Phantom Cab Stories

An Act of God?

2011-11-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

When I first started driving taxi many of my customers - especially the San Francisco locals - were unfriendly or hostile. They would say things like "great route" or "you're the best cabbie in the world" in sarcastic tones of voice. Many of them stiffed me.

I got tired of this and used sarcasm myself when I told a yuppie who'd given me $6 for $5.80 ride,

"Thanks for the tip!"

"You've already given yourself a tip!" He snapped back.

I was what my father would have called "flummoxed." I was trying to do a good job and couldn't understand why people were so nasty.

After about a month, I picked up an old-time, hippie cab driver. White hair down to his shoulders. We'd gone two blocks when he suddenly raised his gravelly voice in excitement,

"Hey man - you got yourself a hot one!"

"You mean, my girl? How'd you know about her?"

He laughed.

"Right! I mean that hot chick on your dashboard!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Boy are you good! That's great, man, you never know who might be a cop."

"Are you stoned?"

"Of course I'm stoned. I've been stoned all my life. Except'in the year I spend as a Tantric Buddhist in Tibet. But that amounted to the same thing - what's your point, man?"

"Man, what's your point? I don't know what you're talking about."

"O.K. We'll play it your way," he said laughing. "Your meter is hot."

"You mean, it's fast?

He broke out laughing and couldn't stop for a long time.

"No," he finally said, "it's not fast - it's a fuck'in world class sprinter."

"How fast?"

"Hmmm ... 35%, 40% - you really didn't know?"

"I just started driving. It's my first cab."

"Well, you hit the mother-load."

"Really? I'll have to get it fixed after the shift."

"Man, you are good!"

He stared laughing again. Then he suddenly turned serious, leaned forward, grabbed me by the arm and fervently wheezed,

"You don't fix nothing! I might drive this as a spare. You wanna squeeze these cheap fuckers for every cent you can get!"

Now that was just the kind of attitude I didn't want to be associated with - the stereotype of the greedy, grasping, cheating cabbie.

When I finished my shift I filled out a form to fix the meter, stuck it on my windshield and went over to tell the gasman about it.

He was standing, talking and laughing with a mechanic and a couple of other drivers. I walked up to them and said,

"This one's got a hot meter. Can you make sure they fix it in the morning?"

The men fell silent and stared at me then at each other and back at me. After awhile, the gasman said,

"Sure."

I'd walked about ten steps when they burst out laughing behind me.

The next shift, my day driver Bob was waiting for me when I showed up to pick the taxi. He looked me over intensely as I walked toward him.

"I see you wrote up the meter?" He said nervously.

"Yeah - did they take care of it?"

"No, there was something I wanted to ask you first."

"Sure - ask away."

"Are you crazy?" He passionately ejaculated.

"No, I don't think so," I said, startled. "I just want to earn my living honestly."

"Did you fix the meter?"

"No."

"Did I fix the meter? No!"

"That's not the point. It's -"

"If you didn't fix the meter," he interrupted, "and I didn't fix the meter who did?"

"I haven't the faint -"

"It's an act of God!" Bob declaimed.

I was speechless.

Bob leaned forward and grabbed my by the arms.

"Listen!" He said. "I've been doing this for three years. Three years of eating shit. Three years of watching the owners steal all my money. You're new. you don't understand. Who are you to interfere with the will of God?"

I didn't really have an answer to that so I left the meter the way it was. I started telling my customers that the meter was hot and they should pay whatever they thought was fair. Much of the hostility disappeared (the public is the public and it never completely goes away), the sarcasm went down and my tips went up.

A couple of weeks later, Bob was hit by a red-light runner who totaled the meter along with the car.

Can Karma trump God?

The Ugliest Sound

2011-10-23T09:53:00.001-07:00

A Tall, white-haired man in his 50's carrying a violin case stepped into the back of my taxi. I recognized him as a violinist from a quartet that played all modern classical music.

I usually don't bother celebrities but his kind of music doesn't have a big following so I told him I enjoyed his playing and his dedication to the avaunt garde.

He looked back at me with boredom.

"I used to go to all your concerts," I added.

"Used to?"

"Yeah I guess I lost interest ... no - that's putting it negatively - I fell in love with a woman who played Latin jazz. She's gone but I still gotta have that rhythm."

"It happens," he said with indifference.

After a moment of silence, I asked, "Are you working on anything now?"

"I'm been working on creating the ugliest sound ever heard," he said laconically.

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"Well ... well ... because music should be beautiful," I said, sounding lame even to myself.

He sneered, then asked, "What is beauty?"

"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty," I quoted like some idiot college freshman.

"I like Keats," the violinist said, "but you have to admit that he wasn't what you could call a profound intellectual."

"I suppose not but you have to admit that his poetry was beautiful - and does beauty really have to be defined?"

"Now you're on the right track," he said with a little enthusiasm, "listen to this."

He took out his violin and played the theme from Beethoven's Fur Elise

"Now that's beautiful!"

Without a word he switched to the Mediation from Thais.

"Wonderful! Bravo!" I shouted.

"Yes," he said "Beauty IS. It defines itself. But it's only half the story. What about ugliness?"

"What about it?"

"Who has defined it?"

"Who hasn't?"

"But pure ugliness? I don't think so - I've spend the last three years, three years of hard work, tireless research and endless experimentation, trying to make that sound before finally - at last - creating it ."

"Really?"

"And may I add that I felt much angst and despair during my quest."

"I can well image."

"Not even my wife understands."

"I can image that too."

"Do you want to hear it?"

"Is it uglier than chalk on a blackboard?"

"Oh, yes," he said laughing."

"Is it uglier than a car with brakes screeching and crunching metal as it crashes into another car?"

"Much."

"Is it uglier than women screaming as they are being slaughtered by soldiers in an insane war?"

"There's only so much one can do with a single violin," he said as he raised his instrument toward his neck. "But - yes. I should think that's it's uglier than the cry of any individual woman. Do you want to hear it?"

I threw him out of the cab.

I probably should’ve run him down and I probably would have if I hadn't imagined how ugly his screams would be.

How to be Mugged

2011-07-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

I saw them as I was walking back from the laundromat. A couple of lowlife druggies. They were medium height and scraggy wearing dirty old shirts and jeans. Indeterminate age. One was fat and the other skinny with a short beard.

I noted them without thinking anything about it expect that they were out of place. My apartment was at Vallejo and Hyde on Russian Hill. Arguably as safe as any place in the world. It was 4 pm on a warm and sunny afternoon. A cable-car has just gone by and there numerous people wondering around the area.

I was almost at my apartment when the skinny one walked quickly by me and stopped about ten feet in front of me. As I walked toward him I head a man’s voice coming from slightly behind and outside of my right shoulder. The voice was professional, smooth and reassuring.

“Don’t worry,” He said. “Don’t panic. Just relax and nothing’ll happen to you.”

I spun my head to look. It was the fat man. I was struck by the gap between his grubby appearance the educated quality of his voice. He stood a couple of feet away and stepped toward me in a vaguely threatening way. I started turning to confront him when he spoke again his calm voice.

“You’re not taking the whole situation in ... you’ve forgotten about Bob.”

I turned back and realized that the skinny man was walking toward me hunched over with a butcher knife hidden from side view by his jacket but pointing directly at my gut. He had the pocked-face of a junkie and a nervous, angry expression.

I started to step back but felt the spokesman’s large hand gently pressed against my shoulder.

“Take it easy,” He said. “I’m John. This is Bob. All you have to do is give us your money and we’ll be on our way.”

As he spoke Bob came up to me and stuck the knife an inch from my ribs. The two of them had me boxed in so expertly that the four people walking by laughing couldn’t see what was happening. To them, it must have looked like a normal conversation.

“Just take out your wallet and hand it to me?”

“What’s he gonna do?” I asked, looking nervously at Bob.

“He’s not going to do anything as long you co-operate,” John said pleasantly, his voice becoming superior, almost laughing at my fear. “Why don’t you give the man a little room, Bob?”

Bob moved a little away.

“Now - what about that wallet?”

I dropped my laundry on the street, pulled out my wallet and gave it to John. He looked inside and took out all six of the dollars bill that I had inside.

“You’ve only got six dollars?” John asked in sudden hostile tone. “That’s not going to be good enough!”

Bob stepped closer to me again and touched my shirt with his blade.

Despite my anxiety, I recognized that this was something of an act. They were clearly professionals and Bob was being a little crazy on purpose. On the other hand, what kind of a dimwit expects to get rich robbing a guy doing his laundry on a Sunday Afternoon? No matter how calm John pretended to be he wasn’t thinking clearly. These guys needed a fix. They were desperate.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said nervously. The phrase ‘I didn’t know you were coming’ popped into my mind but I suppressed it. “I was doing my laundry. Sorry I just don’t bring much money with me when I do my clothes. Sorry.”

I acted more nervous and frightened than I was. I even made my hands shake a little like Don Knots.

Bob and John looked at each other with a hint of a smile. They relaxed and moved back slightly.

I inched imperceptibly away from them.

“Where’s your apartment?” John calmly demanded, “ Why don’t we go there so you can find some more money for us?”

“Yeah ... Yeah. That’s a great idea,” I said, “My place is right over there.” I pointed across the street.

They looked where I pointed. I spun around like a wide receiver and took off running. After about 5 strides I glanced back and saw them running in the opposite direction.

***

For years after that I became paranoid any time I heard someone walking behind me. But the experience was worth a thousand times the $6.00 I lost.

If I’d seen John and Bob in the Tenderloin, they never would have gotten close enough to rob me. A great lesson for my future career in cab driving. There are no safe places. You always have to be awake and alert.

Nobody's mugged me since.

That's Not a Question

2011-07-04T12:53:00.000-07:00

"Are you taking us the long way," She asked.

She was thirtish and overdressed for the ballet. Ditto for her husband who wore a tux. I mean it was Thursday night.

Usually I throw people out of the taxi when they ask me that. But it was slow night and I was tired so I said nothing and kept on driving.

"Are you going to answer my question?"

"That wasn't a question."

"Well, then, what was it?"

"It was putdown, an attack."

"What's he saying?" she asked her hubby.

"I'll make it simple for you," I said ignoring her ignoring of me. "A question is a statement designed to elicit information but your faux question was clearly designed for another purpose. I mean, do you actually think I'd tell you if I was taking you the long way?

And, since you obviously don't know the city, you wouldn't know if I was telling you the truth or not. The purpose of your quasi-query, then, was simply to assert your superiority over me by being a person entitled to say such a stupidly rude thing to another human being."

"What?"

"Would you ask your dentist if he was drilling the right tooth?"

"I don't know ... maybe?"

"Would you ask your lawyer or your shrink or your financial advisory if he was cheating you?"

"No ... but maybe I should?"

"Damn right you should. But you didn't because you'd feel it insulting." I ranted. "No - but you felt it was perfectly okay to submit a "cabbie" to such a rude, meaningless interrogation ... And," I added, "when you consider that you have a neurotic need to insult cab drivers in order to feel superior, your 'question' was truly pathetic."

"What's he saying?" She desperately asked her husband again.

"Yeah, Jack," I asked, "what do you think I'm saying?"

'I think we're leaving," Jack said opening his door and walking around to let out his date/wife.

"Needless to say", he said, "we'll complain."

"Needless to say," I said mocking his East coast voice. "But about what?"

What a Little Music Can Do.

2011-06-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

Bitches! No worse - a couple of snots. Wouldn’t even look my way when they got in the cab. Too high class. For me? Huh! Drab looking snips. Snippy voice snapping out an address. A please at the end as in:

“Union and Webster ... pu-leeease.”

Not a request. A command. The way one talks to one’s servants. Or, the way these prigs imagined that one might talk to one’s servants if one had servants.

Then the inevitable insipid conversation. Barbie doll talk. How the last date went ... “the coolest bar in town ... the drinks cost $12 but the bartenders really mix a great drink.” Right - it takes a real artist to make a bourbon and water, “... you won’t believe what happened to Rachel ... did you hear about Jan and bob? ... what are we gonna do Tuesday night?”

What are you ever gonna do, witch?

I turned up the stereo to drown the dialogue. My classic rock 50’s mix. Chuck Berry. Fats Domino. Chuck Berry again. Then Wimoweh - ’61 Tokens version.

“My god!” one of them said, “You’re playing the greatest CD.”

“Yeah!” the other one seconded, ”Can you turn this up?”

“I can do better than that,” I said as I turned the volume up to rock out blast, “Let’s take it from the top.”

“In the village, the peaceful village the lion sleeps tonight ...” we sang. One mezzo, one contralto, my awesome bass.

“My god you’ve got an awesome bass!” The mezzo gushed.

I checked her in the mirror. Red haired. Not really too bad.

“A wimoweh! A wimoweh!” We sang along. They couldn’t quite hit the high notes. I tried falsetto. Did it for a few bars then my voice cracked and gargled to a wheeze.

We broke out laughing. I went back to bass.

“A wimoweh! A wimoweh!” We sang out slightly off key but gleefully.

We pulled in front of their bar.

“This is the best cab ride ever!” the red head explained.

“It’s awesome!” Her blond friend said.

“You’re got an awesome bass,” The red mezzo said again as she climbed out. She reached back and gave me her card.

“You were awesome too,” I told her. “ Awesome.”

"Awesome!" She said laughing at my mockery.

She’s a hair stylist. I can always use a cut.

Disobedience

2011-06-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

“Is the San Francisco Airport in Oakland?” She asked me in an Indian accent. She was in her thirties, dark skinned, attractive and wearing a business suit.”

“No,” I replied laughingly, “I’m going to turn just before the Oakland onramp - good question though. You sound like my girlfriend. She thinks my routes are crazy.”

“Have you been together long?”

“Five years.”

“Why aren’t you married?”

“Another good question,” I said laughing again, “We’re too old for kids and everybody ends up divorced anyway, so why marry?”

“That’s probably the right approach ... of course one can’t do that in India.”

“No living in sin?”

It was her turn to laugh.

“Of course but not for respectable girls like me.”

“Are you happily married?”

“We are now but we had a rough patch. I’m certain we would have divorced if we’d lived here. He used to beat me. Have you ever beaten a woman?”

“No - where I come from it’s lowest thing a man can do.”

“Where I come from the man has the right to beat a disobedient wife.”

“And you were disobedient?”

“Not only disobedient but defiant - as my mother in law put it.

It started when I invited her over to dinner and she said that I should clean my house better. I told her that my house was as clean as I could get it ... I make more money than my husband although his family is richer ... I said if she didn’t like it she could clean it herself because I needed to work to pay the bills that her son couldn’t pay ... that’s what started it ... I’m only telling you this because I’ll never see you again ... after that my husband and I fought all the time.”

“Did he hit you hard.”

“Oh yes - as hard as he could. But, to the tell the truth, I wouldn’t let myself be beaten. I fought back and I beat him worst than he beat me.”

“How long did this go on for?”

“Several years ... finally we sat down and had a talk. We decided that all our fights were about our parents so we would never discuss our parent again. Since then we’ve been very happy.”

“That was it?”

“Indian men are mama’s boys. If I didn’t mention his mother, there was no reason to fight. I’m raising my sons to be independent so the question of disobedience will never come up.”

Cultural Refinement

2011-03-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

I took a radio call at the de Young Museum where the opening night of the Balenciaga exhibit was just breaking. I was told to get Mica who should be walking toward the front.

When I turned the corner onto the museum road a bejeweled, skinny, elderly woman in a $5,000 dress jumped in back.

"The museum called for me," she said, "I'm Rossi."

"That's not the name I was given," I said. Plus the call had come from a smart phone.

"We have to get my husband - Bill!" she screeched in my ear.

"You're screeching in my ear."

"Sorry," she said rolling down the window and sticking her head out to screech again, "Bill!"

We pulled in front of three 30ish, attractive women, one of whom was waving a cell phone and looking at me.

I rolled down the back window as the tuxedoed Bill, stocky and balding, climbed in front.

"I'm Mica," the woman shouted hopefully.

"Oh - you're the one," I shouted back and turned to the woman in the back seat. "I'm sorry, they called."

"Oh! Fuck it! - just go!"

"Sorry but I came for them."

"Go! You stupid ass! Go!"

Mica climbed in back followed by one of her friends.

"No wonder you're alone," the woman said to Mica, "what man would bed you?"

"What a wench!" Mica retorted as her blond friend leaned forward and caressed Bill's bald spot.

