Taxi Driver

by Richard Elman

  Well that was no place much to hang out for long, and I didn’t. I just fell out there to sleep, if I could, after a day’s work.

  I was working very hard, six to six, sometimes six to eight in the A.M., a stretch shift, it was a hustle, kept me busy. I could take in two, sometimes two fifty a week, more with skims, which is also why I don’t like the theater district. You could get caught.

  Well, when I brought it all back to clock in, there’d be a look. Reproaches. People never seemed satisfied. That face in the bulletproof glass scowling, the buzzer on the locked door. A lotta distrust and disapproval makes my stomach queezy.

  I was exhausted all the time now, back achey, too, from my scars. Stayed up a lot on reds. Thank God for the rains which had washed all the garbage and trash off the sidewalk, including some that was human. I almost never got a chance to write in this book much in those days, didn’t even see a movie a week at a time.

  By April 10 I was doing stretch shifts at three different garages: Dependable, and Ding-A-Ling, plus Skull. Medallion jobs all yellow cabs, and later I found all the time I needed just driving for Dependable. The dispatcher at Ding-a-Ling in those days was pretty and fat, an Irish lass. Brunette. Well she liked me, said I could come home with her sometime if I wanted.

  She was too fat, and she drank a lot, I think. I don’t like that sort of forward woman. Afterwards I would still be lonely.

  I knew I had to do something about my lonelyness aside from talking to people in the cab but I didn’t want that sort. That kind of woman can get really heavy, depressing, if you know what I mean. You find yourself being twisted. This way and that.

  I guess like most people I wanted to meet someone I liked, have some fun. Eventually maybe make her a commitment. Just to be with another person. To have a friend.

  I felt I was capable of giving and getting. Had been so ever since I came home. Well you know I really couldn’t prove it, but I felt there were these things inside me that had to come out on another person. With another person. Good things and bad.

  A man is not a fountain pen, you know. I wanted to care and be cared for. Well it was a heavy time. Bad days those. The people I saw. The things I did.

  Of course, I’d known some women back home. At least one, I think. Even had a sorta girlfriend. Before the Nam. Hedda was older. Not much for good looks but you can imagine a good egg. Good sort. Sweet. I guess she liked me a lot better than I ever liked her. She really wasn’t my type, I’m afraid. No class. Hedda Dugan worked on the line at the Ford Gear Shop. Nice woman except I always had this feeling about her when we were together she was taking me over somehow. She said she loved me but it felt like she was taking me over.

  She called me Pickle like a rhyme. Her big dill pickle. Said she needed a bite, of that pickle morning, noon, and night. Said, “You’re the nicest pickle in the whole damn barrel, Travis.”

  I was—nineteen? Maybe twenty? She was a damn sight over thirty. Would never see twenty-nine again, or thirty. Got scarey. She said she wanted to go wherever I went. Followed me around town just like a puppy. Waited on me breakfast, lunch, and supper. Big Dill Pickle.

  Sure I liked her but not that much. She wasn’t any dream to me, just another woman.

  I guess I hurt her feelings. I imagined she thought with a face like hers she would have to get her hooks in somebody or else, pretty soon. I imagined I was too young for that. That sort of thing.

  When I left her she cried. There was nobody in her life. Mine neither. Went away and that was that. Hedda never forgave me for not taking her to meet the old folks at home, but she was just a horse of a different color from the kinda person they liked to see me with, and I kinda knew that.

  More like a mother to me than a girlfriend, really.

  After that I was away for so long in Service that it was mostly just professionals I saw. Your friends for the night, if at all, and then I heard Hedda she had gone and done this awful thing to herself with a scissors, and that’s when I thought seriously of coming here to New York and the cab business.

  Or should I say coming to New York? Cabbying happened just as I said it did. Though I figured it would be hard to live Hedda down in a stockroom somewhere. Well, as I say, driving in the City those first weeks was a challenge. Night after night I saw things happening made Vietnam look a lot better in some respects. I saw people at their worst. Whatever that means. The asshole of the planet is hardly a fit place for making friends and influencing people.

