He had his fists up and looked at me, saw the stick and just dropped the passenger and jumped out.
Missus was all shaking: “Who’s that? Who’s that?”
“I don’t know—some nut,” her boyfriend said. “Thanks for taking care of that, cabbie.”
“No sweat. That happens every now and again.”
Guys Like You in Prison
Frank, driving for twenty-nine years
I picked up a guy at the King’s Bridge Hotel at about four o’clock in the morning. This was twenty years ago. He looked really pale, and he was shaking like he was in shock. I said, “Where are you headed to?”
“We got to wait for somebody else.”
This other guy came out, and he had to be six-five. He was covered with tattoos. You could tell he just came from prison because he had that prison swagger about him. If you’ve ever been to prison, you’d know what I’m talking about. He treated the guy in front like dirt, and he had this girl with him. I kind of figured out that it was either buddy’s sister or girlfriend or wife, and this guy was having his way with her in the back of the car. The guy was just too scared to say anything.
When she got in, she said, “Oh, we got a good-looking cab driver tonight.”
Buddy started running his fingers through my hair. “Oh, yes,” he said, “Isn’t he sweet?”
I don’t like guys like that. I had just seen this movie Roadhouse, and there was this line in the movie that I loved. I thought, Now is my opportunity.
“Give it up!” I said. “I used to fuck guys like you in prison.”
Buddy’s jaw dropped, and the colour drained out of his face. He couldn’t believe I said it. It was just like I hit him with a shovel or something. I stunned him for about two minutes. The other guy, the little one, I thought he was going to have a stroke. He thought it was all over. And then buddy in back let out the big roar, the big belly laugh. He said, “You got some balls. No one gets away with saying stuff like that to me.”
“No man gets away with running their fingers through my hair, either.”
When he got out, he ended up giving me a $10 tip, plus the fare.
Level-Headed
Danny, driving for three years
I came down past the Sheridan Hotel, and there was a guy in a pile on the ground by this bar. His head was down, and I could see his body kind of jump trying to breathe. He was choking. Two big brutes were just stood there doing nothing. I stopped, and I said, “Why don’t you roll him over so he can breathe?”
One guy said, “It’s best for you to get the fuck out of here.”
I said, “Is it worth a man dying on the street when all it takes is for you to roll him over?”
“He passed out. He had a seizure.”
“I don’t care what he had, man. Roll him over. He’s going to choke.” I then recognized one of them as a guy I used to work for. “Man, he’s going to die, and the two of you are going to go to jail for the rest of your lives.”
He knew I was a level-headed guy, and he rolled him over. You could see the body heaving up and down breathing. That poor guy was beat to fuck. His face was messed up like Quasimodo or some- thing. They did a number on him. I don’t know what happened, and I didn’t pick him up. I called an ambulance to go get him.
I’m Not a Tough Person
Janet, driving for six years
For many women, the workplace is the site of violence, harassment and bullying. In 2004, over 350,000 work-related incidents of violence were reported by women. While the vast majority were physical and verbal abuse, 24 per cent were incidents of sexual assault. But this only accounts for a fraction of the total number. Assaults against women are consistently underreported. Statistics Canada has estimated that only 20 per cent of women who are the victim of violence bring it to the attention of police. While assaults by strangers account for only 15 per cent of the total number, working with unstable or volatile persons and having a mobile workplace are contributing risk factors.
I’ve always been a caregiver. Even growing up, I had a big family, and I helped take care of my brothers and sister. Then, of course, I had my own children, and I took care of them. I worked at the hospital and the CNIB. After I went through my divorce, I wanted to do something that didn’t involve having to take care of somebody. I’d just had enough. I wanted freedom. You’re in my car now. You could go to the corner store on Queen’s Road. You’re going to get out, and I don’t have to worry about you anymore. That’s the way I wanted things to be.
I always wanted to drive a taxi, but I didn’t think I had enough knowledge of the city to do it. One morning, I just got up and said, “That’s what I’m going to do.”