"Whatta you think Harold?" she enticed. "You wanna come with us or you wanna stick with this decaying skank?"

Harold/Bill wanted to get out to the cab as fast his chubby body would allow.

"Come back here, you wimp!" the woman shouted after him.

"I'm sorry ma'am but you've got to leave," I said politely.

She glared at me defiantly.

“Come on. Please. This is their cab.”

She turned away and ignored me.

Suddenly my buried Germanic heritage popped out.

"Schnell!" I commanded. "Schnell!"

The woman bolted out of the taxi and then leaned back to snarl, "Sluts!"

A tall brunet, who had climbed in the front seat, calmly countered in a refined English accent, "Bite me, bitch!"

We drove away in silence for a moment then the brunet and Mica spoke in unison to the blond,

"Decaying skank?"

They broke into giggles.

Then, they all turned to me,

"Schnell?"

We drove off laughing into the night, warmed by the embrace of higher culture.

On the Rudeness of Cab Drivers: One

2011-01-09T11:47:00.000-08:00

A middle-aged couple couple edging toward aged. He in his 60's with white hair. She in her late 50’s. The were high but not drunk.

She climbed into the cab totally self-absorbed, simultaneously talking to the man outside and shouting into her cell with a squeaky, high-pitched voice. She leaned forward and turned to the man, motioning him in, while she continued hollering into the phone.

The man climbed inside as she snapped her cell closed.. She leaned toward me and screamed out an address at the same amplification.

“Could you please lower the volume?” I asked. “You’re shouting in my ear.”

“You just take it easily, fella,” the man said belligerently.

“You’re screaming in my ear, ma’m,” I said quietly, “ Can you please speak more softly?”

“Fuck you, asshole,” the old man shouted.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave.”

They climbed out. The man slammed the back-door shut and then opened the front door, stuck his head in and snapped.

“I hope they shoot you tonight!”

Four Kinds of Karma

2010-12-14T09:27:00.000-08:00

He was mid-twenties, good looking, nicely dressed in sweater and slacks, obviously well-educated.

I picked him up at the emergency ward of a hospital.

"My brother's dying," he told me.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Bone cancer - nothin' they can do."

"I'm very, very sorry."

"Thanks I appreciate that," he said, "I was wondering if you'd do me a favor?"

"Sure."

"I have to get some things for my brother - can you wait?"

"Sure - no problem."

Ordinarily, I ask for money up front in these situations but what kind of creep would tell a story like that just to beat somebody out of six dollars?

The answer is the guy I had in my cab. I dropped him off at a Pacific Heights apartment and he never came back. It turned out they called him the "Fare Evader." He beat over a hundred cab drivers out of petty cash with similar tales.

Actually, I later realized that he had come out of the building wearing a hat. He was with a young woman who looked at me with sad, guilty eyes. He must have bragged to her about his brilliance and my stupidity.

I thought that she felt guilty and wanted to tell me but didn't have the courage.

He was early twenties, Hispanic and poor.

He desperately flagged me down in the mission.

He got into the front seat. He could barely speak English. He was crying.

"My mama," he said chocking. "Mama ... die."

"I'm sorry," I told him."

"No dinero," he told me.

"Es bueno," I told him.

It was a six dollar fare. He left crying but grateful, saying, I think, that he would pay me back someday.

III

He was overweight, middle-aged and belligerent.

I picked him up on Fisherman's Wharf.

"You got a problem?" Was the first phrase out of his mouth.

I can't remember what I'd said. I think it was "hello."

"There's no problem," I told him, "I don't take drunks."

"I'm not drunk."

I looked at him closely. He was right. He was only high. He didn't have an excuse for the hostility.

"Then, I don't take problems."

He stuck a twenty in my hand and said with annoyance

"Just take me to North Beach."

"I don't have change."

"You don't need it - it's yours."

Twenty dollars for a six dollar ride? It was a slow night. What's wrong with a little belligerence after all.

We drove a couple of blocks and he reached out to hand me another twenty.

"What's this?" I asked.

"It's yours."

"Thanks"

"What-da-ya think of that?"

"Of what?"

"My over-tipping."

"There's no such thing as over-tipping. That a concept for the filthy rich."

"Then take this," he said, shoving another twenty in my hand.

I looked closely at him again. There wasn't a trace of generosity or kindness in his face. All I could read there was arrogance. He was giving me the money to prove his superiority, to put me down.

'Demean me,' I thought, 'demean me.'

He hit me one more time with a twenty and left the cab without a word.

Eighty dollars for a six dollar ride. If that didn't prove his point, what would?

He was in his mid-forties, athletic, wearing a sport coat with no tie, ruggedly handsome.

I picked him up coming out of Michael Mina.

He was polite, friendly and personable.

I was playing a classical station.

"I know this piece - what is it?" He asked.

"I know it, too ... but I can't think of it either."

"Schubert?"

"No Brahms -"

"Brahms Third!" We said simultaneously.

"It's unusual to hear Brahms in a taxi," he said.

"It's even more unusual to find a customer who knows who Brahms is."

"Touché," he said with a laugh.

It's easy to describe sexual attraction and poets wax endlessly on love but how do you describe "like." I liked this guy and he liked me - an instant connection.

He was a bass who'd had master classes with Pavarotti and was currently singing with the opera in Seattle. He told me about how Pavarotti could project his voice so that a whisper could be heard across an auditorium.

I told him about my girlfriend who is composing a song cycle inspired by classical Chinese poetry. He gave me his card so I could send him her CD.

We talked music and art and politics and life. We talked about nothing.

The fare read $12.55. I thought that he's handed me a twenty as he stepped out of the cab. I looked at it. He'd accidentally given me a hundred. I called out to him and he turned back toward me.

"You gave me a hundred by mistake."

"It wasn't a mistake," he said, "best cab ride I ever had."

Soft Core Porn or the Real Reason You Can't Get a Cab in San Francisco

2010-12-04T11:56:00.000-08:00

Nice looking woman in her middle thirties: thin, short brown hair, dressed in a conservative business blouse and skirt.

We passed a couple of cruising hookers.

"Are those women prostitutes?" She asked as if waking from a dream.

"You don't get out much do you?"

She laughed.

"No, I don't. I'm from Utah. I got married in High School."

"Yes - they're prostitutes."

We pulled up to her stop. Instead of paying she leaned forward from the right rear seat and asked,

"Do you think they enjoy their work?"

"Strange question."

"Well - you must know."

It was my turn to laugh.

"I know a little," I admitted.

"Well," she asked eagerly, "do they?"

"I don't know ... maybe at first ... having pleasure isn't what they're about."

"You don't think they enjoy it?"

"Maybe sometimes ... but they're into making money. They have to do it whether they're attracted or not?

"I know what that's like," she said. "I feel like that every time my husband touches me."

She leaned back in her seat and started crying. I watched her for a minute. Then I put the car in park and reached out to hold her hand. I pulled her gently toward me and she rose up, put her arms around my shoulders and sobbed for a few more minutes. When she stopped, I asked,

"So you want to go somewhere?"

She looked at me, studying my face, then nodded.

"Why don't you get in front?"

She took her purse and sat next to me.

"There's a motel on Lombard."

She nodded an OK. We didn't talk. I didn't want to break the spell. While I drove we caressed each other's knees and thighs.

When we got to the motel, I told her to get a room while I parked the cab on the street. She was sitting patiently on a bench near the office when I returned. She showed me the key with the room number. I took her by the hand and led her to the room. She stiffened up as we walked.

The room was a dump. She looked around and said,

"I don't know why I'm here."

"Why don't you take your blouse off," I said, "that would clarify things."

She flushed red, smiled and started to take off her overcoat.

"Do you have a condom?" I asked trying to act as if the decision had already been made.

She shook her head.

"Neither do I - I should have grabbed some at the corner store. Let me see if they have any here."

I went into the bathroom. There was a machine. I paid for two and returned. She'd only removed her coat.

"High class place," I said. "They have condoms but no soap."

"I have soap in my purse," she said seriously.

"I won't ask why," I said laughing.

"I won't tell," she giggled.

"You're still wearing that blouse."

She turned a delicious shade of pink and threw me a coy smile as she slowly undid the buttons. Then she quickly took it off, snapped open her bra and tossed it onto a chair, boldly exposing a lovely pair of breasts.

I walked over to her and slowly sucked her nipples without touching her body with my hands. Then I caressed her, we wrapped each other up and kissed. She thrust her tongue deep down my throat and led me to the bed.

I saw her for a few months after that - usually at my place and always when we were both supposed to be working. I had the day shift. She was in sales and could take extended lunches.

The last time, she walked to the door then turned and said,

"I won't be coming back."

Then she pivoted again and left.

A bit abrupt but that's why they call it cab driving.

A Marina Christmas Eve

2010-12-02T12:46:00.000-08:00

Christmas Eve. I should've gone home to celebrate but I made the mistake of taking one last call in the Marina.

They weren't that young, they weren't really in a hurry, they weren't really drunk and they weren't having a good time. The men wore tuxedos and the women black evening dresses. They milled about the taxi staining to make witty repartee.

For me, the significant detail was that there were six of them: three men and three women.

"I'm sorry," I told their leader, "I can only take five. Take two cabs."

He was tall, athletic, handsome and 35. They were all athletic, handsome and 35. Four of them were Caucasian. One man was African American. One women, India Indian. One man and one woman were blonds. Neither the African American and the Indian nor the blonds were couples. They appeared to be mixed and matched by a conscious need to be P.C.

"We've already been waiting an hour," the leader said

"There's no insurance if I take six," I told him, "I'd be fired if there's an accident."

"We'll give you a really big tip," he said.

"We're not going far," the blond woman added, leaning forward so that I could see her breats and giving me a lovely, gracious smile." It's almost midnight. We'll never get another cab."

"Anything for you," I half joked.

"Great," she snapped, shutting off the smile, "22nd and Missouri - The Elysium"

"The what?"

"The Elysium," she repeated with irritation, "the new condos at the bottom of the Potrero Hill."

"Oh yeah - the one's right across from the projects."

"It's a transition neighborhood," she said sharply then immediately began conversing with her friends - although I don't know if you could qualify the way they interacted as a true conversation. They appeared to know each other fairly well but they lamely struggled to connect, often making long pauses between subjects and sentences.

They made jokes that weren't funny and then laughed too hard. They talked about mutual friends and acquaintances. They name dropped: one knew Gavin Newsom, another knew Warren Hinckle. They all knew Wofgang Puck. They'd attended Dartmouth, Northwestern, Standford or USC. One of them was in on the founding of Napster - although he didn't buy any stock. Another belonged to the same fraternity as Larry Summers. One couple decided not to move to Atherton because the Marina was "more real." Another "just loved" living in the fog on "top of the hill" in Daly City.

From the Marina to the bottom of Pot Hill is actually halfway across town so I had to listen to their dispirited chitchat for a long time.

"It's midnight," the blond said. "Merry Christmas Bob. Merry Christmas Jean. Merry Christmas Emil. Merry Christmas Mary. Merry Christmas Kevin."

Bob turned and said:

"Merry Christmas Christine. Merry Christmas Jean. Merry Christmas Emil. Merry Christmas Mary. Merry Christmas Kevin."

Jean then said:

"Merry Christmas Christine. Merry Christmas Bob. Merry Christmas Emil. Merry Christmas Mary. Merry Christmas Kevin."

Emil then said:

"Merry Christmas Christine. Merry Christmas Jean. Merry Christmas Bob. Merry Christmas Mary. Merry Christmas Kevin."

May then said:

"Merry Christmas Christine. Merry Christmas Jean. Merry Christmas Emil. Merry Christmas Bob. Merry Christmas Kevin."

Kevin then closed by saying:

"Merry Christmas Christine. Merry Christmas Jean. Merry Christmas Emil. Merry Christmas Mary. Merry Christmas Bob."

They smiled wanly at each other and we rode the last few blocks in silence. As we pulled to a stop, I turned to them and cheerfully said,

"Merry Christmas Christine. Merry Christmas Bob. Merry Christmas Jean. Merry Christmas Emil. Merry Christmas Mary. Merry Christmas Kevin."

I never cease to be amazed at how some people strive toward being cliques when they're in a taxi.

Christine, Bob, Jean, Emil, Mary and Kevin looked at each other appalled and aghast - stunned by my temerity in not only addressing them with such familiarity but in making a sardonic comment they didn't understand. The looked back and forth at each other in confusion with mouths half agape then fled the cab as quickly as possible.

"Was that supposed to be funny?" Bob asked Christine, Jean, Emil, Mary and Kevin as he stepped out of the cab.

The meter read 14.80. Kevin thrust two rolled up bills into my hand.

I unrolled them - a ten and a five.

"This is your idea of a really big tip?" I asked laconically.

"That's all we've got," he snarled.

It's the Knuckles that Go First

2010-11-29T13:00:00.000-08:00

***
I always liked Henry. He was a tall, powerful, African American who dressed stylishly in suits and always wore a fedora hat. He was very personable, professional in his driving and a strong advocate for worker's rights - a gutsy position in a business where unions are illegal.

In fact, like many of us, he could wax obsessively about the owners, calling them "pigs," "moral retards" and "scum."

But he was a realist and, when he finally understood that the unions weren't coming back, he put his name on a list to own a taxi himself.

"If you can't lick 'em, join 'em," he told friends. "Doesn't mean I have to act like 'em."

After twenty years, he finally rose to the top of a list. He had a small problem with the industry regulators and I helped him iron out the details so he finally became an owner.

I didn't hear from him after that but I soon began hearing about him. There is a saying that you never know what a person's like until you give him or her a taste of power. Or, as Eric, the dispatcher, put it to me when I first got my cab,

"It usually takes about three months for a new owner to turn into an asshole. With you, I'm figuring on three weeks."

Whatever. With Henry it was faster than that. Some say it was drugs.

The unwritten rule is that if you're a driver, you're a driver. It doesn't matter if you're an owner or not. When you're working, you follow the same rules as everybody else.

Henry made his own rules. Instead of waiting in line to get his taxi every night, he just walked to the front. He stole other drivers fares. He had his own drivers wash and clean his cab without paying them for it. Rumor had it that he was also overcharging them on the lease.

Of course, he could've gotten away with being a "moral retard" himself but he made the mistake of fucking with his company.

He started shorting his payments to them and, when someone else was driving his taxi, he took out cabs without a medallion - which could have resulted in huge fines for the company. As soon as they found out they canceled his contract.

Henry nearly broke the door slamming it when he come into the office looking for Bill, the manager.

Bill, an old-school Italian of about 73, was sitting behind his desk listening to opera online. Russ, an Irish-German of 69, was sitting at the desk talking on the phone

"You muther-fucker," Henry screamed at Bill as he rushed toward him, lining him up for a punch. Henry stood about 6'5" 220 pounds and was an ex-boxer.

Russ, who was almost as big as Henry, stood up to calm him down. He put his hands out in conciliatory gesture and said,

"Take it easy ... relax... take it -"

Henry unloaded on Russ with about 8 quick hammering blows: left-right body, left-right head, left-right body, left-right head.

Guys always said Russ was somebody you just didn't want to mess with. He was still standing, staring at Henry, after the barrage.

Henry paused for second, staring back at Russ.

Then, he threw two more punches. Russ blocked them both, counter-punched and knocked Henry out. Then he and Bill mopped the blood off the floor with Henry's body as they dragged him out of the office and dumped him in the parking lot.

I came by a shot time later to see Russ.

He told me the story and said, "I think I broke my little finger."

"Did you take Henry to a hospital?" I asked.

"Naw - he's okay. He' walked out of here."

Russ shook his bad hand and said.

"Damn it! I can still fight but the knuckles just can't take it anymore."

He walked toward his desk nursing the finger then he turned back to me with a smile and said,

"But - damn that felt good!"

A Criminal Mastermind

2010-11-28T12:23:00.000-08:00

***
That's what the press called him, "A Criminal Mastermind." As if you needed to be a genius to hold up a taxi driver. If he'd been smart he would have stopped after a few robberies or at least spaced out his crimes. Instead, he ripped off one or more drivers every day for about three weeks.

I guess this is why media thought he was brilliant. What they didn't know was that serial cab robbers are actually common. And, they all have one thing in common; the perps are always junkies. That why they never quit until they're caught.

