When you lose your money and your mind

I turn north, no no, south on Avenue A, then a young man walks up to the cab with a pizza in his hand and a paper plate. He settles in slowly and slurs his words.

“Manhattan College.”

“Okay.” Hmm, where is that? "Umm, I’m not sure where that is, Is it downtown?”

“It’s in the Bronx.”

Oh crap, I don’t know the Bronx, I like to get there and then get the --… I like to get out.

“Where in the Bronx?” I asked.

This man seemed rather nonchalant about a trek to the Bronx. Usually when people ask to go to the Bronx, they don’t just stumble into a cab.

“It’s umm, in the Bronx.”

I repeat my question again. And I sigh, this is going to take a while. I might as well kick back with this one, the night rush was coming to a close.

“I’m gonna have to pull over here and look this up on the map, ‘cause I don’t know where that is. I don’t know the Bronx that well.”

“Oh man, oh, I know where it is man, it’s on Broadway. Yeah it’s on Broadway, and, Weehanawken, Avennyouu. It’s on Broadway, in the Bronx.”

Hmm, no shit, in the Bronx you say? “Well I’m gonna have to look this up.”

“Well I got some money here, just get me there. Get me there ok. I got some…” reaches in his right jeans pocket, “four, no six, dollars man.” He must be bragging.

I’m a little concerned to say the least. “Well you can’t go to the Bronx with 4 dollars.”

“How much will it cost to go to, Man- hatin college?”

It’s too early to start estimating fares, “I dunno, it’ll cost 25 or 30, no 35, 25 to 30, or 35, maybe 40, it’ll cost 50. It’ll cost you between 25 and 30 dollars.” Phew, “maybe 35.”

This man was rethinking his life now. “I’m gonna have to call somewa- hey can you get me there and, I’ll pay you, when we get there?” Now he was begging.

“How are you going to do that?”

I’d already suggested an ATM here. I’m not a big fan of being forceful. So I waited it out to see when he would realize he had chosen the wrong mode of transit. He had a cell Phone conversation, but it didn’t last very long.

I volunteered to drive him around the block. While driving I gave a long deliberate repeated instructional seminar on where he can pick up the L train, which side of the street to get in on, which direction the subway should be headed, what stop to get off, and the train to transfer to. So he gets out.

“Thanks man, you’ve been enough.. … more than.. you’ve been helpful more than anybody else today.”

Aww, the poor guy, and he headed into the corner store.

I soon picked up another fare and drove them somewhere very close. She handed me a cell phone, which was left in the back of the cab. Well we all know whom this belonged to. I drove back to where I dropped him off. Sure enough he was standing right in front of the plastic door inside the corner store.

“Is this your phone?” I was a little too close to him; a foot away, he backed away.

“Yeah.”

“Awesome.”

It was nice to finally get a phone back to someone. Last year, I threw one in the trash as if it were evidence for murder.

semester 1

Raw Enthusiasm

Saturday:

The Weekend started slow. Saturday was remembered for a poor decision, I took two people from the East Village to Jamaica Queens. The fair was 31.70 and it took around twenty minutes, they guided me well. Problem was I went to LaGuardia Airport and waited for a flight. Supposedly the flight just arrived, but after a half an hour I drove some people to another terminal came back and still waited, only to find a bunch of crazy airport shuttle vans pull in and collect all the passengers. Bah! I waited from 4:30 to 7am at LaGuardia, I wish I had driven in to Manhattan and at least gotten some sleep.

When I got into Manhattan at 7:45 or so, I immediately got two fares in a row. One fare went from Hell’s Kitchen to Alphabet City for 5 or 7 bucks, and from there I got another fare to Northern Blvd in Queens for 15. We saw one of those long lines of police cars driving on the FDR Drive. Unfortunately they wanted the same exit as us. Three of the cop cars wouldn’t let me into their lane. I guess they didn’t want the yellow cab to create an eyesore in the esthetics of the white and blue with red sirens parade, it just wouldn’t do. Fortunately one cop car was nice enough to let us in. I came back into Manhattan and had no luck finding fares. Turned out my cab was filthy. From that week’s previous storm all the cabs in the city were blackened. My fare sticker on my door was completely covered with dirt. There were lines at all the car washes, luckily the car wash that the garage pays for wasn’t so crowded. A cop car got washed there too!

Sunday:

I drove the Sopranos of Bay Ridge, or so I chuckled to myself. Condoms and raw sex, and other raw topics were conversed among the four broad shouldered men. They had the thickest Brooklyn accents I’ve ever heard in my life. We drove to Downtown Brooklyn, and eventually into Brooklyn Heights to get their car.