  I would go back to the garage most mornings and have to clean stuff off the back seat, mostly come, sometimes blood. Those old women in shawls eating out of garbage cans at 5:00 A.M., well, sometimes I’d think there’d never be anything but hard times like this. So many guys sleeping out in the street, at least I had this roof over my head. First thing I did when I came out of the service was put that roof over my head, just like that poor imitation of an army doctor said I should.

  Speaking of which I often wonder why it was O.K. over there but not here. Well, they covered themselves, of course. Said they were different. “A different value on human life,” was the way our CO used to put it. But some of the animals around here didn’t seem any better. Worse. Killing was maybe much too good for some people, was the only reason I could think of, though there were times when I was more than just sorely tempted. Though I did have some respect for women.

  On reds most of the time I couldn’t straighten up after an evening in that cab, and I would always be getting these terrible cricks in my back. I booked in sloppy sometimes. My head just fuzzed on me was all. My head fuzzed . . .

  One night I dreamt I got back to the garage after a typical day with over three hundred bucks in my pocket and all the spaces were taken. I’d have to go back out again on another shift. All I could see anywhere were yellow and blue and white cabs. Signs on the walls: BE ALERT! The safe driver is always ready for the unexpected.

  YOU CAN’T STOP ON A DIME!

  ALL NIGHT DRIVERS HAVING PERSONAL INJURY ACCIDENTS MUST PHONE IN AT ONCE.

  That girl in the massage parlor who wouldn’t let me touch her on top was in the personnel office and I thought this was just like hell. Hell surely.

  I went straight to the Adam, saw Six day Cruise, and Beaver Dam. Slept through part of Beaver. Only woke up when the guy next to me said I was falling against him all the time.

  People at those places are really weird. The guy who tears your ticket thinks he’s got something on you. The woman behind the candy counter. So goddamm unfriendly.

  I guess she thinks you stink on ice just for watching such pictures.

  One night I asked her name. “Come on,” she said, “just because I work in a joint like this doesn’t mean I’m that kind of girl.” And she wouldn’t give me her name. Even after I told her I was serious: “Really.”

  Well, then she says, “Want me to call the boss? What you want?” So cruel and cold like that time in Saigon when this girl said I could do anything to her I liked she would never come. That was strictly for her boyfriend a sailor.

  I ordered a big coca-cola—without ice—and a large buttered popcorn, and . . . some of the chocolate-covered malted milk balls. Kind that makes your cavities ache. It came to $1.47 and they didn’t have cokes so I took a Royal Crown . . . and that’s when this little sorta diddy started going around and around in my head: “Whatsa life without a wife a cunt without any kindness?”

  Little bits and pieces to that effect. Over and over again: “Whatsa cunt without a heart a heart without a cunt?”

  I don’t say it’s topflight, topnotch, really great stuff. I was only trying to express myself. Honesty. Better that than go altogether weird like the others. Those other safe drivers.

  “Whatsa heart without a head a head without a cunt cunt cunt, a head without a cunt?”

  Those other taxi drivers I knew, all they ever did was hate Mayor Lindsay and the dinge. Even the dinge. They hated him too, the big blond mayor, and all they ever did was jabber. Everything’s a re
mark. Must be because they were so bored they just had to let off some steam heat. Nobody at home knock knock for talking to. “Whatsa a cunt a heart a head . . .?”

  There’s Freak-Me-Out who lives in a cellar and does carpentry to order from ads he puts in the Voice. He used to say his wife had taken this lover and he would kill the son of a bitch if he weren’t so grateful.

  A woman answers his ad and he comes over and makes a closet for her. A loft bed. He says he makes a lot that way with his big electric drill and all. Just like in the movies, man or woman. He chooses his own hours.

  Well his real name is Rizzo and they just call him Freak-Me-Out some people because he liked to do crazy stupid things in his cab with the zipper on his trousers in the front seat.

  Says a guy can get a lot that way, too.

