Handsome Jack

Jack was a rarity: both a ladies man and a man's man. There was an easy, relaxed, unpretentious air about him that everybody liked. At the same time, he was clearly special. You could tell that he was going places. He was much too intelligent, too good-looking and too talented to spend his life driving a taxi.

After graduating from Julliard, he spent a few years in L.A. doing bit parts in films and television. But his wife hated the place and he found himself being type-cast as a psycho-killer so they moved to San Francisco. He did a lot of theatre and had a semi-recurring role as a street cop on Nash Bridges. They were thinking of expanding his part but the series folded before anything happened.

His wife left him for sleeping around too much. This stuck him as odd because he thought that they had an open relationship. But he could hardly argue against the facts. A few weeks later, Jack heard that she'd moved back to L.A. with one of the show's producers.

His loss gave him pause for thought. Although he looked ten years younger, he was 38. As his father might have phrased it, "it was time to shit or get off the pot."

One good thing about his new solitude was that it finally gave him the chance to re-work a play he'd written in college; a satirical comedy about a detective. Jack thought it might do well as dinner theatre with audience participation. He sold the idea to a producer and they re-furnished a small supper club. Jack directed and played the lead.

It caught on and became a local hit. It quickly garnered a reputation that went beyond the city. Sienfeld stopped by with an entourage and said that he thought the show would make good TV. He gave Jack a few names.

Things were happening fast now. Jack found himself working 12 hours a day and driving taxi 3 days a week on top of it. He was exhausted but exuberant. It was close to how life should be. Drop the cab Driving and it would be how his life should be.

A production team agreed to do three pilot shows. Don Johnson said he might guest star in one of them but had a conflict and pulled out. But the shoot went great anyway. The wrap party was a celebration. Everyone liked the episodes and they liked Jack. Word was that Letterman "just loved" the series and and there was talk about Jack appearing on his show. Some network or other was certain to pick the project up.

Jack waited and waited and and waited. Then, nothing happened. The dinner show ran it's course and closed. With all his expenses, Jack barely broke even.

It took awhile for reality to sink in.

One night Jack picked up a gorgeous woman outside of one night club and took her to another. The chatted and she made some comment about a movie star. Jack, as he had so often before, took the opportunity to lightly hit on her,

"But you're better looking than she is."

The woman looked at him like he'd touched her with filthy hands and snapped,

"Let me out here, cabbie!"

So that's how it would be. Jack getting older, the women getting younger. He envisioned an endless series of snobs and drunks, fraternity boys and girls, middle-managers and power-tripping clerks, corporate lawyers and creeps lining up with arms stretched out for as far as he could see.

He'd never thought of himself as "a cab driver." He'd done it for 15 years but it was only part-time. Temporary. Now he knew that he'd became the word that he most detested, a "Cabbie."