastic bag and a newspaper in his hands and tells me to drive him to 39th and 9th. I am immediately put off by his brusque manner and decide this is not someone I want to have a conversation with and, in fact, I want to be rid of as quickly as possible.

So when we get to his destination and he tells me to pull over while he finishes a conversation on his cell phone, I am not pleased. Several minutes go by and, after a couple of nudges from me - "excuse me, are you getting out here?" - he tells me to drive him to an ATM on 38th and 6th. It is late, I am tired, and I have become annoyed with the guy as his behavior has crossed the line into peculiar.

We drive to the ATM. He exits the cab but brings his plastic bag with him. I keep my eye on him all the while as he has been deemed a flight risk in my mind. But he returns and, in the same abrupt manner, orders me to drive to 33rd and 2nd without any explanation of what's going on. He gets back on his cell phone and, now that I am suspicious of the guy, I try to listen to his conversation and am able to pick up only pieces of it. With great seriousness he is describing his physical characteristics to someone on the other end. "I am white, I am thin... yes... yes..."

When we arrive at 33rd and 2nd he once again does not pay me and get out, but instead continues a conversation on his phone. This time he's getting an address and an apartment number from the person on the other end. He says this aloud a few times, the sound of his voice creating a memory of it in his mind. Then, finally, he decides to end the ride. The fare is $15.40. He gives me an additional 60 cent tip. I am so happy to be rid of him and the anxiety he carried with him that I'm not even upset about the cheapskate gratuity. In fact, I expected it.

My night is over, so I drive to the gas station to fill the tank for the next driver. As I clean up the cab, I find that The Village Voice has been left on the back seat and is opened to a large section they have at the end which is a listing ("body work") for prostitutes.

Now I understand.


Tuesday, April 17th, 11:37 pm - a 30ish guy, white skin, about 6 feet tall, jumps in at the intersection of 5th Avenue and 34th Street. Our destination is DeGraw Street in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn. As the ride begins I overhear him say to someone on his cell phone that he just punched someone on a subway platform. A minute later that conversation is over and, unable to resist asking him about it, I do. (Which turned out to be a good thing for him, as he needed to talk to someone.) He told me this story...

He'd been at Yankee Stadium and was on a subway filled with people coming from the game. The Yankees had just played the Indians. He grew up in Cleveland and, although he's lived in New York for ten years, he was wearing an Indians hat. A group of "white, suburban gangster wannabes", all teenagers, decided to harass him due to his hat as they exited the subway car and stepped out onto the platform. This led to an angry exchange of words and one of these kids in particular, showing off to his friends, got in his face.

And that's when my passenger slugged him.

He said they were all in shock and just stood there as he hastily went up the stairs and left the station. He then jogged a couple of blocks and jumped in my cab, thinking about stupid, teenaged punks and lawsuits. So actually it turned out I was his getaway driver.

Interestingly, as he told me about the incident, he was filled with regret and chided himself for losing his cool and hoped maybe it will have taught the kid a lesson. It reminded me of the time another person used my cab as a getaway car after being in a bar fight and thinking he may have just killed someone. (See "The Wrong Guy". )

But this one wasn't as serious. "Worst case scenario, the guy's got a broken nose."


2:42 am - two girls, both in their twenties, one a platinum blond and both of them wearing skimpy clothes, get in at 87th and York. Their appearance translates immediately to the male eye as a neon light flashing "sex" - not quite as obvious it would be if they were street hookers, but it's close. That they are standing on a street in a residential neighborhood where there are no bars around adds an element of curiosity about them to my expert eye.

Their destination is 7th Avenue around 24th Street, but they are not sure of the exact address. When they get on a cell phone and are then told the number of the building, added to the fact that they speak in strong Russian accents, I have no doubt that these are call girls en route to a client. It's something I sometimes suspect with certain female passengers, but it's not often I am so sure about it.

Well, they seem pleasant enough and the way they jabber away to each other in Russian is rather melodic to my ear, so I am thinking whoever is paying for them may be getting his money's worth. But halfway into the ride their phone rings and after a short conversation I am told to please turn around and take them back to where I picked them up. Which I do.

I am thinking about asking them why their customer cancelled out on them but decide that would be pushing it and I just keep my mouth shut. We return to 87th and York, they pay the fare, and disappear into a deli.

4:11 am - my final fare of the night is a dancer/stripper from Flashdancer's. The girls all leave the club at 4:00 and I'm told there are as many as 50 of them working each shift in the joint, so it's a good spot to get one last ride.

Since I work the place often, I've had many conversations with these girls. I find the ratio of conversational to non-conversational to be about 50 per cent. In other words, about half of them do not want to speak with their cab driver. This in itself is interesting to me because, if you think about it, here's someone who has just spent several hours dancing almost naked around a pole and then trying to lure guys into a back room so they can do twenty-dollar "lap dances" for them. It's a come-on dressed up in a heightened degree of "friendliness" (pardon my pun). But then, just minutes later, they are often quite out of communication.

This last passenger fell into that category. It was a long ride out to Queens during which she stared blankly out the window. She seemed to me to be a lonely and unhappy person. And if that's true there's some irony there considering the type of work she does.

One of the permutations of the attempt to make contact, if you will.

An April Fool's Day Story

Here's a story from the vault - April 1, 2003, 8:30 pm. The war in Iraq had just begun.