It was fast-paced—hectic. You sort of got to be Johnny-on-the-spot. For the first three days, I had a tremendous headache. Then I said, “You know what? You can do this.” I just relaxed, and then I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I come out here every morning, and I rarely miss a day. This year I missed two or three weeks because I ended up with pneumonia. That’s rare for me. But I work six days a week, and I love it.
You got to realize, there’s 180 or more guys working at this stand, and four women. I never wanted to become one of the guys. I didn’t want that. I wanted to keep my identity. That’s not to say that I don’t want somebody to open a door, or to pull out a chair for me. I just didn’t want to be standing around, telling dirty jokes and spitting on the sidewalk. That type of thing. A couple of the guys here said that I wouldn’t make it because I wasn’t tough enough. I’m not a tough person. I don’t have a tough exterior. But men get in my car, and they’ll try to say and do things. They’ll say things to see if they can get me going. Sometimes they’ll make a grab for you. My best defence against that is to just ignore them. Recently, there were a couple of guys talking in the back seat. One of them said to me, “What’s your favourite food?”
“Pasta.”
“What’s your favourite day of the week?”
“Probably Sunday.”
“What’s your favourite colour?”
“Black.”
“I figured you’d go for black,” he said. “A big black cock.”
For the most part, the things they say are mostly sexual. It’s really just dirty talk. The majority, I think, are in their early twenties. Some are university students. But I did have three Irishmen in the car who were with one of the oil companies, and they were saying they’d like to have a couple of women for the night. I didn’t even listen to them. One started rubbing my shoulders and then he asked me if I had a daughter that they could rent. I found that very distasteful. I said, “I’m assuming you don’t have daughters, or sisters.” That sat him right back on his ass.
I’ve only once had a problem with violence. I picked up this guy and took him to where he wanted to go. He said he had to run into his sister’s house and get some money. I waited four or five minutes. I tooted the horn, but he didn’t come out. I could see him chatting with someone in the kitchen, and I knocked on the door. I said, “I just want to get paid. Give me my ten bucks, and we’re good. I’ll be gone out of your hair.”
He got a little upset. He said, “I told you to wait in the car.”
I thought, This is not going to be good.
He threatened me. He was going to kick the guts out of me. He was going to beat the car up. It was pretty scary stuff.
I called into the dispatcher and told him what was on the go. He sent the police, and the other drivers kept checking on me while I waited. By that time, the meter was after running up to $52. The guy was arrested, and he had to pay me back the money in instalments, $5 a month, through the court. The court wanted me to go down and write a victim impact statement. I said, “No, I wasted about two hours on this guy. That’s more time gone out of my life than I care to waste on the likes of him.” I heard later that he’s very violent, and he was arrested just a couple of weeks ago and charged with beating up two women.
Going to War
Sandra, dr
iving for four years
There’s times when I’m going out and I feel like I should put on a helmet. There are times I feel like I’m going to war. There’s been a few times when I’ve had to pull off to the side of the road. I think, That’s it. I’m not doing it no more.
I had two guys in the car recently. One was sensible, supposedly.The other wasn’t. He was absolutely loaded. Loaded or not, one of them could still manage to say, “Come into my house, and this is what I’ll do to you. I’ll do it to you better than anyone else has done it to you, and you don’t have to do nothing.”
How I address it is I sort of shrug it off: “No, give it up. That’s enough now. Go in the house; I got to work.”
The last going off, I just said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
You know that it’s only going to be some kind of whacky deviant who is going to go out and rape some stranger. But you’re down on George Street, or you’re picking up at a house, and you don’t know where you’re going with them, or you don’t know what’s waiting on the other end of the trip. You just get them where they’re going and hope that it isn’t a tangly long run. If I got myself into a situation where I felt unsafe I wouldn’t hesitate to stall out the car on some main road and say, “Listen, I got to get you another cab.”