  Morny is in love with a lady driver. Big bull dyke, she won’t give him the right time of day. He wants to soften her. She aims to be a dancer, just moonlightening. He’s always keeping tabs on her when she’s driving. He knows all her fares and where she eats and who she’s seeing after work. Well she calls Morny a pig and he isn’t, he’s just extremely jealous and possessive of his right to know her. She calls all the men drivers pigs. Liked to have slapped her one sometime only Morny would get pretty mad at me if I did. He’s a married man, too, and he needed all his friends he can get. Not to say she was much.

  There was this one black guy Charley T. I used to see a lot with Wizard and Doughboy and everything he said was a big racist remark. It was never just a passenger he was taking someplace, but a Jewish passenger, an Italien passenger, a colored passenger. That’s what he called his own. Colored. We’re all hanging out at the Belmore and he has remarks galore for everybody who passes by or is in the place. Like he tries to show he knows who you are by speaking your own language.

  If he’s Spanish, Charley T. starts in with the Spanish to a person, man or woman. The same I’ve heard him with French, and Jewish, and Italien. Got a bullet head. Big pirate mustaches. A Marvin Gaye wooley cap on. Well, what he says always sounds right, though I don’t know. Are they the real words?

  He said Lindsay’s wife played around and everybody knew it. So did Happy Rockefeller.

  He says Jackie Kennedy gave head to all the limo drivers

  He knew he had a cousin did that in uniform

  No wonder I stuck to my movies Whatsa wife without a life a . . . well, you get the picture. I’m sure.

  I liked all those movies a whole lot better before I saw so many. I only liked it when the men did things to the women. Not the other way around. Well, you know, I only saw my first movie at eighteen, and that was Elvis and Annette Funicello, I believe.

  People in Kalamazoo were real strick. My folks no exception. I should write more about this probly, though I have no talent for it. I think sometimes I could be something like a writer if I had. In bits and pieces.

  A man who has not lived can’t pretend to write as if he had. Except in bits and pieces. To that effect. To write as if he had not is so dull. Writers must say life is worth living. Some people do grow up. Otherwise they’re simply talking bullshit.

  Despite all, I’d never known how to share my life with others. Shared only the worst of it. If at all. But human beings are not bullies. They enjoy experience.

  All my life I’d known that, it seems to me, and I still could not convince myself it was so. Seems like I was just living in this motel, couldn’t pay the rent, couldn’t leave. Waiting for that money order from home.

  Those near and dear to me.

  I began to think of myself as IT. Kinda. The days dwindling on forever did not end. A time bomb inside me.

  Why sure I would try talking to some people, even the straight ones. Once at the Belmore I was aware of loving feelings. A big blush on my face. These two very pretty young women were talking at the next table.

  They weren’t real beauties but they were talking about guys, and I couldn’t help overhearing.

  One said she liked blue-collar men.

  “Well,” said her friend, “Arty isn’t blue collar.”

  “Well actually no,” the first said. “It doesn’t matter what a man is, just so long as he is in good shape. I value tenderness and looks.”

  “You know me,” the second said. “They have to like to be touched. I’m a touch person.”

  Well I was measuring myself against all their requirements and so far so good. They knew I was listening to them, saw me I’m sure, and didn’t stop. Said, “Of course, penetration is also important.” Giggling a lot.

  Well I was burning up from my ears on down. I had to say something.

  Said, “Do you two know which end is up? Well you never will, you know, if you continue to talk like that?”

  “Oh,” says the blonde, with a sly wink, “there goes another, if you know what I mean.”

  The second is eating kadota figs. Stewed. With her spoon raised, she says, “Hey mister, why are you so afraid of us?”

  “I’m not afraid . . .”

  “He’s afraid you’ll bite him,” the first one said. “Afraid to live.”

  Maybe so. On reds I wasn’t exactly all I wanted to be. I felt slightly spaced and skittish at times. A lotta the time. I was always just entering or leaving some dream. Seems like I would pick them up in the middle somewhere like switching on TV, and then they’d fade on me.

  Often I would be driving and there would be some kinda change of scene.