But I have to hand it Einstein - he was clever. A 6'5" African American built like a wrestler, he still managed to con over twenty drivers into letting him climb into the backseat of their taxis. He dressed differently for every crime. Sometimes he wore a suit; sometimes a wig; sometimes horn-rimmed glasses. Once he walked out of a hotel and had a doorman put him in the cab. And he was charming. His talk relaxed the drivers enabling him to slip behind them and put them in a chock hold.

But there was nothing charming about his grip. He seriously injured a few of the drivers.

While he was somehow able find cab drivers gullible enough to feed his habit, few other man of color were able to even slow a taxi down. It wasn't only African Americans. Hispanics, Indians, Arabs, Persians - none of them were getting cabs.

Except, I guess, from me. I'd had a little experience with people sticking guns in my face and, rightly or wrongly, thought I could tell whether or not somebody was dangerous. I do know for a fact that I twice passed up thugs who robbed other cab drivers. I looked for the body language and the eyes - windows to the mind and the soul.

I probably never had so many young brown-skinned males in my cab as I did during those three weeks. And, they were grateful. They were throwing money at me. I was getting twenties for six and eight dollar rides.

The "genius's" mistake was getting into Henry's cab. The mugger put on his usual act with the talk and the charm while he slid behind Henry. Then he directed him into a deserted spot and put on the headlock.

What he hadn't realized was that Henry was deceptively thin and only looked like a pushover. He had long, hard muscles and big hands like Dennis Rodman or Woody Strode and was a powerful man. He wrapped those huge hands around the forearms of his assailant and snapped open the head-lock like it was pair of cheap chopsticks. Then Henry put the creep in the hospital.

I was almost sorry to see the "Mastermind" apprehended. My income dropped about thirty percent the following week.

Don Miguel's

2010-11-27T20:37:00.000-08:00

***
Mary's disease was already well advanced the first time I picked her up. I believe she suffered from MS although she never mentioned it. She had difficulty walking from the bank to the cab. I came around to help but she refused me saying cheerfully,

"It's good for me to exercise."

When she got in, I asked her how she was.

"Every day we're alive is a blessing," she told me.

I picked her up about every other week after that - either at her home or at the bank where she was a high ranking administrator. I only realized how high when a thirty-something, middle-managing, Standford MBA type came sheepishly forward as I about to drive away so he could get her to sign some papers and kiss her butt.

Mary simply didn't act like a person with power. She showed no arrogance, no sense of superiority, no need to control, no need to demean. She was one of a handful of true egalitarians that I've ever met.

She didn't just make "conversation with the cabbie" like most people in her position would. She actually enjoyed talking to me and was truly interested what I did and my ideas. I soon began thinking of her as a friend and looked forward to seeing her.

Her condition rapidly deteriorated and within a few months she not only accepted my help in walking her to my cab but depended upon it. A few weeks afterward, she handed in her resignation and retired. She said that she looking forward to relaxing and re-reading the great Russian novels - a passion we both shared.

I hadn't seen her for a couple of months when I took a call at Mary's home. She'd gone down hill fast. She was now using a walker and being helped by a tall, blond woman in her thirties that I learned was her niece, Grace.

Grace had come from Fresno to help nurse Mary who was clearly excited to see me. She talked and gossiped about various drivers who had become part of her social circle. Every now and then Grace would politely ask who somebody was and then silently listen to us converse.

The next time I picked them up, a few weeks later, I gave Grace a warm hello. She ignored me. In fact, she cut off my greeting before I got the second syllable out.

"Don Miguel's!" She snapped, "and we're in a hurry. We're already late thanks to you!"

"I took the call two minutes ago," I said.

She waved my words off with a hostile expression.

"I really don't have time for chitchat - we're late for an appointment."

All this time Mary was slowly working her walker down a set of stairs. I started up to help her and had just about reached her when Grace snapped.

"Leave her alone! Exercise is good for her."

"I thought you were in a hurry," I said.

She looked at me and started to say one thing but just shrugged and said,

"Suit yourself. Just make it snappy!"

Mary looked at me with huge eyes and an enigmatic expression but didn't say a thing as I helped her into the car.

"You know where Don Miguel's is don't you?" Grace continued in the same demeaning tone of voice.

"I've never heard of it," I told her truly looking at Mary who continued to silently stare at me. What did she want to say?

"It's a very popular place," Grace insisted.

"It can't be that popular or I would've heard of it."

"Don't be insolent!" she snarled. "I thought you were supposed to know where everything is?"

"There are over 10,000 bars and restaurants in this town. Nobody knows them all."

"If I was a cabbie, I'd know," she told me condescendingly. "It's part of doing a job properly."

'Just like the way you nurse,' I thought to myself without saying it. Mary obviously would pay for any sarcasm on my part.

"Let me call my dispatcher."

He didn't know where Don Miguel's was either.

"We'll," Grace snapped, "We'll just get another cab."

I helped Mary get out of the cab and as I drove away, she followed me with those huge eyes. They were no longer a puzzle to me. What they showed was terror and despair.

Several years later I stumbled across Don Miguel's in a back alley and thought of Mary. I hoped that she'd been blessed with a quick and painless death.

Walkabout or How Real is it?

2010-11-27T17:59:00.000-08:00

***
A rare hot San Francisco day. Dusk falling into night.

I took five young Aussies, three men and two women - all tanned, all attractive - across the Bay Bridge to the train depot in Oakland. I asked them where they were going.

"We're on a walkabout," a tall man replied.

"You mean, you're making it up as you go along?"

"You got, it mate."

"You know, you sound just like a young Mel Gibson," I told him.

They laughed.

"Too bad he don't look like it," one of the girls cracked.

"Too good lookin' for the likes of you."

They started putting each other down and laughing.

"Take it easy on him," I told the girl, "he could look like me."

"Na' that would be an improvement," she said leaning forward from the back seat, putting her arm around my neck, nestling her cheek on my shoulder and peering up at me

I stared into her blue eyes and at her sexy, teasing smile and lost my concentration.

Not a smart thing to do in West Oakland. I took a wrong turn and, then, another wrong turn, went under the freeway and found myself driving through what looked like a bombed-out lunar landscape.

Instead of street lamps, huge Halo projectors rose from the top of twenty-five foot poles casting light down on endless rolls of military-type bungalows. The place looked like a film version of a WWII prison camp.

An ancient Toyota hatchback came careening around a corner chased by three black & whites. A dude knocked out the hatch window and started firing with what-I-took-to-be a 9 mm automatic. Its magazine holds 18 bullets if I remember my TV correctly. Dude fired off about 17 of them without hitting a damn thing. Then, just as the car whipped around a corner, he nailed the leading cop's front tire with a single shot from a 100 yards away.

The cop car spun a half U before the driver took control and brought it to rest. The other patrol cars screeched around the corners with two cops firing pistols out the windows of both vehicles.

I put in reverse, whipped the steering wheel and floored it, spinning a U. I was almost hit broadside by three more cops cars who raced around me with the drivers screaming obscenities loud enough for me to hear.

"Fuckin' A," I said.

"Fuckin' A," the Aussies said in unison, laughing.

"Just like a Oliver Stone flick," one of them reported.

"If you say so," I replied as I sped down the street wondering where the hell I was going. The place looked the same in every direction. The Toyota had taken a left so I decided on a right. Wrong choice. The Toyota raced toward me from a quarter block away with a five cops cars following close behind. I didn't have time to turn.

"You'd better duck," I said, "dudes sometime confuse us with cops -"

"Dudes," they imitated, laughing as they put their heads down.

Indeed one of the dudes pointed his gun at me and fired just as I ducked. I never found a bullet. It must have gone in one open window and out the other.

"I think it's the badges," I said finishing my thought as I looked up.

That was pretty much it. I kept driving straight until I finally got out of the neighborhood.

"God! I'm sorry," I told my customers who had been quiet since we'd been fired upon. "I don't know the neighborhood - I just took a wrong turn."

"Naw - this was great!" One of them said.

"It's the highlight of the trip," added another.

"At last," the blue-eyed girl said, "we get to see the real America."

That Little Miracle

2010-11-26T13:52:00.000-08:00

***
The sky opened up. It was raining more heavily than it had in four or five years with huge drops of water hitting the street so hard that they bounced back up over the hood of the cab like hail.

I drove a woman through the deluge to a house on the edge of the ocean. We joked about the rain along the way. She said it was like Florida. I contended that Minnesota was worse. Hurricanes and tornadoes vs tornadoes and blizzards. We decided it was a toss.

When I dropped her off, I got notice of a radio call in the area. I didn't know if I should take it or not. It was toward downtown but it was still three miles away. It would take me at least ten minutes to get there. People in these outlying areas often call three or four cab companies. If you don't pick up in five minutes, the order is usually gone. On the other hand, the house was half-way up a small mountain so the customers probably couldn't flag a taxi down ... and it was raining. The odds were 50/50 that the fare would still be there. I decided to take the call.

The rain eased off a little but it was still pouring. The traffic was horrible. Everybody but St. Paulites ("Minnesota Nice" can be annoying but it works for driving) think they have worst drivers in the world. In San Francisco we KNOW we have the worst. There is no debate.

As usual most of the cars were going 15 mph, tailgating each other, and weaving like their drivers were on cell phones or drunk. About one car in ten decided to charge through the mess at 75 mph. During a rainstorm a few years earlier, there had been 67 accidents in a three hour period.

We were going for a new record on this night. I saw one rear-ender and cut over to the next block where two cars had creamed each other with a classic I-dare-you-to-take-that-left-in-front-of-me-while-I'm-running-the-"yellow"light accident. I doubled back only to get caught in the overflow from the two collisions. I back tracked, doubled back and went way around until I found a street I could make progress on.

It was already 15 minutes since I'd taken the order and I was still 5 minutes out. The odds of the customer still being there was less than one in twenty. If I chased the ride and it was gone, it could cost ten or twenty bucks and put me a real bad mood. I decided to blow it off and head for a nearby hospital where I'd have a good change of picking up a flag.

Then I thought of the new director of taxis. The taxi directors were always woman and they were always good looking. I suppose the powers that be figured that 5,000 males would be too busy drooling to notice that they were being shafted. This turned out to be true. The only thing I remember about one previous director was that she had beautiful breasts and wore low-cut blouses. If you looked at her a certain way, her nipples would pop out.

These woman all started idealistic, thinking that they would "reform" the taxi business. But, after running up against the relentless corruption of the owners and the endless stupidity of the politicians not to mention the petty greed and arrogance of the drivers, the woman all left bitter. As one former director put it,

"Everybody in the industry is either an ex-convict or soon will be."

The new director, who could have been a fashion model if she hadn't been a tomboy and was gorgeous at forty-five, still lived in the Utopian stage. She truly thought that she could make a difference. Noting that many people who called for taxis in the neighborhoods never got them, she encouraged the drivers to go out of their way to help the customers get their cabs.

"Go pick up those people in the neighborhoods!" She said like a coach giving an inspirational half-time speech. "Make an effort, once per shift, to go get someone who has no reason to hope that a taxi will actually appear --give them that little miracle."

She said this to a bunch of cab drivers.

Her uplifting tone, her optimism, her naivete was - well - so cute, so endearing that I actually drove up the damn mountain through the downpour to chase my order. Of course I was cursing her all the way knowing that what I was doing was a waste of my time and money.

Then I rounded a corner and saw them, Louise and Mary, two lovely women in their late 70's, dressed to the teeth, standing patiently under an umbrella in the wind and the cold. Sometimes the best words are cliques. They were overjoyed to see me.

"You got here just in time," Louise told me, "I thought we were going miss Placido Domingo."

"Yes," Mary added, "we've been looking forward to seeing him all year."

Just Drive

2010-11-14T20:36:00.000-08:00

***
Maybe it was just a racial incident.

I was dropping off a woman near the Western Addition projects when two African American men in their early 20s appeared in my driver's side mirror. They were dressed ghetto. I didn't know where they came from. It freaked me out.

"Are you the one I called?" the taller one asked.

It was a line. He hadn't called. Or had he?

I reflexively went into a racist mode.

All the stories about cab robberies zipped through my mind: the guy from the projects who beat and robbed a cab driver and then went back to the same address where the driver had picked him up, two guys who'd shot a driver and left him on top of a hill, the guy who'd shot and killed a driver two blocks away from where I currently was talking to the dude. All black guys.

"I got an appointment," I said lying.

"Come on man - I just need a ride," the tall one whined.

"I got a radio call," I said, lying again.

"Ah - come on," he said, "don't be like that ... you're not taking me cause I'm black."

He was right. I was being a racist and it didn't feel right.

"Okay," I said, "I'll cancel the radio call."

I pretended to talk to my company while the tall man stepped into the backseat on the passenger side. I started driving and asked,

"Where ya wanna go?"

"Just drive," he snapped, "I'll let you know."

I looked at him in the rear-view mirror. He glared back at me. I felt myself fill with fear.

At the next corner I said,

"I need to know where to go."

"Just drive!" He snapped more loudly.

The neighborhood was quiet but not completely deserted. There was a car driving toward me and another at the intersection. A couple walked slowly in the distance.

"I'm not supposed to take anybody without a location," I told him.

"Just drive!" He snarled.

I looked in the mirror. Now his eyes were filled with hatred.

I headed toward downtown. I started looking for cop cars. I asked him to give me a destination two or three more times - always getting the same answer. If he was going to attack me, he'd have to do it before the streets became more congested. Both his tone of voice and his look became more and more intense.

He began to piss me off. I mean, all right - I was a racist but I had picked him up. He was riding to nowhere in my cab wasn't he? What right did he have to hate me. Just 'cause I was white!? I was probably the only taxi driver in the city stupid enough to give him a ride and here he was hating me for it. Where was the logic?

I looked in the mirror and glared back at him.

"I need a location," I snapped.

"Just drive," he snapped back.

We glared at each other in the mirror.

I figured that if he'd had a gun I would've already seen it so I decided that, if he tried to rob me, I was going to put up a fight.

Slowly, glancing back and forth from the street to his eyes in the mirror, very slowly because I didn't want to panic him with a sudden move, making sure that he was watching me, I reached my arm out, opened the glove compartment, took our a heavy flashlight and slowly brought it back to my lap.

The son-of-a-bitch might take me out but he'd have a sore face for a long time afterwards.

"Where da ya wanna go," I asked evenly.

"North Beach," he said quickly, caving in.

I looked in the mirror. He stared nervously back at me. I floored it, whipped a right, took a quick left down an alley, then stopped the car. I turned around and faced him.

"This what you lookin for?" I asked evenly.

"Yeah, Man," he said tensely. "Just where I want to go." He started opening the door as he spoke.

"That's $9.85."

The creep pulled a twenty out of his pocket and handed it to me.

"Make it ten."

"What?" I asked. "No tip?"

"No - no ... make it ah twelve - no thirteen," he said as he climbed out the door. "Tell you what - keep the change."

He turned and ran down the alley. I guess he thought I'd pulled a gun out of the glove.

Stupidest thing I've ever done in my life. If he'd been packing, he'd a blown me away and thought it was self-defense.

A Blank Receipt

2010-11-13T11:21:00.000-08:00

***
The juxtaposition was stunning.

Nancy, a woman of around thirty smiled obsequiously at Doctor Greyson (as she continually addressed him during the ride) hanging on his every word. Then she turned to me from the shotgun seat and, with a look combing hostility, arrogance and, perhaps, sadism - snarled,

"Cabbie - you will give me a blank receipt!"

Doctor Willis, Doctor Chopta and Doctor Murphy were riding with Doctor Greyson in back. I know this because they all addressed each other with their formal names. They were delicate and polite as they asked each others opinions and ventured ideas of their own. They were slightly less polite to Nancy, if for no other reason than that they called her by her first name and showed no interest in her opinions.

Nancy broke off her smiling admiration of the physicians twice more en route to loudly command,

"You will give a blank receipt!"

None of the doctors appeared to notice her ejaculations.

When we arrived, they all got out and Nancy came around to my window to pay me $9 for an $8.05 ride and to once again announce,

"You will give me a blank receipt!"

I took a receipt and slowly and carefully began to fill it out, beginning with the date.

"You will give a blank Receipt!" she repeated more emphatically.

I slowly wrote out $9 in both numbers and prose, signed the receipt and held it out to her with a smile.

"Why? Did you take a blank ride?" I asked.

She looked at me with an expression combing frustration and humiliation with hatred. Finally, she snatched the receipt.

As I drove off I heard her call after me,

"Next time we're taking a limo!"