It’s mostly agitating, the sexual stuff. The other day, a guy and his three buddies used the word “pussy.” And then they apologized for using it. I said, “No, I’m fine with that.”
Then they went, “Oh, you’re fine with that. So how’s your landscaping going?”
And those were men coming from a big house. They were well educated and well dressed. There were no hoodies. There were no ball caps on sideways. They weren’t old and drunk. Those are the most intimidating, the over-forty, educated, got a wife, a nice house and a good job. They’ll look you right in the eye, and they’re not drunk. That’s the difference—they’re not drunk.
One guy taught me a good lesson. It was Halloween, and he pointed to the meter and he said, “How much are you going to make in the next hour? Whatever it is, I’ll double it. You just come into the house.”
I said, “You’re kidding, right?”
He looked me straight in the face and said, “Seriously, this is your last chance. I will not make this offer to you again.”
I went, “You really should get out.”
Now that was intimidating. He wasn’t loaded. I won’t say he was sober, but he wasn’t loaded, and he had the nerve to say that to me.
If someone touched me in some way I didn’t like, I could slam on the brake. He’d have no legs. He’d go right up over the seat and probably hit his head on the console. You can do that; that’s an option. If someone grabs you the wrong way, if you got your seatbelt on, or even if you don’t, you know you’re doing it, so you can brace yourself. Slam on the brakes, and they throw themselves up onto the front seat. I slammed on the brakes a couple of times and just watched them go. And they do, they just fly like they’re in an accident. Then they’ll say something right accusatory: “What did you do that for?”
“Okay, you just asked me if I could give you a blowjob, repeatedly. I asked you to stop, and then you touched my arm. That’s why I did it.”
It happens, but it’s not too common. Rarely do they touch your face. You don’t get too many that touch your face, and you don’t get too many that touch your neck. It’s your shoulder, arms, and sometimes you’ll get a hand on your leg. They rarely “accidentally” bump your boob.
I’ve heard things from men that I had to go home and look up on the Internet. These are things I don’t want to know. It’s so graphic, it’s pornographic.
You got to roll with the punches. What’s the word I’m looking for? Maybe it’s passive. How passive am I? What I thought was rolling with the punches, is that being passive?
One of my friends is completely traumatized by the raunchiness of it, the stuff we’ve all had said to us. But this person’s background is so hardcore that I don’t grasp why it’s devastating her so much. She said, “What can I do? Can I use bear spray, or mace?”
I never carried anything in the car. I know people who have. I’ve gotten into taxis and there’s a magnetized knife attached to the radio. I’ve heard of concrete being put into the bottoms of Pepsi bottles. One of the girls went to talk to the police about it. They said, “Use the mace and answer questions later.” But you still got to answer questions later, and God forbid you end up whacking someone whose daddy got lots of money and can get them out of a jam.
You can’t always cry for help, either. You got to make sure that when you are hollering out you need it. Like I said to my friend, “Make sure that if you’re in a situation you’re going to be ready to start calling out for help, you let someone know where you’re at.” Personally, I wouldn’t call out unless I absolutely had to. But if she wants to spray people, maybe you should get another job.
Some drivers aren’t much better than customers. I was single for a period of time. Every driver who will cheat on their wife will hit on you. Just like if you walked into a store every clerk who knows that you’re single will hit on you. So they start crawling out of the woodwork. That’s why when I go out to a club to have a few drinks or to a friend’s house I don’t want to be driven home by certain people. It just makes it uncomfortable the next day, especially when they think they can hit on you in the same dirtbag way that the customers do.
So, guess what? It’s not just a customer thing, it’s a male thing. I’ve had a few friends of mine who said, “We need a ride to a party. Come in and have a smoke.” And I’ve done that. I’ve walked into parties—and I don’t know if it’s common—but they’ll have porn on at the party. It’s like background music. And no one is supposed to notice what’s going on? I walked in and one of the guys sat down was a friend of mine’s son. I go in and here he is sat down watching porn. And they think it’s normal. It’s one thing if it’s a Friday night and you and your boyfriend are watching a bit of porn. But it’s totally something else if you and your buddies are sat around getting drunk watching it at a party with a houseful of people.