  Well there’s a premium on really cut-out people in a city like New York. I thought all my life needed was a sense of direction, someplace to go. I did not believe one should devote his life to morbid self-attentions, but to becoming a person like other people.

  We Meet Betsy

  Between rides I got to spending a lot of time on the corner of Fifty-eighth Street and Broadway. The Palantine Campaign Headquarters. A store front: “New Yorkers for Charles Palantine for President Committee.”

  The primary was July 20. A long way off. People seemed pretty excited already.

  Palantine had something. He was no middle-class bullshit artist. He looked like he could be your friend for Life, or your friend’s friend. A happy man. Lotsa positive vibes. Had one of those nice clean honest faces. Middle-aged, smiling with thin lips, wiry gray hair. Used to wear seersucker suits and pink shirts. Nice ties. I thought I would vote for him, though that was not why I was hanging out.

  A certain woman worked there, I didn’t even know her name, but she was beautiful, tall and blond and clean and cool. I liked keeping an eye on her, watching her with the other workers. There was a guy she talked to a lot. A chub, cute, with a big shock of curly brown hair and glasses, I guess. Sort of a kid brother type. He reminded me of my second lieutenant. Well I don’t think she liked him that much, but he liked her.

  Me, I had eyes for her, too, liked to watch her a lot, all the time, she was one of America’s “chosen youths,” I sometimes think, so beautiful and fortunate. When she walked out on the street to get coffee, she always seemed to float above any of the others, suspended. She was certainly better than your run of the mill.

  I didn’t know what she did, we never spoke. Once in a while our eyes touched through the glass, and then she had to look away, or I would get a stare.

  I thought if it was ever going to happen this was it. I could only stand so much. Like being inside a tin can, holes for peering out. I had the cab fitted out with a rubber portable fan and a little transistor radio, but it was still not all the comforts of home: And I would always park across the street and stare at her typing, or talking on the phone, such a beauty.

  Well, one day she pointed me out to her friend and he was coming at me through the door so I just put the cab in gear and drove away, fast.

  I wasn’t so sure I wanted to get involved. What did I know about politics anyway? A loner wolf like me. They’re all no good, I thought. But she was so very beautiful.

  I thought she was my dream woman. She always wore this nice long yellow dress
, or a Palantine T-shirt, jeans. Built nice. She spent so much time on the phone, too, talking and looking happy and she typed with only two fingers. So stylish, slender, a little pug nose, blond hair, a yellow dress that clung to her body, among the masses on the street, untouched by the crowd.

  Well she was like an angel out of this open sewer, out of this filthy mass. Alone; they couldn’t touch her. I would call her—what’s wrong with just her? Names wouldn’t change a thing about the way I felt for her. I’d call her Her . . .

  But, that day when her boyfriend started out the door, I got so very frightened and angry and started to drive away because I could see her pointing me out to him.

  I don’t think he meant to chase me away. He was just being protective of her. Is all . . .

  Further Thoughts

  By April 14, I had given her a birthday, April 14th, the anniversary of our eyes first meeting a week ago on Fifty-eighth and Broadway: I still didn’t know a thing about her except that I was madly in love with this person, if she was who I thought she was, my woman I could respond to

  I tried writing notes to leave for her: “I am a working person vitally concerned about the welfare of our country. I want to help Mr. Palantine. Can we talk? I want to meet.”

  “I think you are a lovely clean young woman . . . Could we be friends?”

  There was also a sort of poem I scribbled to myself, though I would never send her that:

  I bring you my lonely death

  with open arms to love you

  Like a flower that smells sweetest

  whenever you are bending over it

  Well, I never finished that one because it seemed she would not understand. All that week, my favorite song was, “Killing me Softly With His Song,” and also “Lean On Me” though not with Bill Withers.

  I wondered what her favorite song was. Probly something by Stevie Wonder or the Stones maybe.

  Deep in my own thoughts. A dreaming time. I’d have to buy her an album with my letter of introduction and poem when we got acquainted. One thing was certain, she was very well brought up. You could tell.