You know, thinking back on it, that was the first time I'd filled out a receipt in four or five years. Usually, its just too much trouble.

Tragic Stupidity

2010-11-11T10:42:00.000-08:00

***
I pulled up at four-way stop. The street changed from a two-way to a one-way heading in my direction on the other side of the crossing. It also turned into a steep hill leading up to a freeway entrance.

Two Asian kids around ten years old were skateboarding down the hill. One of them fell just as I stopped but the other one was careening out of control, flying toward the bottom.

A thirty something, badly-shaven, white guy with black hair drove an old Buick slowly toward the stop on my right. He glanced at me and floored it so he could beat me to the right-of-way. He probably didn't think he needed to look up the hill because of the one-way sign.

I wildly honked my horn, sticking my arm out my window and pointing at the boy, who sped into the intersection.

The man flipped me off without looking at me. His car didn't swerve or brake so I don't think he saw the boy before he killed him.

The driver stopped quickly after hitting him, looked out his window at the body that had been thrown about thirty feet, then floored it again and raced away.

I got out and ran to the boy's mangled body hoping against hope that I could help him in some way but the only thing I could do was try to comfort his stunned and horrified brother.

The killer either didn't know the neighborhood or panicked because he pulled into a cul-de-sac and a truck driver, who'd seen the crime and followed the man, blocked him off until the police arrived.

The killer's attorney tried to claim that "the cabby" had caused the "accident by honking his horn." The jury didn't buy it but maybe the judge partially did.

He only gave the guy two to five for involuntary manslaughter.

A Charming Couple

2010-11-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

***

The were charming. Mid thirties. Good looking. In shape. Fashionably dressed. They were heading to Gary Danko's for dinner before night clubbing.

The woman did most of the talking. She wanted to know how I was and how the night was going. She was smart enough not to ask me how long I'd been driving a cab.

"I'll bet you do something else," she said, leaning her forearms on the back of the suicide seat and nestling her head on top of them. I could smell her perfume. Delicious.

"Yeah," I told her, "I drink a bit and I sleep."

"No no no," she said laughing and gently pushing my shoulder with her hand, "you know what I mean. You must be a musician, an artist. With that voice, I'll be bet you're a singer."

"Yeah - in fact I do sing a bit."

"I knew it!" She exclaimed rubbing my arm.

"But," I added sheepishly, "what I really do is write."

"I knew it!" she exclaimed again, this time squeezing my arm. Then she turned to her husband. "Doesn't he look like a writer, Bob."

"Yeah," he said. "You know ... you sound just like William Buckley."

"Nobody's perfect." I sotto voiced.

They burst out laughing.

I sucked it in.

I'd had a horrible night. I'd been on a negative roll and had had one asshole after another after another work me over. I was fairly new at the time and didn't know how let things slide or how to quietly take revenge. I felt anguished, degraded and lonely.

The couple introduced themselves to me. He was Bob. She was Caroline. We talked about my writing. Caroline had been a lit major before going into law.

"I'll bet you get a lotta material driving a cab?" Bob mused as we pulled up the restaurant.

"You know," Caroline said, leaning closer to me, "Bob and I both forget to ask for receipts sometimes."

"And sometimes," Bob said, "cabbies don't have them."

"Is there any way," Caroline continued, "that we could get a few blank ones."

"Of course," Bob added, "they'd be a good tip involved."

I reached into my briefcase and gabbed a stack of receipts. There were maybe - I didn't count - 75 or a 100. I felt such gratitude toward Bob and Caroline for breaking my isolation that I held out the stack toward them saying,

"What you have to do is catch a cab driver in a good mood."

Their eyes dilated. They held their breath. Caroline's mouth stayed slightly open in a smile. She reached out slowly and carefully, not too fast, as if not to frighten my hand away and gracefully relieved me of the receipts.

The exchanged a quick look. Non-verbal communication. What the look said was "smuc."

The meter read $9.40.

Bob gave me a ten.

"Don't forget the tip," Caroline said.

"Of course I won't forget - whatdaya think I am?"

Bob peeled off two one dollar bills and handed them to me. Then with a twinkle in his eye, he peeled off one more.

"Thanks for the receipts."

The War Against Cabbies

2010-11-04T13:53:00.000-07:00

***
Jack was an airline pilot in the USSR flying out of Moscow. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 so did the economy and Jack lost his job. But he had saved enough as a pilot to finally realize his dream of moving with his wife and son to America.

He changed his name to Jack from Yuri in honor of Jack Nicholson and his favorite movie, One Flew Over the CuckCoo's Nest.

Of course all the jobs for airline pilots in the USA were filled and he worked cleaning up in New York restaurants for awhile before moving to San Francisco to drive an old friend's taxicab. It was tough, thankless work but it paid the bills and gave him a chance to practice English while he looked around for a position with the airlines.

After a few years, he realized that cab driving would be his career from then on. It was a huge disappointment but he came to look at it as if he was flying an airplane only on the ground. He prided himself on his knowledge of the city and his ability to navigate every route in the best possible way.

The girl, the woman, was about 23, stylishly dressed, a little homely and rude. When she stepped into the cab she ignored his greeting, looked through him and snapped out a command,

"Union and Laguna - Kearny to Pine to Franklin to Union to Laguna!"

Jack hesitated for a moment than said,

"I don't think it such a good idea."

"What you think doesn't matter - this isn't a subject for debate! "

"But lot of construction on Pine right now."

"That's California - there's construction on California."

"Yesterday on California - today Pine."

"Am I paying for this or are you? Take Pine!"

"But its total gridlock, it stupid -"

"I'm stupid!? If you're so smart why don't you get yourself a fucking job!"

"But -"

"No 'but' Boris - you have to do what I say!"

"Suit yourself," Jack shrugged

"Who should I suit, Boris? You?" she said taking out her Smartphone playing with it.

Jack shrugged again. He took a right on Kearny, drove three blocks making two lane changes in the process and took a left on Pine. He'd been wrong. The gridlock wasn't total. It didn't start for fifty yards but it went on for a least four blocks up the hill. Jack tried to get over to the right lane so he could escape down an alley but the light changed and traffic cut him off before the could make the maneuver.

The cab moved four or five car lengths during the next three lights while the girl concentrated on texting.

"Can't you driver faster?" she snapped without looking up from phone.

A quick, chuckle escaped Jack's lips.

She looked up and stared wildly about at the traffic.

"You did this deliberately!" she shouted. "You think this is funny?!!!"

"No - ridiculous ... you want Pine. This is Pine."

"Well - Boris, I'm not paying for this!"

"Yes - you chose the route, you must pay - and my name's not 'Boris,'" he said as he pulled out a copy of the taxi regulations.

"Here," he said turning toward her to show her the specific rule, "look at the this."

"No Yuri - you look at this," she said as she spit a big gob into his face.

He reflexively backed-handed her. She fell against the seat and bounced up toward him.

"Faggot!" She screamed and spit at him again.

This time he slapped her hard enough to shut her up.

The City decided to suspend his taxi license for six months to a year because he had never had a complaint before. But this wasn't enough for the girl. She took him to court.

"I'm truly sorry," Jack told the judge. "I don't mean to hurt girl ... I never do violence before ... never hit wife or son growing up ... never hit anyone. It's just ... in my country spit on a person is the greatest insulted ... I caught by surprise ... never hit before ... I never hit again ... I just so insulted ... please ..."

The judge took away his license permanently.

The woman, the girl, an aspiring actress, triumphantly told the press, "It's a victory for all women in the war against cabbies."

A Driving Lesson

2010-10-18T22:46:00.000-07:00

The car hit us from behind just as we were about to turn. It was only a tap but I wanted to make sure that there had been no damage.

I was just putting my clipboard aside when I noticed the driver of the other car standing next to my window glaring at me.

I gave him a big, friendly smile, stepped out on the passenger side and walked with him to the back of the car. He was tall and thin, in his mid-twenties and wore an expensive leather jacket.

We glanced at the bumpers and everything looked okay.

"You must have rolled back," he said.

A ridiculous statement if I ever head one. The street was level. Besides, as I told him,

"We were already moving forward."

He started hollering at me. I was so stunned that I can't remember what he said. I only knew that there was a point I wanted to make so I ignored his outburst and began speaking.

"You shouldn't -" I started to say but he interrupted me before I could finish.

"Get outta my face!" He screamed, moving threateningly toward me.

"There's no need to be rude. I was just trying to say - "

"Get outta my face!" He screamed again.

Who was he to tell me what to do?

"I'll get in your face if I feel like it," I replied taking a step forward.

"Back off!" He, as usual, screamed, "Or I'll kick your ugly face in."

"That's not a nice way to talk," I said with a smile. "All I've been trying to say is -"

"My God!" He screamed in exasperation, "There isn't even any damage!"

"True," I agreed, "But irrelevant to my point. You shouldn't -"

"I'm gonna ruin your whole day!" He threatened.

I ignored him and tried once again to speak.

"You shouldn't -"

"I'm gonna fuck you up for life!"

"You shouldn't - "

"Suit yourself," he cried as he shoved me in the chest.

Now you'd think a guy with his attitude would've learned how to fight or at least have taken a few boxing lessons or one of those self-defense courses. If he had, it didn't show. He had big hands but a weak grip. I easily took his fists off me and pushed him away.

"Okay - you asked for it," she snapped.

Then he let out a Kung Fu yelp and leaped toward me swinging a wide, wild left hook. It was one of the most ridiculous and pathetic moves I've ever seen. I almost broke out laughing. I was so amused that I took mercy on the fool, held back my punch and made my move. I bull-rushed him, threw him down on the pavement, pinned his arms with my knees and sat on his chest.

"I'm sorry, " he said, "I'm really sorry."

"You shouldn't -"

"I didn't mean it," he cried out.

"You shouldn't -"

"I won't do it again! I won't _"

I was just about to slap him when he sensed my intend and shut up.

"You shouldn't," I calmly and quietly told him, "tailgate."

Mary Beth was still sitting in the driver's seat when I got back to the car. In the excitement of the argument, I'd forgotten about her. As I climbed into the passenger seat, I tried not to notice the womanly body thrusting out of her school uniform.

She clutched the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles turned white. She stared at me with wide, dilating, blue eyes.

"We can only hope he'll learn from this experience," I said. "Now let's finish that right turn - but cut it a little sharper this time. You shouldn't ... you wouldn't want to end up on the wrong side of the street.

Three Rights Make A Left

2010-10-14T18:01:00.000-07:00

Shirley MacArthur spent the afternoon of her 84th birthday getting lessons from me on how to make lane changes on two of the busiest streets in San Francisco (Fell and Oak.) Shirley hadn't learned how to drive until she was 35 and never liked changing lanes. If she needed to go left, she drove one block past the desired street and then made three right turns.

The strategy worked fine for almost 50 years - until she had to take a driving test. Shirley needed a teacher and chose me when she found out I was a cab driver like her late husband. I'd taken up teaching because I'd burned out on full time cab driving and needed a mental break. I would drive taxi three days and teach two or three.

It made me a more careful driver. I mean, I couldn't very well tell fifteen year-olds to slow down than race around like a lunatic myself. I became the world's safest cab driver and the most dangerous driving teacher. My taxi colleagues had a different view and took to calling me, "the old lady."

Ironically, they also thought I was crazy to take on such a dangerous job. Yeah - not a safe occupation like driving around with a couple hundred in cash in a city filled with junkies. And, I can't remember a single driving student threatening to re-arrange my face.

The truth is that I found teaching a little dull - a real danger because you never knew when a student might suddenly whip a left in front of a charging semi.

I specialized in drivers that were either very good or very bad because they both demanded all my attention: the good ones because I could teach them advanced skills and the bad ones because they kept me alert. Part of this approach included teaching seniors who needed to be re-tested.

Age by itself didn't seem to be very important in determining their chances of improving. The main quality required was the ability to learn new and different ways to do things. Some people could still adapt at 90, others were hopelessly set in their ways at 60.

The classic example was changing lanes. This is where most senior drivers fail. The generation before mine had not been taught to look over their shoulders. Instead they only used the mirrors. But, of course, you can't see everything unless you take an over-the-shoulder glance. In California, if a driver doesn't do it, he or she flunks the test.

I had one student who had failed three times because he neglected to take that glance. He was only in his forties but I've never taught anyone so impossible. I had him make at least 50 lane changes and had to tell to look every single time. At the end of the lesson, he turned to me and asked, "Can you look over your shoulder too much?"

This sort of hardened mentality wasn't a problem with Shirley. She was sharp and she was game. The only difficulties were getting over her fear and teaching her to make those lane change in heavy traffic - the toughest technique in driving. We spent three rush hours going up and down, whipping from one lane to another, on those insane, congested streets. The next day she easily passed the test.

"You're a great teacher," she told me as I drove her home, "you should stick to teaching ... I always tell my cab drivers to get out of the business - it's just too dangerous out there."

"Yeah, " I said laconically, "I know."

"No, you don't," she said. Then she told me about her husband.

They were in love and were very happy together. They opened a small cafe that gradually became successful. Her husband drove the cab a couple of nights a week to help with the expenses. When the cafe started to bring in enough money he decided to finally quit driving.

"On his last night," Shirley told me, "on his last ride, he picked up a crazy ex-marine dressed like a WWI Russian officer and he killed my Bobby with a sword ... so, no, you don't know how dangerous it is."

Anger

2010-09-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

A thin guy in his middle thirties. Said he used to drive cab at my old company. He started dropping names. I knew some. I didn't know others. In the cab business you can talk to a driver for years and not know his name. I was going to say "his or her name" but I always know the names of the women.

"Remember Jack?" the ex-driver asked.

"The dispatcher?"

"Yeah - he died last year.

"It wasn't soon enough!" The words exploded out of me. "I'm glad he's dead!"

We were both shocked by my outburst.

I drove in on in silence for a few minutes while he looked nervously about as if trying to decide whether nor not he should bolt. He finally decided that I wasn't immediately dangerous and changed the subject. I think he talked about the Giants until we arrived at his destination where, as is the custom with many ex-cab drivers, he under-tipped me and walked off smiling as if he'd done me a favor.

I turned off the car and sat stunned, staring out over a small park. I had no idea that I carried so much anger, so much hatred around with me.

Jack was the head dispatcher at my first company twenty years earlier. He was tall and well-built with dark hair and good looks. He spoke in a whinny, New York intellectual, Woody Allen way, as if he'd read every book in the world and found them all beneath him. He knew endless trivia about Joyce, Pound, Stein etc. and constantly made allusions to their works.

His intellectual pretension was one of the things I despised most about him. I mean, here he was - this superior being, talking about Baudelaire while extracting $5 from me before he'd let me go to work.

"- Hypocrite reader - my fellow - mon frere." Personally, I doubt he'd ever gone beyond Cliff Notes.

I took him home in my taxi once and he talked to me as he was an aristocrat straining to communicate with the common man. ("I mean, what do say to such people?" ) He told me that before he'd been "chosen" as a dispatcher (i.e. connived, lied, bribed and blew his way into the job) he was "just a cab driver."

Jake showed us "just cab drivers" what he thought of us every day.

The shifts changed daily at 4:00 pm. And, every day at precisely 4:00 pm, Jake went to the bathroom. He stayed there for 15 or 20 or 25 minutes while dozens and dozens of drivers waited in line losing money, while dozens and dozens of customers desperately wondered why there were no cabs on the street. When he finally showed up, wiping his runny nose, Jake looked at the line of waiting drivers with a sardonic glint and nonchalantly, slowly, started handing out the medallions.

One day, when he'd taken an especially long time fixing his nose, when he was finally reaching out to give me the my taxi license, his hand stopped in mid-air while he started hitting on a nearby woman driver. All smiles and charm. This went on and on.

"Is it okay if I get my medallion?" I finally snapped.

He looked at me and tossed the metal through the window with contempt.

"You don't have to be rude!"

"I don't have to be rude?!!! Fuck you!"

I was walking back to get my cab when a big hand grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around to see Jake hunched a little over, ready to launch a round-house right at my head.

"Come on asshole!" He screamed, "Come on! Fuck me?! Fuck you!"

Jake was as big as I am and, with those big hands, could probably hit hard enough to do some damage but he didn't know how to fight. He was getting ready to throw a slow, sweeping punch. I'd have stepped inside, blocked it and hit him fiver or six time before he could react. It would have been the only punch he threw.