When I said to a few cab drivers about the stuff that’s being said to us, one of them just looked at me: “Do people really say that shit to you?”
People don’t quite grasp it. They’re thinking of what might be said but until they hear it themselves they sort of skirt around the reality of it. When I talk to my boyfriend about it, I’ll talk around it, too. Like, I don’t say to him, “Last night, some buddy tried to grab me by the boob.”
With my boyfriend, I’m not verbally descriptive. He knows some of the stories because he’s sat around when a bunch of us are all talking. But I don’t think any of them get it. And with him it’s weird. I don’t see the same anger that I would project if it was my daughter, or if it was my wife, who came home after someone crowded her in a corner and said they were going to take her home and do this and that to them.
I can’t help but think, Why aren’t you saying something? Why aren’t you more concerned?
One thing I refuse to do is deliveries after dark, and I won’t bring in groceries after dark, either. We got a little old lady, and she gets so mad at me. But I don’t care. She goes to the grocery store at three o’clock in the morning, and she wants the groceries brought in. We call her the “paper towel lady.” She’s OCD, so she buys a load of paper towels, and I guess she wipes down her walls with them, or something. I get her to the door, and then I leave.
That’s the part that makes me nervous: being in parking lots in the dark. No, you don’t do that. If you were walking home, you’d never cut through the parking lot of an apartment building. I don’t want to have to do deliveries where you got to walk into the building at night and walk out again. That’s one of the areas I’m scared of—alone in a parking lot at night. There are parties in apartment buildings where you might be bringing in beer and cigarettes. But then on the way out you could have a bunch of guys watching you. Then
there’s the other issue of me having money in the car, or having money on me. I don’t want to get caught up in that crossfire.
You Can’t Leave the Scene of an Accident
Danny, driving for three years
Taxi drivers are not just the victims of assault. They are also the victims of property damage both in and out of their cabs. They’ve been rear-ended, side-swiped and T-boned, while some—foot-heavy and frustrated—admitted to causing accidents. On any given Friday or Saturday night, the majority of taxicabs are going to or coming from the downtown area servicing hundreds of customers who are intoxicated. Some cabs—like when a customer is passed out and incommunicative—are put out of commission for hours. More than a few customers are dead drunk and vomit up over the back seat. Those cabs usually don’t get back on the road until the next day.
I was coming down Torbay Road. There are four lanes, two lanes going south, and two lanes going north. I was in the left lane going south. Some guy was in the furthest lane going south with me, which is the northbound lane, doing eighty. I phoned into the police and reported him: “Buddy is loaded on the wrong side of the road.”
A half an hour later, they called me back: “He’s in his house. We need your statement to arrest him.”
I said, “If he made it home, he made it home. What do you want me to do about it?”
“We need your statement to arrest him. You’ll be the one pressing charges.”
“I’m not doing that. He made it home, and no one was hurt. But I guarantee you he is a repeat drunk driver, and he’s still at it.”
It makes you not even want to phone in drunk drivers. Why phone them in when the police are doing nothing about it? I see them going up Hamilton Avenue all the time—that’s one of the major arteries in the city. I’m doing sixty or sixty-five. I usually won’t go twenty kilometres over the speed limit. That way the police don’t bother with you. Then you got a drunk driver doing forty or fifty over the speed limit. It’s the prime time of the night, and he’s doing 100 kilometres an hour. He’s obviously drunk. Drunks don’t go nowhere near the speed limit, and they’re swerving all over the road. What are you going to do, phone them in? Then you get interrogated by the police about who you are and what you’re all about. Then that drunk will get into an accident or run someone down and you’ve got to deal with it. That shouldn’t be.
The Other Side of Midnight Page 14