As we drove down the West Side Highway, the guy in the front recalled the last time they were driving here, in the Mercedez, “Hey, remember when I puked out the side of the car!” he said to his buddies. There was also talk of video taping a friend’s sexual relations through his closet. “(Joey) was wacking off while he was in the closet.” And the woman may run in politics, so maybe they could use it for extortion. He was also trying to convince his friend to have sex raw without a condom. He asked me what I thought about this. After I shook off my discomfort, I decided to voice the P.C. opinion that it just wouldn’t be right; where have these dudes been anyway? And he told his buddies I thought otherwise, to which I corrected him again, to which he winked and said, “Don’t worry buddy I know what you said.” More talk came earlier of sucking on tits. Were they at a strip club? I hope so, otherwise??? They asked me if I wanted to drive them to Bay Ridge. I said I’d rather not.

“I might get stuck out there,” I said.

They joked around, saying they wouldn’t pay me, but they tipped very well, and I let them off in Brooklyn Heights and headed back to Manhattan in 10 minutes.

Speaking of disrespect, I was afraid one of my fares was going to pretty much splurge in the back. I wasn't going to, nor did I say anything, but I take it as very insulting, far more than cell phone conversations, that two would take this time to practically do it in the back. However, the adventurist in me can relate to such a desire.

"We're here," I said, thankfully I drove a pretty quick root. A hand came up from the foot well to the partition

"Already?"

"Yes already.”

No moans or groans as far as I heard and no removing of apparel took place. I’m sure they had a nice night. Why didn't they tip more?

I drove a woman to the Upper East Side, and she was totally up for a conversation, and was very inclusive. I took her to the building, but there was a limo picking up someone and a cab behind me dropping off someone. This was a small cross-town street and so there wasn't much room. I was afraid of the "ding" as specified by Cabs Are For Kissing, so I offered to move up to a larger gap between parked cars. Then I noticed that an icy build up of hard semi-white colored snow was there, so I asked if this was all right. It was then that she commented on my consideration and threw another dollar at me, she asked me to pull her around the corner where she could get to the building safely.

She asked me what I wanted to do other than this, and I said my passion is photography. Then she said her son was a famous photographer, and I told her I would look him up. She then said that if you do what you love, you will always be happy, and you will be good at what you do; 

I take these comments, these moments of serendipity as signs. I take moments like these and feel so positive off of them. It is as if these people take on mythological roles to me, I am no longer serving them, in reality I was supposed to be there, and I forever, am in need of a guide, and maybe ever so infrequently I can pass along whatever I may know as well.

semester 1

Too long into the night

The second fare remembered was a more typical ridiculous couple of fools. I was in the neighborhood of the slummy but tragically phony north west Chelsea when I picked up a well dressed man standing in the cold outside of a closed club and desperate for a cab. I was to drive him to east Midtown; our progress was hampered by one red light after the next.

It seemed longer than it was I’m sure, because he was on the cell phone the whole time. His volume was super high and I could hear both sides of his conversation. He was on the phone with some woman who was partying somewhere else.

“So are you gonna come over” she asked in her caring tone.

“I said I was gonna come over, but that was before I knew you were going to New Jersey. Man I can’t go back to New Jersey with you. I’m never gonna get home.”

“Ohhhh… okay.” Her coy look almost readable in her voice.

“Well It’s just that I don’t wanna hang out with those idiots.. and you know, none of them are gonna drive me back, how am I gonna get back?”

An anonymous man takes the phone beside her, “Hey, uh

Eventually it ended with him saying that she should get up early in the morning and they were gonna hang out in the morning.

“You shouldn’t party, don’t party okay? We’re gonna get up and do something tomorrow. I’m gonna wake up early tomorrow, and we’re gonna hang out.”

“Yeah, okay… so we’re gonna do something tomorrow?”

“Yeah tomorrow, I have all day open tomorrow.”

This conversation, one of many logs of a missed connection in NYC is only the beginning of a curious tale. For the fancier the suit, the slicker the hair, the more slippery the gentleman.

In his second cell phone conversation, he connects and disconnects several times with a friend who provides comic relief with his pathetic nature.

“Dude, I am in a cab man, and we’re totally gonna hang out with you.” Said his friend, juiced I’m sure on several expensive cocktails.

“Oh, hey I’m in a cab too, and I’m going home.”

“Well, where are you we’re gonna meet you.”

“I’m on 28th street and I’m heading to the east side, __ Avenue, and __ Street.”
“Man, where the fuck are you?”

This Q and A of an unintelligent variety continues for some time. By the time we get to Madison Avenue he calls again, and he’d forgotten everything.

“Where are you!?” his head was spinning in circles.