But, I made a mistake. I hesitated and waited for him to move first. And, when I hesitated I thought - thought about how beating on him would cost me my job and how I only took it in the first place because nobody else would hire me. On top of this, Jake would probably have me arrested for assault. All the guys in line would testify on his behalf because they were in the same situation as me.

Suddenly, Jake was right up eye level. My hesitation had emboldened him. He filled with the courage of a beast preying on the weak.

"Come on! Come on!" He screamed, getting closer and closer until he almost bumped my chest.

I stared at him, paralyzed by realism.

"That's right!" He yelled, backing up a step while sticking a finger at my nose. "You don't fuck with me! You wanna get along around here, you get along with me! You got that?"

I turned and walked away. He grabbed me by the shoulder again and spun me back around.

"I asked you a question!" He demanded, "You got that?"

"Yeah," I finally said, "I got that."

I turned and looked around me, my face turning red with humiliation. The other drivers were all staring at the the ground.

I felt the same sense of humiliation every time I saw him after that, every day that he kept me waiting before handing me the medallion with smug superiority, every time that I handed him the $5.

Even more humiliating was the thought that it was all my own fault that I was even there. I should have been the doctor or the lawyer my parents wanted me to be. I should have written better books. I was a "cabbie" - a loser - and Jake rubbed my nose in it every day.

I try to be a follower of Mahatma Gandhi but I'm not that pure. If I'd hit Jake, I never would've thought about him again. I might has well have. They "didn't like my attitude" and canceled my lease a few months later anyway. As it was, as it is, I'd let the anger fester and grow for 20 years ... over a pretentious smuc.

Living the Blues

2010-09-23T07:33:00.000-07:00

Tori thought the staging in Aida was tacky.

"Did you expect Radames to ride in on a real elephant? " I asked

"They didn't even have a horse for the triumphal march."

"It's a recession," I said, "they save money on the staging."

"But with Aida the sets are are the main thing," Francoise added.

A specular trio (mezzo, tenor, soprano) finale made me forget everything else about Aida. For me the music is always what it's about, but I wasn't going to argue - it was Francoise's night. After 20 years, she finally owned her medallion; 20 years of driving cabs five or six nights a week to raise three kids on her own; 20 years with no vacations; 20 years of worrying every month about the rent. No, I wasn't going to argue. I raised my bottle of beer.

"To Francoise," I said toasting her.

Tori and Barry, Francoise's daughter and her boyfriend whose names I never caught joined in, clicking bottles and glasses.

"To Francoise!"

She clicked her glass with us and tossed back a warm, lovely, impish smile.

Yes, I was drinking my beer from a bottle. Inappropriate for a discussion of Aida, perhaps, but perfect for the dumpy, half-empty, blues bar we were sitting in.

It was a pickup night and an old black man standing next to his wheel chair was singing Otis Reddings' Dock of the Bay backed by two aging white guys, a young Asian and a middle-aged Samoan playing guitars; a half-blind Mexican on a toy piano and a young, blond woman blowing wonderfully on a harmonica. You tell that they either were (or had been) professionals but they were a little out of sync. When the piece ended, a couple of guitars introduced themselves to each other.

As the night went on they got better and better as our conversation grew warmer and friendlier.

We were a good match for each other, the band and us. We were all a little beat up and maybe had seen better days.

Tori, Francoise and I could all have lost 30 pounds without noticing it and Barry always wore a hat to cover his bald spot. Tori and Francoise were artists, Barry a cameraman and I try to write but we all earn our living driving cabs. Probably always will.

We been lied to, we'd been cheated, we'd been robbed, we'd been mistreated.

But, at that moment, as a bass guitar played a duet with the gravel-voiced singer and the harmonica jabbed beautifully over the top, as we rocked in time to the soulful beat, as I noticed Francoise's daughter smiling with adoration at her mother, I wouldn't have lived it any other way.

The Karma of Rudeness

2010-05-10T19:10:00.000-07:00

It was my day off and I was indulging in my favorite pastime of wondering around the city when I came across a hip, new bistro. I'm hardly a hipster but the prices were moderate and it was late afternoon so the joint wasn't busy.

I sensed that I'd made a mistake the moment I walked inside. A blond bartender of around 35, gave me a "what-you-doin'-here" look. It was so pronounced that I reflexively checked my fly. It was zipped. I glanced in the mirror and saw a good-looking middle-aged man wearing a nice sweater and slacks staring back at me. I walked over to a table near a window and sat down.

The bartender huddled with a 25 year old waitress. They took turns sneaking peaks at me. "Good-looking" and "nice" apparently weren't hip enough expressions for their customer profile. I suppose I could have left but, as a cab driver, I'm used to snobs finding me undesirable and I don't let people with attitudes keep me from doing what I want to do.

What I wanted to do was have a meal and a drink.

After about 10 minutes, it became clear that the waitress had no intention of taking my order so I got up, walked over and took a menu off the bar, told the bartender to send me over a Guinness then went back my table to read the menu.

Another 15 minutes passed. Three couples, proper hipsters, came in, were immediately seated, given menus and had their orders for drinks taken by the obsequiously smiling waitress. As she passed by me, I said in my most booming, bass voice,

"Could you please give me that Guinness now ... and I'm ready to order."

I was so loud that the couples turned and looked over at me. The waitress glanced at the bartender who gave me a blank stare then nodded to her. They rightly decided that it would be less trouble for them to serve me then not. The waitress brought my beer and, with a snippy expression on her face, took my order.

A half hour later, the three couple all had their food and there was no sign of anything or anybody heading in my direction. I held up my empty beer mug and was about to yell for another when the waitress pre-empted me by rushing over with a dead chicken.

It was supposed to be a dish called "Fusion Chicken" but it was just dead. And it had been dead a long time before they sort of cooked it.

I should have sent the chicken back and had them bring me a decent dish but I have a neurotic block when it comes to such behavior. Every time we ate out in my childhood, my grandfather send his food back to be re-cooked. It didn't matter how it was cooked. He send it back. I have a horror of becoming an ass like that.

I ate the third of the chicken that I guessed wasn't rotten, finished my beer and tried to motion the waitress for my check but she refused to see me. This went on for another 15 minutes. Finally she headed in my direction.

"Can I have the check?" I asked politely as she blew by me and went out the door. She came back 15 minutes later and it was yet another 15 minutes before I was able to pay and leave. I seriously thought about having her give me change for a dime and then leaving a penny tip but I decided that would be stooping to her level. I simply stiffed her. It's the first and only time in my adult life that I haven't tipped.

I can't remember exactly how many of my taxi customers I talked out of going to that restaurant but there were at least a half a dozen who had reservations and changed their minds after talking to me.

I also related the tale to every cab driver I knew. This is the ultimate gossiping network. I'm sure that in no time at all, a thousand drivers were trashing the place for me.

"Have you heard anything about "...." Bistro?" My customers would ask.

"Yeah," I would tell them truthfully, "the food's rotten and the service is terrible."

"But the online reviews were very good?"

"Don't be naive," I'd tell them, "they write that stuff themselves."

Several months after my dead-chicken meal, the bartender got into my taxi and commanded me to drive him to the bistro. He was wearing an expensive suit and didn't recognize me.

"Have you heard anything about this place?" he asked as we arrived, clearly fishing for compliments.

"Yeah - the food sucks and the service blows."

It's not easy to describe the expression on his face and as he stepped out of the cab.

He scowled at me with a combination of hostility and deflation. He looked a little like he wanted to assault me and a little like he wanted to cry. Must have been the owner. He kept glaring at me as I smiled cheerfully and drove away.

Three months later he was out of business.

Tough luck, fellow. It's too bad in a way. From what I hear, the food ordinarily wasn't half bad.

Where's a Cop When You Need One?

2010-04-08T11:10:00.000-07:00

I picked up two Samoans and took them to the outer mission. One of them, a huge man of about 6'8" and 325 pounds with enormous hands sat in front with me while the smaller man sat in back. They were a little high but personable and friendly, especially "Big Man" as his buddy called him.

Big man offered me a line, which I politely refused, then talked about how he used to be a cop in Samoa where he couldn't carry a gun. All he was a allowed to use was a baton which he became pretty good at.

"How do stop a drunk?" he asked me.

"I don't know," I pondered, "I guess ... hit 'em in the face."

"Naw," he said, "doesn't work."

"You're right," I replied, "it doesn't. I thought I just had a weak punch."

"Naw - if they're drunk they can't feel it. Hit 'em in the skin or the knee. They go right down. The knee's best 'cause they don't get up again."

"I'll remember that."

"Never know when you're gonna need it."

We drove down Mission Street almost to Daly City where we dropped off Little Man. Big Man then told me that he needed to go down near the Geneva Towers, which were the toughest housing projects in the city. He said he lived across the street.

I don't like going down there but, as I've always said, it's not where you are it's who you're with, so I turned on Geneva to take Big Man home.

As I drove on, however, he stated to change. He lost his friendliness and became morose. He talked about how he'd had nothing but bad luck since he moved to the mainland. He's lost his wife. He'd lost his job. He couldn't see his kids.

"Of course I've got enough to pay you," he reassured me.

Big Man asked me turn left off Geneva with headed toward the Towers. I turned, drove half a block and stopped. The area was deserted.

"How's this?" I asked.

"Actually - if you could keep going for a little bit," he said.

"I thought you weren't going to the Towers," I said.

"Oh - I'm not," he said leaning slightly toward me, "I know this sounds strange but it you could pull down that alley behind the sign. That's where I live."

It was a huge tennis shoe advertisement. If I drove behind it, I couldn't be seen from the street.

"You can probably walk it from here," I told him looking at the ball point pen I'd attached to the sunshade with a rubber band.

I'd fantasized about using it as a knife in just such a situation as this. What I hadn't fantasized about was Big Man's girth. If I did manage to stab him, I didn't think the pen would penetrate his flesh deeply enough to stop him. It'd probably just piss him off. I looked at his shins and his knees wishing I'd taken that self-defense course instead of putting it off.

My mind was reeling. The only prayer I had of stopping him if he attacked was grabbing his juggler veins and rendering him unconscious before he broke my grip with his huge hands. It wasn't much of a prayer.

"Is there a problem?" I heard a man ask from outside the car.

I looked out and saw that a squad car had pulled up across the street from me. A big, blond cop had asked the question.

"No officer," I said with relief, "this gentleman was just leaving ..." I turned to Big Man, "weren't you?"

Big Man didn't say a thing. He nervously dug into his pocket. The meter read $10.75. He finally came up with a roll of crumpled one dollar bills. He only had nine of them.

"That's good enough," I told him.

Without looking at me, he pushed the roll of bills into my hand and climbed out of the car. I watched him stagger off for about 100 feet, then turned to the cop and said,

"Thanks. I think you saved my butt."

"He was going rob you?" the cop asked angrily.

"I can't say for sure because it didn't happen but I think you stopped it."

Without a word he spun his car around and drove over to Big Man.

When I drove off, Big Man had his hands in the air and the cop was making him try to walk a straight line. If nothing else he'd get Big Man on a possession charge. Six months in the box.

Tough luck, buddy.

Another Cop Story

2010-04-07T20:38:00.000-07:00

It was a slow, rainy night with very little business and hardly anybody on the streets. I was in the Sunset and decided to stop by a local store for a juice drink. I drove around a corner and saw about eight police cars double-parked at various angles turning the road in front of the store into a one-lane thruway.

I parked my cab a block away and walked toward the scene. Whatever incident had occurred was clearly already over because the cops were standing around telling each other jokes. Back then I assumed that so many cops descended on a call in order to back each other up in potentially dangerous situations. It was only latter that I leaned that the real reason they showed up en masse was to file for overtime.

I started to walk around the crowd to get into the store when I spotted a man laying face down on the street with his hands cuffed behind his back. He was chubby, in his mid-fifties and needed to turn his head to one side or the other to keep his mouth out of the puddle that the rain was forming around him.

He looked up at me with a dazed, distraught expression and said, "Madness ... Madness ... Madness."

I went into the store and bought my juice from the distracted store owner who kept looking out at the scene outside.

I stepped outside. The situation remained the same: the cops swapping jokes while the stunned man stared after me, twisting his head from side to side to keep from drowning.

The next day, the store owner told me what had happened.

The man in the street had been mugged by two guys who stole his wallet. He chased them, kicked their asses and took his wallet back.

Just as he grabbed his wallet the police came up, arrested him, cuffed him and threw down on the street into the position he was in when I spotted him.

Okay, anybody can make a mistake. It must have looked like the victim was the thief when the cops showed up. That I can understand. What they did next, however, blows my mind: without bothering to look at the picture on the victim's license, they gave the wallet back to the thieves who walked merrily away - no doubt to burst out laughing as soon as they went beyond the reach of sound.

"Madness .... Madness ... Madness ... Sloth ... Sloth ... Sloth."

The Rabbit

2010-03-08T20:26:00.000-08:00

"This town's gone to hell," Big Walt told as we broke for coffee. "Look at that," he said sweeping his arm toward the shops across the street. There were a couple of Mexican fruit and vegetable stores and a Vietnamese fish market with several people shopping at them.

"I grew up in this neighborhood," he said. "Now it's a fucking slum."

"I mean, San Francisco used to have class. I used to be proud to drive a cab here. Half the scumbags these days don't know how to act - know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I think I do."

"I mean, used to be you'd take a bar or restaurant call and, if the customer left, the bartender or the hostess'd give ya a couple bucks - maybe even a fin. Just by way of appreciation. Remember that?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Now they look at ya like you're bothin' them. One hostess snapped at me, "they're gone - whatya want me to tell ya?

"'How about tellin' me you'll give me a couple bucks for my trouble,'" I told her. So she told me, 'how about I just call another company' - and in a snotty tone of voice. As if that would be a punishment. 'Go ahead' I told her, 'soon enough you won't get no cabs at all.'"

"I don't pick 'em up anymore," he continued.

"Bars and restaurants?"

"Yeah - and hostesses. I'm done with those bitches. Ditto for waitresses. And bartenders - they're all a bunch of low-class snobs. They actually think they're better than we are!!! I mean, how much brains does it take to carry a drink? ... And, I've had it with freaks and weirdos ... I don't pick up guys with baseball caps on sideways or backwards, women with tattoos, girls with rings in their noses, guys with red tattoos, guys with their pants hung around their knees, girls with holes in their jeans, men with sandals, women with big boots, guys with sunglass on top of their heads ... and sailors? Who needs those cheap drunken bums ... And, construction workers used to know how to tip. Not anymore ... I don't pick up Australians, Italians, the English or tourists from Minnesota for the same reason ... I don't pick guys carryin' big radios or anybody talking on a cell phone. Drives you crazy. I wouldn't own one myself ... And I don't pick up minorities."

"But Walt," I pointed out, "more than half the people in this city are minorities."

"Somebody's got to make a stand."

"What about yuppies?"

"I used to pick up the women until I had this investment banker type - you know, your typical Stanford snob bitch. She snapped out a location without so much as a hello - like they do - and I started to drive when she suddenly screamed."

"What'aya yelling about?" I snapped. "You could cause an accident doin' that."

"But there's an animal back here," she said.

"Don't worry about that," I told her, "it's just a rabbit."

"A rabbit?!"

"Don't worry about it, it's dead."

"Dead?!"

"Yeah - I keep tellin' the day driver to clean it up but the lazy bum just ignores me."

"Would it take too much effect to throw it out yourself?" she asked in this snotty, sarcastic voice.

"I tell ya - I snapped. I mean, if there's one thing I can't stand it's sarcasm. If you got something to say. just come out and say it."

"You know," I told her, "one thing I can't stand it's sarcasm. If you got something to say, just come out and say it."

"Why don't throw it out yourself?" she asked in the same snotty tone of voice.

"Because it's the day driver's responsibility not mine." I told her again. "Not that responsibility is anything you'd know about. No - you just sit in the back, snap out commands and think you get someplace by magic - You don't think about how much skill and training goes into this job - how much real intelligence - not the abstract shit you live on - if it weren't for my responsibility you wouldn't even get nowhere alive - and you talk to me - I wouldn't talk to a dog in the tone of voice you use on me! Thanks for treating me worse than your dog!"

"And thanks," she cooldly replied, "for finally revealing the meaning of that obscure biblical passage."

"What biblical passage?" I asked her.

"The one that goes, 'and she was smote by the jawbone of an ass.'"

"I mean, a Stanford graduate and she can't even get the quote right - it's 'He was smote' ... "

"So what'd you say?"