A young guy and his girlfriend, both about 19 years old, jumped in at 79th Street and York Avenue and told me to drive them to DeKalb and Vanderbuilt in Brooklyn. This was bad news in itself as any cabbie in New York hates to leave Manhattan when it's busy on the streets. It means he most likely has to drive back without a passenger and that is money lost.

But to make matters worse, these two kids saw the upcoming journey as not merely a way to get from point A to point B, but as an opportunity for a heavy make-out session. My attempts at chit-chat fell on deaf ears and within 30 seconds they were kissing passionately and doing God knows what with their hands.

As I entered the FDR Drive and headed south, I realized I was in no mood for this. A money-losing, half-hour ride to Brooklyn with two juveniles who have no regard for how their behavior affects other people, jumping all over each other the whole way to Brooklyn. And by pretending that I wasn't right there, three feet in front of them, reducing me to a non-human object that drives a taxicab.

Ugh.

This wasn't going to be merely a bad ride to Brooklyn. This was going to be an assault on my dignity and an endurance test of my tolerance. I gritted my teeth and started the process of suffering through it. But then, as I passed the 53rd Street exit of the parkway, I had a thought.

It was April Fool's Day... hmmm...

"Hey, have you guys heard the news?" I called back to them with a tone in my voice that demanded attention. Through the mirror I could see their heads, which had been joined together at the lips, come apart and their eyes stare blankly at the back of my head.

"President Bush has signed an executive order reinstituting the draft."

They both moved forward simultaneously and a slight space opened up between their shoulders. The guy wasn't sure he'd heard that right and asked me to repeat it.

"There's gonna be a draft, just like in the Viet Nam war. All men over the age of 18 are going to have to go into the army."

"What? Oh, my god!"

"Are you over 18?"

"Yes!"

"Oh, man, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this."

"But I'm in college. They don't take students into the army... do they?"

"What I heard on the radio was that there wouldn't be any exceptions. Unless you were like physically disabled or something, you know?"

"Oh my fucking god!"

Other than asking for some directions as we approached DeKalb Street 25 minutes later, I don't remember saying another word to them until the cab stopped in front of their building. I didn't have to say anything because the rest of the ride consisted of a lively conversation between the two of them about the pros and cons of the Iraq war, the armed forces in general, whether or not he should maybe go into the navy, why shouldn't the volunteer army be good enough to handle the conflict, what are we paying our taxes for, anyway, is Bush really deciding anything or is it just Cheney, why shouldn't females be drafted, too, and whether his father, who knows a lot of people, could possibly get him out of this mess.

Needless to say, this dilemma proved to be the antidote for youthful lust. And aside from the deep satisfaction I took in successfully diverting their attention, I drove across the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn without any introspection as to why it should be my fate to be reduced to role of servitude to a couple of disrespectful teenagers.

They stepped out of my cab after paying the fare and giving me a below-average tip and took a few steps in the direction of their place. I called out to them from my opened window.

"Hey, you know that thing I told you about the draft?" I said.

They stopped walking and turned to look back at me. "Yeah?" the guy replied.

"April Fool!" I shouted back with big smile on my face.

They looked at each other with expressions on their faces as if to say they couldn't believe they had swallowed the gag hook, line, and sinker. Then they broke out laughing.

And I drove off on DeKalb Street back toward the Manhattan Bridge in what might be called a state of ecstasy, thinking they really ought to make April Fool's Day an official national holiday.



Click here for Pictures From A Taxi. No joke!

A Moderate Muslim

Tonight's fare of the night was a man in his 30s who approached my cab at 3 AM while I was waiting at one of my "strategic spots" in Greenwich Village. (A "strategic spot" is a certain place where I may just sit in my cab in order to "fish" for a fare when it is slow on the streets.) He came up to my window and asked me if I knew where a certain club was located (I think he called it the "Orchid Club".) I had never heard of it, so he elaborated by telling me it was a club for transsexuals.

I knew there was such a place just a couple of blocks north of where I was sitting, so I told him its location and, when I mentioned that there was always a "trannie" sitting on a stool out in front of the joint, it rang a bell with him and he was sure that was, indeed, the place he was looking for. I thought he would just walk off but instead, perhaps feeling guilty that I wasn't going to profit by being honest and helpful, he asked if I could drive him there. That was fine with me so he jumped in and we went for what amounted to merely a ride around the block.

Now what was interesting about this guy was that he mentioned that he was from Turkey. I know that Turkey is a Muslim country so right away the idea that a Muslim man would be going to a transsexual club struck me as fascinating. I had already gained his confidence by not invalidating him due to his choice of night clubs, so we could speak frankly. And we did.

He told me that he was, in fact, a Muslim, but (obviously) a moderate one. And this led to a discussion of which Muslim countries in the world would tolerate the presence of transsexuals. He said only in his own country, Lebanon, and Indonesia could such a thing be found. Morocco, he said, was liberal but not that liberal. Everywhere else - Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc, etc - forget about it. He went on to say that Turkey was by far the most moderate Muslim country in the world and that is why it is one of America's most important allies. An interesting thought.

With so much attention in the news these days about fanatical Muslims it was encouraging to me to meet someone who can consider himself to be of that religion but not feel compelled by it. Obviously this was a person who thinks for himself. In his own way, a breath of fresh air, in my opinion.