“Where are you?” my passenger calmly replies. “Are you at my house?”

“Where is your house?”

“Are- -you- -at- my- house-?” he sounded out the question slowly.

“Dude I don’t kno—hey I’m—where the fuck are you?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m over here on fucking… Dude I don’t know man, my girlfriend is giving me a really hard time, she wants to know when your gonna get here!” the man if possible has grown more hysterical than before. He sounded a little like Bobcat Goldthwait, after a panic attack induced by too much marijuana in one night. “I’m on,” he looks up at the street signs, then walks to the corner to find them, “I’m on 30th street and…” I waited in anticipation, for soon we would be on a rescue mission. He spun around to the perpendicular street sign; “10th avenue.” Oh for Christ sakes I was just there to pick this guy up.

So my passenger asked me to go back and pick him up. These two were gonna have fun tonight if it was the last thing they did. Needless to say he may have called three more times, saying how his girlfriend was impatient from the beginning and was getting more agitated. I turn around to 29th Street via Park Avenue; ignore the no turn sign checking my rear-view for cops while checking the oncoming traffic to pull the left as quick as I could. I raced west passing yellow turned red lights, sometimes later, trying my luck. Within 5 minutes we were back where we started and I turned the corner to 30th but it seemed too late. I pulled over and my passenger requested that I wait for two minutes.

I hear the ring tone behind me. Twice the phone rings, and he picks up, he is about to explode; “Dude where the fuck are you?” his voice was cracking more then a pizza-faced teen. “My girlfriend just left, she couldn’t wait anymore! She just got in a cab and left me! My girlfriend left me man!”

“Uhh man, where are you?” emphasis on the you, “we are right at 30th and tenth.” I search the corners to find a man who fits the description of a moron. There he was, right across the street. Every time he asked where we were, he spun 180 degrees. He stood in the street rather than the on the sidewalk, cell phone in his right hand and steam coming from his mouth in the cold pre-dawn glow of overhead streetlights.

I pointed him out then honked and flashed the brights from behind a stretch limo.

“We are behind the limo!” my passenger exclaimed. His comic relief buddy was still looking frantically. When the light turned green he found us and we pulled up. Then he walked away. “Get in the car!” my passenger was now amused by his friend’s idiocy. He climbed in.

“Man, my girl left me. My girlfriend just left, she just got in a cab, she couldn’t wait.”

“It’s ok I’m not with my girl either.”

“Yeah, guys out on the town! Yeah man, yeah.” Hmmm what could make him more of a moron now? “Lets go to a strip club!” He was excited, I think he found his true love, and hid it behind a shallow shroud of masculinity.

“Dude I was just at a strip club,” my original customer replied. The meter had now reached 9 bucks and all this had occurred in at most 15 minutes. I don’t think he was at a strip club, but for some reason it was the right thing to say. They joked for quite some time as I found a major street to drive east on. I wondered if I would have to take them to a strip club. The idea had came and gone.

“Do you think I could invite my girl?” asked the funny man.

“Sure, sure call her up.”

Then they decided again that it was a guy’s night out, even though the sun was to come up in two hours. They seemed to be hugging and even kissing perhaps, only on the cheeks though. In his defense, comedian two was having a pretty bad night.

Apparently my first passenger in this tandem of comedy planned it to be a guys night out from the get go. His friend was going to Iraq. The funny drunk felt sheepish. But it doesn’t piece together because earlier the first guy was talking on the phone with that girl. And it got worse; guy two wondered who was at his apartment.

“My wife is sleeping.” His wife? “Yeah but don’t worry. If she wakes up, I’ll tell her that she needs to get up early in the morning for her flight, she has a flight early in the morning.”

Fare= 15.80
Time= 32 minutes
Total paid= 20 bucks

Eh good enough
They exited from separate sides of the cab and guy two was yelling something at me. I wonder if he used to yell out of car windows when he was a drunken kid. They both told each other they were “blowing each other’s spots,” very true, very true. Their spots are blown up.

Friendly man at 5am

Two memorable fares came on board this weekend; the first was around 5 am Saturday morning. I picked him up by being the last amongst a wave of taxis zooming down Second Avenue. Sometimes it’s better to coast down the avenue catching every yellow light looking for the passengers the other drivers couldn’t get.

He requested an intersection in Brooklyn that I wasn’t familiar with and I told him that as long as he knew how to get there, it’d be cool. He gave pretty clear directions, and I found the streets on the map eventually. He referenced a few streets that sounded familiar, but in all truth I can’t remember the last time I was on them: Brooklyn Avenue, Nostrand Avenue, Eastern Parkway. The only one he mentioned that I was fairly familiar with was Atlantic Avenue.