"I didn't say nothin'. I 86'd the bitch ... "

"I tell you, man," Walt continued, "I'm getting out of this business . Used to be you could earn a decent living - not anymore."

Flying Off to Roma

2010-03-08T09:58:00.000-08:00

Tall, wearing a stylish pants-suit and in her early thirties, she put a couple of packages onto the back seat before climbing in herself.

She was open, friendly, and attractive but not my type - not that it would've mattered. Thinking of me as a "partner" simply would not have entered her head. She wasn't a snob. She just belonged to a different world. She would no more think of having sex with than she would with a pet cat she was fond of.

"I've got to run some errands ... it'll take three or four stops," she said breezily, "I hope you don't mind ... I can always grab another cab if you have to be somewhere."

Usually, I do mind. But my policy on this is: if they ask - I don't mind, if they demand - I do. Besides, she looked like a true San Franciscan, that is, a 20% tipper.

First we went to her laundry.

"I've been dating this fantastic man," she told me en route, "he's a little bit older but he's highly successful. He has just the littlest touch of grey hair - but he's very fit ... he plays baseball and he has a great sense of humor."

"Sounds like a good catch ... if you ladies still talk like that."

"We don't talk like that - but we think it," she said with a laugh as she got out to drop off her clothes.

When she returned, we headed for her wine shop.

"We go to the operas and ballets and we eat at all the top restaurants."

"Sounds great."

"Yes, he spoils me ... but I've met this other guy ... he's more my age - actually a little younger and he's not nearly as stable or secure ... in fact he's a little wild ... but he's ... how shall I put it?"

"More passionate."

"Yes - exactly - more passionate. Exactly the word. Passionate. Anyway ..."

We arrived a the wine shop.

"... to be continued."

She came back with the wine and I drove her to a fancy foods store.

"So my problem is," she continued, "he wants me to go to Roma with him."

"Which one? El Appassionato or Mr. stable."

"El Appassionato," she replied, "very appropriate name."

"So what's the problem?"

"Well ... maybe he's a little too appassionato, too wild."

"He's wouldn't want to marry you?"

"I ... don't ... know if I'd want to marry him. I'd have to worry too much about where was all the time - if you know what I mean? ... but still ..."

"He's very passionate."

"Yes."

"So you're afraid that things ultimitley won't work out in Roma and your trip might cost you Mr. Secure."

"Exactly," she told me as stepped out to buy the groceries.

When she returned, I asked her,

"You don't intend to tell Secure that you'll be traveling with Appasionato do you?"

"Well, of course not!" she replied. slightly annoyed by the question. "I'll tell him I'm going with the girls."

"Then, I don't see what the problem is ... go to Roma and if you come back, the older dude will still be waiting for ya.'

"Are you sure?" she asked, concerned and a little doubtful.

"Of course. If you don't go to Roma you'll regret it the rest of your life."

"I guess you're right," she said, sighing with relief. "That's a load off my mind."

She counted out the 20%, then happily tossed in an extra ten.

Not PC?

2010-02-22T11:42:00.000-08:00

A large African American climbed gingerly into my backseat. He wore a three-piece suit, was in his 60s, overweight, and moved slowly as if in great pain.

He sat for a moment and stared blankly in front of him.

"You want to go somewhere?" I asked him with a mild attempt at wit.

"Not really," he said in tired voice. "My brother just passed."

"I'm sorry," I told him.

"Yeah, I know. Me too ... I guess you better take me home."

He lived in the Ingleside, one those neighborhoods that real estate salespeople describe as "borderline but up and coming." Unfortunately, this one was going down and out. The week before a woman had been shot in a laundromat.

It thus was a neighborhood that cab drivers weren't fond enough of visiting to learn the best way to get there. It was tricky. You had to go around Mt. Davidson and, for someone who didn't know the area, it might look like you were going the "long way." I had just turned off Portola when my customer pulled a Mr. Hyde on me.

"Where you think you're going, Boy?!" he bellowed.

"I think I'm taking you home."

"Do I look like I was born yesterday?"

"No, of course not ..."

"I was born in this town!"

"Listen - I don't know how else you've been going but this is the best route."

"Don't give me that shit, Boy! Here look -"

He pulled a cab receipt out of his wallet and showed it to me. The amount written down was about half of what the fare should have been.

"How do you explain that?!" he demanded.

"Well .. I imagine that you wrote it yourself."

"I warned you not to give me shit! Fuck it - I'm not even goin' to talk to you - give me the manager! Get him on that radio! Now! Boy!"

I turned around and calmly looked him in the eye.

"Who you starin' at? Cat got your tongue? Get me the police! You heard me! Boy! What's the matter? Boy! - you deaf!"

He kept it up, "Mau Mauing" me in the grand style. I understood him. I too came of age in the '60s. The corporations were the enemy, the system, "whitey," "The Man." I could dig it. The lowest form of life was the middle class. It was okay to cheat the government or the companies or the cops, to cheat "The Man," because "The Man" cheated you.

Somehow or another I'd also become "The Man" on my $30,000 a year. The dude was playing a game, trying to intimidate me into giving him a reduced fare. He and his brother had probably been working this scam for thirty years. Then they'd laugh about it when they got home.

I think by pulling this act on me he was keeping his brother alive.

I just kept staring at him until he fell silent and looked quizzically back at me.

"I haven't been a boy in fifty years," I told him quietly, "and I live in this neighborhood."

He held my look for a moment and, then, he must have realized both what he was doing and that his brother was dead. He caved in.

"Oh, my God! I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he said, fighting back tears, "I'm so sorry."

Upward Mobility

2010-01-10T09:58:00.000-08:00

"Convent Sacred Heart!" The girl snapped without looking at me as she stepped into the back of the taxi. She was 15 and, except for being a few inches taller, looked almost exactly like her mother, Brandi, who followed right behind her.

Brandi did glance at me but showed no sign of recognition. This hardly surprised me. The girl might not know what her mother did for a living. Besides, I hadn't been with Brandi for a few years and, with all the men in her life, I'd be easy enough to forget. But she still had to be selling it. No way she could've afforded to send her daughter to that school as a grocery clerk or a waitress.

Just by looking at her, you'd never guess her profession. Brandi was attractive but plain and dressed plainly - usually in slacks, a blouse, a light jacket and sandals. She seemed a little simple when you talked to her but she had to be the smartest pro on the streets. Her attire was a disguise that no cop could penetrate. In the dozen years I'd known her, she'd never been arrested.

She always worked a little outside of the mainstream. When the whores took over O'Farrell, Brandi cruised Post. When they moved uphill, so did she. When the cops busted the bitches on Sutter, she was already comfortably cruising Bush and Pine. She stayed away from bars, picking up her customers in bus stops, at sandwich shops and breakfast places, at laundromats and bookstores. She was so subtle in the way she went about her business that the owners of the stores where she hung out never realized what she was doing.

And she treated her customers right - giving them what they paid for instead of ripping them off like so many of the other sluts. She had a steady stream of regulars.

Still - for her to pay the bills at a prestigious private school was quite a feat. She was from the street - uneducated and unpolished. She couldn't have worked out of exclusive hotels or for an elite escort service. She couldn't have had too many thousand dollar paydays.

Brandi and her daughter gossiped in the backseat like they were sisters. They talked about an upcoming dance and one of the teachers. But mostly they gossiped about a social world populated with girls named Megan, Danielle, Stephanie, Vanessa and Jade.

When we arrived at the school, a Mansion overlooking the bay, Brandi paid and thanked me but her daughter ignored my thanks with a look of destain.

They walked toward the front door still gossiping when two teenage girls, walking from another direction, waved. It might've been Vanessa and Jade. The daughter gave a big smile, waved back and started walking quickly toward them.

Brandi also picked up her pace to keep in step. The daughter suddenly turned and gave her mother a look - embarrassment covering a hint of that destain. "What are you doing?" It asked.

Brandi stopped while her daughter turned and ran to greet her friends.

Brandi lit a cigarette and watched them disappear through the doorway.

As I drove off, she was wandering slowly back and forth near the top of the hill, smoking and glancing from the Mansion to the bay.

The A-Rab

2010-01-05T10:26:00.000-08:00

"And, oh yeah, you'll be happy to hear that all the drivers at this company are white," Franks told me with an insider's smile. Then he winked, "except for the tokens."

Here I stood in San Francisco in the 21st century and I'd accidentally found my way to the Aryan Brotherhood. I thought people like Franks were extinct. Why is it that racists always assume that, if you're white, you agree with them? I mean, I'd met the guy over a conversation about The Snow Leopard for god's sake.

"Yes," I said smiling weakly, wondering how long it would take me to find another job.

The racial element didn't turn up much in day to day life and I stopped planning to leave. The conversations among the drivers were about the same as they were everywhere else except that I didn't get a chance to practice my broken Spanish or my barbaric Chinese.

Like all cab drivers, they lied about how much money they made. Every one of them had a story about his $500 days. Ridiculous! I could never figure it out. The driver talking would be lying and the driver listening would know he was lying and the driver talking would know that the driver listening knew he (the talking driver) was lying and ... they'd talk like this for thirty minutes. Made me long for the porno rap of my construction days.

After I'd been there about two months, Franks started complaining about this "A-Rab" who owed him $150 for underpaying his long-term lease. The "A-Rab" took the cab home with him and owned the car so Franks had no way to get the money. All he could do was bitch, which he did obsessively every time I saw him.

One afternoon when I was waiting for my cab, a mechanic ran over to tell Franks that the "A-Rab" had snuck into the garage to fix his car. Franks and the mechanic ran over to the garage.

A few moments later I heard a crash and, through a window, I could see Franks punching the guy while the mechanic held him. I couldn't believe it! For $150?

I ran over with three or four other guys and pulled Franks off. He spun to throw a punch at me then pulled it back when he realized that he was staring eye-level at my chest. He looked around with a dazed expression on his face. It must have seemed like his Aryan brothers had turned on him. I could read the next thought that crossed his forehead. It said, "lawsuit."

Franks suddenly became apologetic and misunderstood.

"This is isn't what it looks like," he said.

"That's good," I told him, "because it looks like a split lip and a broken nose."

A Stalker

2009-12-24T12:00:00.000-08:00

Tall, blond and beautiful she took up jijitsu again when she started driving cab. The day shift was safer but she drove nights because the money was better. She could break a wrist with one quick move and throw a man three times her weight. She carried a taser but only used it once.

Her best protection was her personality. Open and friendly, she had a talent for turning men into guys. She knew how to deflect a pass without hurting a man or making him angry. Almost all her friends were guys who had started out by trying to be lovers.

As a rule she didn't date customers. One exception turned out to be a case in point. She usually didn't go for men shorter than she was either but he was cute, sexy and very funny. She slept with him on the second date. It was a mistake. The sex was great but he acted as if they were an instant couple. He called every day and starting making plans for them without even asking her.

She didn't want an intense relationship. She didn't have time for it. She'd discovered that she had a talent for computers and was taking courses. Her two girls were still in high school.

He had some little clerical job that paid him even less than she made. Besides - he had needs. He needed to be nurtured. He needed love. She had two kids already. She didn't have time for another.

She stopped sleeping with him but he wouldn't go away. He kept calling. She made subtle hints but he ignored them. She started hanging up on him. Then he started stalking her - following her everywhere. Finally, she got a male friend of hers to come over and spent the night.

The next morning when they went out, the little man was standing there, angry and agitated. He obviously hadn't slept. He was almost crying as he shouted,

"I love you and you treat me like this? You'll never find anybody who loves you like I do! I cared for you! I would've done anything for you! I would've made you happy! You'll never see me again!"

He was so pathetic that she almost apologized. It was a low trick but it worked. He never called again but she did see him once a year later.

She was cruising in her cab on Columbus looking for a fare when she spotted him.

He was walking with a plain women his own height. They were holding hands and staring into each other's eyes, lost to the world, in love, happy.

Overnight

2009-12-23T13:54:00.000-08:00

"I used to be beautiful." She said with a light laugh. "You don't believe it, huh?"

I turned around and glanced at her in the back seat. She looked middle-fifties and dumpy. If you studied her face, you could see that she might once have been beautiful.

"You're a fine looking woman," I told her.

She broke out laughing.

"You're a lousy liar," she said.

"Other women have told me that."

"No - I was drop-dead gorgeous," she said, as if stating an obvious fact. "And I have Asian genes - when I was 60 I looked 35 - and I was fine. A Body an 18 year old would kill for. I would've had you eating out of my hand."

"It my case that wouldn't be hard."

She laughed and continued.

"I had a beautiful twenty-five year old boyfriend. Hard body. Filipino like me. It was the greatest passion of my life."

"I mean, it was crazy. I couldn't get enough of him. If he didn't call, I went insanely jealous. I couldn't eat. I'd walk around in agony - I mean physical pain. I never felt nothin' like it before. I couldn't sleep if he wasn't with me. I'd just stay up worryin', imagining him with other women."

"It turned out he was sleepin' around. Maybe my jealousy started it. I mean I accused him so much maybe he thought,

'Fuck it! I might as well get some.'"

"I started sleeping around for revenge. I screwed his best friend and let him know it."

"We fought all the time. Hysterical fights. I threw a knife at him."

"It got crazier and crazier. We'd break up and when we got back together it would be hotter than it was before. Then we'd fight again and break up again. It was like an addiction."

"I came in one afternoon and found him doing my niece on my bed - ON MY BED - they didn't see me. They were really goin' at it. I mean, they were really fucking!"

"So I went and got the gun and came back and they were still at it. They had so much energy. I suddenly thought,

'Yeah they belong together' and I said to myself, 'what the hell are you doin' Marcie? You're 60 years old.'''

"That was it. From that moment, I just let myself go. That was last year."

She laughed again.

"You don't believe me but it's true. I turned old overnight ..."

I stopped the cab and she paid me.

"Thanks for getting me home so fast. I'm just in time for the Surviver final. I'm really lookin' forward to it. It should really be exciting."

A Rear Ender

2009-12-23T10:57:00.000-08:00

The pick-up truck zoomed backward out of a Chinatown alley. No way the driver looked.

Luckily I have rapid reflexes. I hit the horn and the brakes at the same time. Then, the instant I stopped - just as the truck started to hit me - I threw it in reverse. There was a little contact but no damage.

"Why don't you look where you're going," I told the driver, a twenty something American born Chinese.

"Fuck you. Any moron could see me backing up - asshole!"

"You're the asshole!"

"You white mother fucker!"

"Ni bu shi donxi," I responded in Mandarin. It translates to: "you're not even a thing."

"You speak Chinese?"

"A little."

"Well - fuck you!"

A typical exchange. You get a chance to blow off a little steam. It's all part of the job.

"What an asshole!" My customer said from the back seat. He was about 55 and in the middle of a middle-aged spread.

"However," his wife, a statuesque blond of 35, added in a slight Swedish accent, "our driver was at fault."

"What? The guy blew out of that alley."

"Our driver should have been paying more attention."

"Attention! If he didn't back up, we could'a been killed."

"If he wasn't looking at China girl's asses, he would've seen the truck earlier."

"What the hell do you know about it?" he said starting to shout. "You don't even drive!"

"I don't have to be a driver," she shouted back, "to know a bad one!"

"Stop shouting!" He shouted.

"You stop shouting." She screamed.

"If don't mellow out, you're gonna be alone with your dildo tonight."

"I finish with the dildo every night anyway."

"What? With your love master here?"

"The only thing you've mastered is premature ejaculation."

"I hate to interrupt," I said interrupting, "but which one of you is paying?"

"Who do think is paying?" he asked sarcastically.

"You mean, you're going to give this asshole money?" she asked incredulously. "He nearly killed us."

"Of course I'm paying him - he saved out lives."

She got out behind me, slammed the door and walked around the cab while her husband counted out my money. Then he she opened the front door on the passenger side and stuck her head inside.

"You boys take all the time you want," she said looking at me with a suggestive smile, "he just loves being rear-ended."

She slammed the front door and started walking up the street.

"Sorry about that," I said.

"Forget it," he said. "Of course I'll apologize. ... They never give in. ... She's my fifth wife. ... Can you believe it?"

144 Athens

2009-12-07T16:49:00.000-08:00

I was in love with love. Everything Jessica did - every move, every gesture - struck me as marvelous and filled me with joy. I loved her lithe tom-boy walk. I loved her open joyfull smile, her long blond hair, her dark blue eyes, her light brown skin, her Brazilian accent - the way her elegant fingers magically moved as they rapidly counted money through the dispatcher's window.

I couldn't understand how she could have married a snark like Maurice. She was not only twenty years younger than he was but she was vibrant and, I thought, passionate. I could see no possibility of him satisfying a woman like that.

Jessica hung out with the guys at the Ha Ra after work before going home or heading out to dance. She was just one of the boys and, although Maurice didn't drink and never joined her, nobody was about to make passes at the boss's wife. Except for Gill who made passes at all women and, well, me.

I tried to be quiet about it. When no one else was looking I might tell her that I loved her smile or her blue eyes. But, whenever I did so, she froze me out and snubbed me the next day. But, the day after that she'd not only be friendly but flirtatious ... or was it in my mind? If I flirted back, she'd turn cold.

I finally asked her out. She suggested that we meet for drinks and dancing. Clearly a date. However, she not only showed up with Gill but an entourage and she made eye passes at every guy in the place.

A few days later, the taxi dispatcher told me to pick up an order at 144 Athens. This was highly unusual. Normally all radio calls go out on a bid.

"They asked for you," the dispatcher told me when I questioned him. "If you don't want the order let me know - I'll get it myself."

Strange comment. Satyric tone of voice. Now I was intrigued.

"I'll take it - why not?"

144 Athens was a tiny cottage set back from the street behind a picket fence and couple of dwarf palm trees.

Jessica answered the door wearing only a terrycloth bathrobe.

"All women confuse me," I told her, "but you're in a class by yourself."

"Do you find this confusing?" she asked as she opened her robe.

"No," I told her as I walked over and finished removing it.

She put an arm around my waist and led me into a bedroom with a panoramic view of downtown San Francisco and the Bay Bridge. The bed took up half the room.

Afterwards I asked her, "Was that some sort of game were you playing at the nightclub?"

"I was punishing you," she said with a devilish giggle. "How dare you ask me out! I'm a married woman. What do you think I am?"

There was certain bend to her logic but I thought it best not to comment.

We saw each other two or three times a week after that - always at the cabin. We couldn't safely go out because every cab driver in the city knew both of us. We'd just watch movies, eat take out ... and fuck.

In between we'd talk about our childhoods. Her Amazon adventures, my trips on the lakes of Minnesota. She was a great listener. I talked for hours at a time about canoeing on the headwaters of the Mississippi.

Maurice didn't know about 144 Athens. Like most owners of cab companies, he took a percentage of the tips that the dispatchers extorted from his drivers. Unlike most of them, he took 20% instead of the usual ten. His mistake was in letting Jessica count the money. She saved enough to buy the cottage in less than three years.

I didn't think too much about where the affair was leading. I was only making $500 a week. I didn't see how I could ask her to leave Maurice's millions on that kind of salary. We did plan a few trips: one to Mendocino and another to Yucatan but something always came up before we could leave.

She went back home to Brazil for a month and then I went to spend the Christmas holidays in St. Paul. When I came back I had trouble getting hold of her. I saw her at work but she wasn't returning my calls.

I tracked her down at the Ha Ra. She was sitting at the bar talking and laughing with the bartender.

"Haven't seen you for awhile," she said when I went over and sat next to her.

"I went home," I said puzzled, "don't you remember?"

"Oh yeah," she said brightly, "Iowa."

A few night later, I was driving my taxi when the dispatcher told Cab #268 to pick up at 144 Athens.

Who the fuck is 268?

Maurice

2009-12-07T16:45:00.000-08:00

His real name was Mike but he started calling himself Maurice when he returned from studying art in Paris. Maybe he thought the name would help him sell his painting. If so, he was wrong but he never went back to Mike.

He held court with the other owners at a coffee house across the street from the cab lot. He was there every morning and every morning I'd come in for coffee before I started work. Every morning I'd say hello to Maurice and the gang and every morning they'd scowl and snub me.

But when I started political organizing, he took an interest. Maybe he thought I had guts. I was a so-called Independent Contractor. He could have eliminated me with the stroke of his pen. It wasn't courage. I was single and didn't give a flying fuck. Getting in the face of pricks like Maurice was my idea of fun. On the whole he seemed amused by my provocative yet ultimately impotent actions.

He started including me in his court. He apparently had done a background check and spoke to me as a fellow artist cast adrift by the storm. He regaled me with tales of his painting days. He'd grown up with the poet Harold Morse and they shared an apartment in Paris.

"I don't know about my own art, " he told me, "but I knew lots of geniuses - lots of them."

I don't know know about his geniuses but his "art" explained why he owned a cab company.

When my political group began getting notice, Maurice pulled me aside and gave me a lengthy talk about how bad conditions had been for workers back at the turn of the 20th century. You know: 18 hour work days, company stores, sleeping on the job site etc etc. His point of course was that he wasn't all that bad.

Certainly, Maurice could be charming.

There was a veteran driver who was one of the last to belong to the dying union. Maurice made the driver a member of his coffee klatch and told him that he could keep all his benefits if he quit the union. Maurice would personally guarantee that the driver would still have his wage rate, his paid vacations, his retirement and his medical benefits.

"Why pay those damn union dues?" Maurice asked.

The driver took him up on the deal and went on vacation. When he came back, he discovered that he no longer had a job.

"But what about our agreement?" the man pathetically asked as he stood at the door of the Maurice's office.

Maurice got up and walked over to the driver.

"What agreement?" he snarled as he closed the door in the man's face.

Safety First

2009-11-25T06:58:00.000-08:00

The young woman climbed in the back looking at the the floor, the roof, the the seats - everywhere but at me. Anorexic and ugly with a nose ring, crack pimples and tattoos, she ignored my friendly greeting and went into a manic, self-important rant directed to a man standing outside the car. She lay down with her legs stretched across the seat and kept rattling words at the guy she repeatedly called "dude."

They had a high-decibel spat about whether or not he should ride in the front or the back. It went on and on.

I politely asked her three times where they wanted to go. Three time the woman/girl acted as if I hadn't spoken. Three is my limit.

"Can you hear me?" I finally screamed.
"Yeah," she replied without looking at me and went immediately back to her chatter.
"Then get in or get out!" I screamed again. "Now!"
"Well - you don't have to be rude!" Dude told me as he climbed in front, slamming the door. He looked just like the girl: tattoos, nose ring, anorexic, ugly. "Monclair!" he snapped.
"So what?" I asked satirically.
"So you're taking me there."
"Do you mean, 'will I please take you there?'"

Dude looked back at his girl friend with his mouth agape then said,

"Did you hear that Babe?"
"Let it go," Babe snapped, "he's just a cabbie."
"P-L-E-A-S-E," he said his voice dripping with sarcasm.

I started driving - noting, as I often have, that ugly people are ruder than beautiful people. You'd think it would be the other way around. Maybe it's a pre-emptive strike. Or maybe too much cab driving is warping my perceptions.

I drove a few blocks before I noticed that Dude wasn't wearing a seat belt.

"Dude," I told him, "you have to put your seat belt on."
"I never wear one," he replied in a bitchy voice.
"If you don't put it on - no Montclair," I told him as I pulled in toward the curb.
"Oh, all right!" he whined.

I pulled back onto the street. It was starting to rain for the first time in six months. I concentrated on the slippery streets and the horrible driving that San Franciscans indulge in whenever the see a hint of wet.

"I can't get it on," Dude said.
"20 other people managed to put it on today," I said while keeping my eyes on the road, "I've got faith in you."

I drove on for a bit.

"Got it," Dude finally said.

The rain began falling harder and harder. The traffic began to bunch up. The driving became phantasmagorical: cars going 13 mph, other cars going 70 on the same street, guys backing across intersections, woman making suicidal moves while texting, other women j-walking with babies.

I didn't look at Dude until we were on the bridge. Instead of clicking the seat belt into the holder, he had tied it around his body into three or four knots. I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out. What was the use?

"Can't you drive any faster?" Babe bitched.
"It's raining. It's slippery when it rains. Driving fast can be dangerous when it's slippery," I replied with pedantic sarcasm.
"Oh! Yeah! Right!" Babe exclaimed. "Like I was born yesterday."

I finally got them to their address in Monclair, a mansion on a hill obviously belonging to one of their daddies. The fare was $40 which sounds good but it took me almost an hour to get there and it would take me at least that long to get back. I'd be lucky to turn the cab in on time and not be hit with a fine and a diatribe from Steele the company manager. Steele loved nothing better than humiliating cab drivers over stuff like that.

Babe paid me and even gave me a one dollar tip. Dude sat there staring into space.

"You've got to take your seat belt off, Dude."
"It won't come off."

He was right. I wasted five minutes trying to undo the knots. Both of them sat staring into space while I worked. Finally, I politely and slowly asked Babe.

"Do you think you could go upstairs, find a knife and bring it back here?"
"Yeah, sure," she replied in sulky voice, "why not?"

She sauntered slowly up the stairs - and disappeared. I waited five minutes, ten minutes imaging what Steele would do when he saw me. Would he start screaming right away or would sadistically let me twist in the wind for awhile before firing me? I decided to find Babe.

The front door was open and I could hear Neil Diamond of all people blasting from the back of the house. I walked through several rooms to find Babe tweaking in the kitchen. I don't know what drug she was using but I never want to try it. She was jerking around the room like a zombie being zapped with a cattle prod.

I found the stereo and pulled the plug. Babe turned to me and started to scream. She didn't know who I was. She never looked at me before. I pushed by her and opened the drawers until I found a butcher knife. Babe screamed louder as I headed back toward her.

"Okay," she pleaded taking off her clothes, "just don't kill me."
"Don't worry," I told her glancing at her bony, drug-addict, tattoo riddled body. I couldn't image doing her but then I'm not a necrophiliac.

The rain kept pouring down and I was soaked through and freezing by the time I got back to the cab. Dude looked at me with extreme annoyance when I opened the door.

"Well - you took your sweet time," he snapped. "What's your badge number? Your company is going to hear about this.!"

I sat next to him with the knife in my hand thinking that any objective juror would see this as a clear case of justifiable homicide. My mind froze. I couldn't think. There was something I needed to remember. Oh, yes. Gandhi. Would killing Dude help lead to world peace? Clearly not. Besides I'll still have to cut him loose to get rid of the body. I cut the belt.

I didn't even bring cab back to the garage. I was going to be fired anyway so I figured I'd hang on to the gate. I just parked the taxi outside and called the dispatcher when I got home. I'm only sorry that I missed seeing Steele froth at the mouth when he discovered that I'd beat him out of $100.

Star

2009-11-24T15:35:00.000-08:00

Star was Liverpool Irish and talked just like the Beatles - whom he idolized. He could sing every word to every Beatle song that I knew as well as every word to just about every rock song that anybody else ever heard of. He could do the entire repertoire of Spooky Tooth for god's sake.

He played with almost every rock band in town and, although he was only 5'4," his base guitar resonated like a cello. He drove cab on the grave yard shift because he could play a gig and still go to work.

Star was one of the friendliest guys I've ever met and one of the sweetest. A non-stop talker, he never had bad word to say about anybody.

He always started at midnight with change for a twenty in his pocket.

By 1:15 one Saturday morning, he was already dead - shot by junkie, a former taxi driver, who wouldn't believe that Star hadn't tucked away a couple of hundred on a Friday night.

Class Warfare: The Tarvia Battle

2009-11-23T11:01:00.000-08:00

I drove an attractive French woman from SFO to an exclusive neighborhood in San Anselmo. I went into my "the smartest cab driver in the world" act and discussed Sartre, Proust and Gide with her as if I knew what I was talking about. She was pleasant and down to earth; humoring me by seeming to enjoy the conversation.

She lived in a private circle with only a single entrance from the street. When we arrived, a rope had been strung across the street with a sign tied to it saying, "KEEP OUT." There were a couple of adults with three or four teenage kids watching us from a nearby porch.

I leaned out the window and shouted,

"Can you let me in? This woman needs to get home."
"We're paving the street," a kid shouted back. "Can't you read?"

The all looked at me with unpleasant, sarcastic expressions.

I asked the woman where she lived and she said it was about a block away. This was a problem. She'd been living in Paris for 6 months and we had about 250 pounds of luggage in the cab. The trunk was full and there was a huge closet-case in the back seat.

Just when I about to get out and start lugging the stuff, the guys on the porch dropped the rope. This didn't jibe with previous nastiness but I wasn't about to argue. I quickly drove into the circle and took my customer to her home.

As I unloaded the luggage, I got an idea of why they've roped off the entrance. A special kind of tarvia had been poured on their street and my wheels had sunk down about a foot into it, leaving deep ruts where I had driven.

When I drove back to the entrance, the nasties had stretched the rope back across the entrance with five of them standing evenly spaced across the street to make sure that I didn't break through.

"You broke in!" One of them shouted. "You broke in!"
"You let me in," I shouted back.
"You're lying! You're lying!" a few of them shouted.
"We've got you! We've got you!" a couple of more shouted.
"The cops are on their way!" another one yelled.

The cab was sinking deep and deeper into the tarvia during the exchange. I started laughing, stepped out of the car and walked toward the men. They scattered and ran as if they were being confronted by a crazed axe-murderer.

I loosened the rope, went back to the car and drove out.

"The cops'll get you! The cops'll get you!" They screamed.

Actually, I only talked to one cop and I drove to the police station to see him on the advice of my company. A nice young guy who had yet to be done in by donuts.

"They say you crashed though their barrier," he told me.
"No - they put it down," I told him. "At first I thought they'd let me in but I guess they were really being sarcastic - as in 'can't you read you stupid cabbie!'"

The cop didn't say anything but he nodded as if what I'd said made sense.

"Kind of serves 'em right doesn't it?" I added.

He smiled and said he'd check it out.

Last I heard of it. From time to time I enjoy images of the nasties driving over my ruts to get to their homes - cursing me all the way.

Refined Women

2009-09-24T23:42:00.000-07:00

"He asked her out for a date! ... Can you believe it! A date!"

Mohammed to looked at me shaking his head in disbelief.

"A Date!" he repeated throwing up his hands in exasperation. "Well - I can tell you, Hortense didn't like it one bit. She didn't say anything but I could tell - one more fuck up like that and I lose the account."

He circled the room, combing back his medium black hair with his right hand while his left punctuated his speech.

"These woman aren't sluts or whores ... they're refined, elegant ladies. Like gishas or concubines ... And, no full-timers - Hortense is adamant about that. These woman are housewives and college students, single mothers. MBAs and lawyers laid off by the recession. They have husbands and lovers - fiancees ... and Nick the dick asks one out for a date."

"Hard to believe," I said shaking my head.

Mohammed was interviewing me. He was looking me over to see if I had enough class to handle the job. He was looking for three or four good men to take care of the business he couldn't deal with himself.

"And the cliental," he said with an air of disbelief, "the creme de la creme. These men are movers and shakers, computer geniuses, CEOs - the princes of Silicon Valley ... I mean these are 50, 100, 200 dollar rides - and he wants a date!"

I shook my head again as Mohammed stared intently at me, searching into my soul.

"The smuc just didn't know his place," I said as Mohammed suspiciously eyed me. "I wouldn't dream of taking one of those women out."

Gabriella, my first ride, was everything Mohammed said she was. Elegant, refined, 22, wearing designer clothing by Versace and shoes by that Italian dude - Gucci isn't it? She had classic cheek bones and straight black hair that hung to her shoulders and an ethereal look but with a hard cut.

I figured her for a poetics major from Bryn Mawr who'd gotten real and was going for that Standford MBA.

I didn't lie to Mohammed. I wouldn't dream of asking this woman out. What I asked her instead was, "how much for half and half?"

She glanced at me with distain and haughtily replied, "If you have to ask you can't afford it."

"Too bad," I said, "I was thinking of splitting the fare with you."

We were heading for San Jose - a $150 ride. She warmed up and leaned her elbows on the top of the passenger seat. "Well" she said, "I guess I could give you the cabbie special - how about half for half? - Only don't tell Hortense."

Way above my ordinary budget but this woman was refined.

It turned out that the computer genius, mover and shaker, CEO, prince asshole was a regular. He opened the door and gave Gabriella a long, passionate kiss; sticking his tongue down the soft, velvet pallet that I'd explored not ten minutes earlier.