As we drove there, he was very helpful with his directions, and more so, he engaged me in conversation. He worked the night shift for child services, where he does lots of overtime as every case needs to be thoroughly investigated otherwise the government gets on his ass for not fully investigating. However his boss wants him to stop doing so much overtime. A damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. An unmarked cop car raced west on Fourth Avenue as we waited on Atlantic.

“Was that a Chrysler 300,” he exclaimed excitedly.

“Yes.”

It didn’t occur to me that the inventory of NYPD unmarked cars was shifting in new interesting directions. He told me that a lot of other cars I wouldn’t expect were being used. I don’t know how many of you readers are really interested in this conversation, so we’ll stop there.

Then he goes on to tell me that once he had too many tickets and in a certain circumstance he outran the cops turned a corner parked it and walked away. I don’t know about you, but the only reason I watch police chase shows is to root for the bad guy, too bad they never get away on television.

He doesn't live in Woodside you idiot

I should say that I remember more than getting lost going to Newark last Saturday. Another notable fare I took to Astoria the Sunday before last. He got in and said Astoria boulevard and then mentioned some streets as well, three streets in total, I was confused. I asked him if I should take 21st street there, hoping for some clue on directions, but he wouldn’t give. He reclined against the window and just exclaimed “whatever” and that it was in “Queens” yeah that narrowed it down. I had no idea where Astoria blvd was, but I eventually found it on the map, turned out it was really Queens blvd. so I get there, and he says I should have taken 31st street. I am totally confused now, cause I found the streets he mentioned in Woodside.

He started muttering curses, “fuck this. Trying to fuckin’ rip me off.” It was understandable, but it would have been nice if certain questions I’d asked before were met with productive answers that I could use to bring him home. After a few more curses, and me telling him I wasn’t trying to rip him off, we worked together to get him home. I then told him that the intersection he gave me also existed in Woodside, so I wasn’t to blame, though in reality I was. Anyway we eventually got to his location, he called his girlfriend and asked her if he could stay the night. Odd, that he would do this when he is merely two blocks away (stalker?). Then he told me he didn’t have enough money. The meter read 13.80, I told him thirteen to make it easier, since there was enough communication issues with this fellow already. So we drove to an ATM, but the ATM was fucked up. He already paid me 12 dollars and was under the impression it was sixteen, I wasn’t going to argue with that, but I told him it was fine. We drove back to 36th street, wherever, and he thought I was European because I was so friendly. “Usually only European taxi drivers are this nice,” he said, and then we shook hands. What a nice fellow.

Nightmare in Jersey

I waited in line at the Hilton for what seemed like forever this last Saturday, but it was merely an hour. After all the waiting I got a nice reward, Newark Airport, but the luck turned sour, as I got lost in Jersey. This was incredibly embarrassing, frustrating, and anxiety provoking. I had to tell this man that I was lost, he took it rather well, but it was still rather awful. He said he got up a little late and was playing it rather tight. He had to borrow my phone and call his secretary to tell her he would catch a one o’clock flight. Meanwhile I got lost again and again. On the phone with his secretary he kept saying to her in between the yelling, that this poor kid had gotten lost. Well, it was a bummer.

I headed west and figured what the best way to the Lincoln Tunnel was and asked the standard questions; What airline? Domestic? Then I stated it would be the meter fare plus 21. I got to Newark eventually, but when I was in the area, I turned off too early. The sign I turned on said long term parking, but through the black of night, I saw no parking lot. All I saw was a winding road; really all I saw was one white reflective strip, which I followed. I think the white strip was mocking me; it directed me back on the jersey turnpike northbound, to New York City. After about 10 minutes traveling back towards New York I picked a random exit in hope of turning around. We went through the ez pass up an elevated incline, then turned left sharply, sank back down to the earth amidst miscellaneous gas tanks or some type of industrial no man’s land.

I pulled a u-turn to start all over. But after I went through the toll again, I had to make a choice between north and south. I forgot if the sign preceding this indicated south as left or right. I rashly swerved right and unfortunately south was to the left. I told him that I made a mistake yet again. We pretty much were back at the junction of 78 and 95, almost New York City, when I decided to turn around again at an indicated park and ride. I never saw the park nor’ the ride, but wound up seeing signs to route 1 or 9 south. I decided I’d had enough of the turnpike and I take this option. From this point on everything went okay. I gave him the ride for free and he paid me 20 bucks.

All told, the trip took only an hour and fifteen minutes, I don’t know how, because I felt like I would be stuck in Jersey forever. Being lost on a New Jersey Highway is foreign to me because when I get lost, there is no turning back. It is all highways and I can’t just turn around. Every time I made a mistake I had to live with it for miles.