The High Way to the Airport

2009-09-14T10:18:00.000-07:00

I picked up a newlywed couple at a Noe Valley bar. He was sixty and dressed like Willie Nelson. She was nineteen and looked like a sixties' flower girl. They were high and they lit up everyone around them. The people in the bar come out to see them off as if they'd just been married in a church.

He said he was a cameraman and was having trouble getting work so he had to move back to his hated L.A. . When I later took film courses, I learned that he was one of the half-dozen cinematographers who had created the 70's film "look." She was exited to be with the great man and he was in love.

As soon as they stepped into the cab they invited me to the party. I usually don't indulge when I drive but they were having so much fun I had to join them. It turned out to be awesome weed.

I don't know if I've ever been happier in my work. Everything we said was hilarious. I told cab stories. He told "on the shoot" stories. She told hippie stories. I have no idea what we were talking about. We just laughed and laughed and laughed.

It suddenly seemed to me like we'd been driving for a long time. We should already have been at SFO. I looked up and realized that we were on the Oregon Expressway in Palo Alto. I'd missed the airport by like thirty miles.

I turned around and tried to explain:

"I'm sorry. I musta lost focus. We'll even it up."

They were so into each other they didn't even hear me.

"I'm sorry, man," I repeated, "we'll even it up."

They couldn't have cared less. I could've driven them to L.A. and they wouldn't have known the difference.

They kept up the jokes but I let it wash over me. I had to concentrate. To miss the airport once was bad enough: to miss it twice would have been unprofessional. I was too filled with anxiety to laugh.

Somehow I managed to get them to their airline although I dropped them at "arrivals" instead of "departures." It seemed like too much trouble to drive up hill.

The meter read $80 and change.

"It should only be like $30," I explained, "I made a little mistake."

He gave me a hundred.

"Don't be cheap," she told him. They had a little spat.

"Ask him what he thinks of a twenty-dollar tip," the cameraman told her.

"No ... I lost focus," I said, "it should just be thirty."

"You're right, baby," he said as he handed me another ten.

"No - no," I said as I tried to hand the money back, "I mean the total should just be -"

But they couldn't hear me. They were walking away kissing and making up.

I understood then that I shouldn't be driving. But I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to handle the loop back to the taxicab waiting lot. I didn't want to be busted.

I headed for home ... hoping I could find it.

Inheritance

2009-08-26T12:40:00.000-07:00

I first met Roberto in Minnesota when he came to visit along with my three male cousins from Mexico City. They were wealthy, powerful and superbly educated aristocrats. My uncle once thought of running for President until he was told the unfortunate truth that the Mexican people would never vote for a leader with a gringo wife. My cousins all spoke three languages and had read Proust and Joyce by the time they were fifteen.

My cousins were all around twenty when they stopped by. They brought Roberto with them because he was a big, lovable guy who liked to party. On top of that, he was already married and had a mistress set up in an apartment. For Mexicans of their class at that time, this meant that he was already a man.

My cousins were engrossed in advanced studies of one kind or another that would eventually lead to great careers in their chosen fields but Roberto was a former violin prodigy who had stopped practicing and dropped out of college.

At dinner, he told us that we all (by which he meant Western Civilization) had been corrupted by the Protestant Work Ethic "especially Catholics" and had lost our ability to savor life. Roberto told us that he intended to personally correct this imbalance by living always in the moment. He still played the violin but only to express himself, "not to win some stupid competition or other."

My father, a construction contractor who had taken an immediate liking to Roberto, was very upset by his philosophy.

"But what are you going to do?" he asked. "How are you going to live?"

"I'll inherit," Roberto said with a smile.

"But what if you run through your inheritance?"

"Then, I'll inherit again," Roberto said, laughing this time. "I'm worth millions."

He said this in such a good natured and friendly way that all my father could do was throw back his hands in a gesture of exasperation and laugh along with him.

A few years later, I witnessed almost the same conversation during a meal in Mexico City. This time a woman who'd grown up with Roberto tried lecturing him in a sisterly manner.

"Roberto," she said, "you have to do something with your life - you have to have a career."

"Why?" he asked laughing.

"If nothing else," she told him, "you have to learn how to invest your money."

"Enrique (his brother) will take care of that for me," Roberto said saluting her with his martini, "he's into boredom."

When you drive cab in San Francisco you soon cease to be surprised by coincidence. I once picked up a woman at the airport who'd grown up across the street from me on Goodrich Ave in St. Paul. Another time, the daughter of one my Mexican cousins flagged me down. I'd never met her before but she recognized me from a photo.

So I wasn't completely blown away when I found Roberto standing in front of me at the dispatcher's window at City Cab. It made instant sense. I've never given my father much credit but he was right about Roberto and I guess (since he'd asked me the same questions and I standing in the same cab line) me.

It turned out that Enrique had indeed taken care of Roberto's money and invested it very wisely after stealing it. To Roberto's credit, he didn't look too upset when he told me the story.

"I wouldn't trade places with my brother for all his money and mine," he said. "He also took my wife. That bitch is my revenge."

Then, he broke out laughing with his good natured, booming voice.

Roberto had very little Spanish blood in him and he had the big head, huge shoulders and hands of his Yaqui indian ancestors. He looked more natural driving a cab than he ever had riding in the back of a limo. He'd developed a nice beer-belly to go along with his new profession. He still lived in the moment.

We went back to his apartment in the Mission, a block away from the projects. It was a small in-law with a seven foot ceiling that he shared with two Argentinian drivers. Apparently none of the them knew what to do without a maid because it was the filthiest place I've seen. We sat smoking joints among the litter and refuse, listening to his collection of rare violin performances by masters like Heifetz and Kreisler - the only remaining vestige of his inheritance.

We'd listened to similar recordings twenty years earlier in the book-lined study of his mansion high on a hill overlooking Mexico City. He'd been sipping cognac with his marijuana then. Now he had a whisky shot with a beer chaser. The enraptured expression on his face as he lost himself in the music was still the same.

We didn't get together after that. I don't really do drugs and I vowed never to re-enter his hovel. But, I did seen him from time to time. He was always quitting drugs or taking up the violin again. Once he was trying out for a local chamber orchestra.

The last time I saw Roberto, he'd just been fired because of a DUI.

"I needed that. It woke me up," he said. "No mas. No mas boracho. No mas la marijuana."

Then, he went home and spend the next six days drinking himself to death.

Checkmate

2009-08-25T11:35:00.000-07:00

Glen disappeared in crowds: at parties, in restaurants, even at small get togethers. He was thin and average looking but the main thing was that he had no personality. He seemed only partly there, moving as if he was wondering in a daze. People said that he'd never recovered from Vietnam.

But at a chess board, he was a whole different being. I'm tempted to say that he was a master except that he beat most chess masters who went up against him. He wouldn't complete in tournaments (he got too nervous) but his reputation was such that the best chess players from all over the country stopped by the Meat Market to drink great coffee and play Glen.

Everyone (including me) was stunned when I beat him in our first match. I'd been playing for less than three months and the only reason I took the game up at all was because I was living in a hippie house filled with chess fanatics. The only chess book I'd read was Beginning Chess by Bobby Fischer. Fischer being Fischer started where everyone else ended. The whole book was on how to see checkmates.

I saw one from seven moves out against Glen. Being the great player he was, he managed to stop the mate but I fatally crippled him.

Everyone said I was lucky, especially after seeing me lose to a series of second-rate players, but there really isn't much luck in Chess. You either see the moves or you don't. I never beat him again but I always played Glen well and my greatest chess moment (better even than the victory because he paying more attention) was fighting him to a draw.

This baffled everyone. But they misunderstood. It wasn't me playing over my head. It was Glen raising me up to his level. I have a gift for analytical reasoning and Glen's logic was crystaline and pure. I'd look at the moves of lesser players and see nothing but confusion. With Glen every move was part of a grand design and seeing that design told me what move I should make. I'd have no choice.

Glen's mind was a thing of beauty and it was a joy to watch it unfold. Maybe the real tragedy of his war was that it left him capable of using his intellectual artistry only for the benefit of eccentrics like me at coffee houses.

At that time, the press was making a hero out of a crack-junkie who was robbing taxi drivers. One article even called him a "criminal genius." Why? Because he wore a suit and came out of upscale hotels and restaurants to flag down the cabs. Once inside, he'd put the driver in a head lock and steal the money. He was very strong man and seriously injured a few of the drivers. He committed 21 robberies in 19 days. If he'd been half-way smart, he would have quit while he was ahead.

Instead he got into Glen's cab and tried to put a headlock on him. What most people didn't know was that Glen had been in Special Forces. He broke the headlock and tied up the man in his own belt. For me, the awesome thing was he that didn't seriously hurt the guy.

"I've done enough of that," Glen told me, "I just couldn't let him rob anybody else."

Jerks

2009-08-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

I was on a negative roll: small tips, radio calls with no one there, other cabs stealing my loads. I'd had about twelve jerks in a row. I'm not being euphemistic. These were jerks, not assholes. Being an asshole takes intent and purpose. The jerks I was dealing with didn't have enough character to be evil. They were simply rude and obnoxious, creeps without a cause.

I try to shake off such petty things but I confess that I was not in a good mood.

A weird little man got in my cab and barked out a destination without looking at me.

"Would it hurt to say 'please?'" I asked him.

"I don't like your attitude," he snapped.

I snapped.

"Your 86'd - get outta here!" I snarled.

"I don't have to be nice to you," he said defiantly, "I'm not leaving!"

I lost it. Completely. I started screaming at him to get out. I was so mad I can't remember what I said.

"I'm not leaving," he kept repeating. "I've got my rights!"

I decided to toss him. I jumped out of the taxi and, slamming my door behind me, came around to his side and pulled on his door. I didn't have a plan in mind. I'm not usually violent but, if I'd needed to stretch a few of his ligaments to get the job done, I could have lived with it.

The door didn't budge. He'd locked it. I reached for my keys. They weren't in my pocket. I looked up and saw that they were still in the ignition. I tried the front door. He'd locked that too. In fact, the little jerk was sitting in the driver's seat.

I had thought that I was raging out of control. But, the instant I understood the situation, I calmed down. Smiling like an insurance salesman I said,

"I guess we got off on the wrong foot." Holding out my hand I added, "Hi. I'm Ed."

He didn't say anything so I gave him my widest smile and said,

"Now, why don't you open the door and get back in your seat. I'll take you anywhere you want to go - free of charge."

"No - No," he said, "you're going to hurt me."

"I'm not going to hurt you," I said soothingly, "I've never hurt anybody. Heck - I'm a follower of Mahatma Ghandi ... sort of."

"You're a liar and a hypocrite," he replied. "You're going to hurt me."

Then, he drove off in my cab. He didn't even have to start it. I'd left it running.

I wasn't eager to inform my company about the incident. There was nothing my manager enjoyed more than firing cab drivers. He'd hold bizarre ceremonies where he'd berate and publicly humiliate them. I couldn't imagine what he'd do to somebody like me who actually deserved to be fired.

Yes. I confess. I was wrong. My temper got the best of me. Having the little man call me a "hypocrite" cut deep. I had failed the Mahatma. My behavior had done little to promote world peace.

It didn't make sense for the guy to steal the taxi. The address he'd given me was about a mile away. I hoped that he'd simply drive the cab close to his home and leave it.

This turned out to be the case. He'd even been nice enough to take the keys out of the ignition and hide them under the mat. He also put my briefcase, filled with maps and dollar bills, into the trunk. As I walked around the car to check the tires, I heard him call out from a distant window high above me,

"I'm sorry!"

Aoede

2009-08-22T12:57:00.000-07:00

Her husband was in international finance. They lived the high life in London and Paris but he was gone most of the time. She had to raise the kids alone. After ten years, she accidentally found out that he was really with the CIA. In college, he'd said that he wanted to experience everything, to "murder and create." At the time, Eliot's phrase sounded like a metaphor but she guessed that he'd found a way to do exactly that in the real world. When he transferred to Southeast Asia, as she put it, to "start another war," she stayed in Paris.

She took the name "Aoede" after the Greek muse for song and opened an interior design firm dedicated to designing, "art to live in." The business did very well and she raised her kids in comfort, sending them on to whatever college or university they wanted. Her only commands were that they should live life to the fullest, do no harm and be as creative as they could. When the last girl graduated, Aoede closed shop and headed to San Francisco to paint and drive a cab.

She often told her customers that taxi driving was so much fun she couldn't imagine why she'd ever done anything else. She didn't have to worry about meeting a payroll or pleasing a picky client. She now had time to travel and "paint for myself."

"Everybody's so interesting," she says about the people she meets in her job. "They all live such interesting lives. They've all got a great song. All you have to do is listen."

Handsome Jack

2009-08-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

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."

A Little Short

2009-08-20T12:33:00.000-07:00

Early twenties, dark hair and nice looking, she stepped into my taxi. Avoiding the contamination of eye contact, she quietly commanded me to take her to an address. Then, she snapped,

"I'm in a hurry. I have a date. I only have $8.00."

An interesting sequence. It was at least a $10.00 ride.

Now there occasionally are people who will say, "I've only got $8.00 - just drop me whenever the money runs out." Or, sometimes they'll even say, "Drop me off at $6.00. I want to give you a tip." In either case, I'll usually take them all the way to where they want to go.

A young investment banker once told me that he only had $7.00 for a $10.00 ride and that I should drop him off when the fare hit 6.70. As usual, I asked him for the money up front. He gave it to me and we headed for his destination. Just as the meter clicked on 7.15, a woman flagged me down. It was a nice day so I told the banker,

"I'm going to take you up on your offer."

I pulled the cab to a stop. With a stunned expression on his face, he started to reach into his coat pocket for his wallet. Then, remembering what he'd told me, he reluctantly got out of the cab.

The banker'd been running a little scam. Including the tip, he saved himself $10.00 a day going to and from work. It says something about the legendary "greed" of cab drivers that I was apparently the first one ever to cut short his ride.

But the woman in a hurry had a different scenario. She was telling me, rudely, that she was two or three dollars short and that I going to take her anyway. Furthermore, she expected extra service. I was supposed to get her there fast.

"It's a $10 or $11 ride," I told her.

"I'm a waitress," she replied me in a tone of voice that clued me into the fact that she belonged to a higher level of humanity than I did. She cemented her elevated status by adding, "I'm studying design."

In short, I was supposed to sacrifice a few dollars because she thought herself socially superior to me. Hardly a unique concept, but I'd never before heard it stated quite that boldly.

"I'm in a hurry!" she repeated.

"Are you new in town?" I asked her.

"Why?" she asked, indignant at my temerity for asking her a question.

"Don't you have a bank?"

"Of course I have a bank," she snapped angrily.

"Good. We can stop by your bank and get some money."

"There's nothing in it right now."

"Maybe you should buy a book on money management."

"I beg your pardon!" she said, appaulled by my bad manners.

"It sounds like you could use some advice."

"When I want advice I'll ask for it!" she said with finality - clearly terminating the conversation.

"What about your date?"

"What about my date?!"

"I'm sure he could lend you a few dollars."

"I couldn't ask him for money," she said, incredulous, "it's our first date."

For some reason I took her all the way home. The meter read 11.65. She handed me a ten dollar bill and commanded, "Give me back $2.00! I need to catch the bus tomorrow morning."

"The exercise will do you good," I told her, "you still owe me $1.65."

She called the police the next day to complain that I was "rude." I talked it over with Sergeant Donleavey.

"Nothing to worry about," he told me.

"Are you going to get me back my $1.65?"

He laughed.

The Argentinian or Virtue Rewarded

2009-08-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

I took an aging black woman to the emergency entrance of UC Hospital. I pulled as close as I could to the doorway, just as I had done a dozen times before, and walked around to help her out of the back seat.

A large black cop came over and told me that I couldn't park there. I'd have to move it to the other side of the parking lot - 50 yards away.

"But she can hardly walk," I told him, "she came here because her legs are bothering her."

"Can you read the sign?" he said pointing to a No Parking sign.

"Yes of course," I said, "but I'm just dropping her off. I'll take 2 minutes."

"Do you always ignore signs?" he asked sarcastically.

"Everybody ignores that sign - these are sick people. They need to get into the hospital." I heard my voice rising. I took a breathe and quieted down. "Listen - if you'd a let me do my job, I'd already have her inside."

"Don't get smart with me," he snapped, "move it right now or I'll give you a ticket."

"I never heard of nuthin' like this," he woman said sitting halfway out of the back door. "They always let me in here before."

The cop looked at her for the first time and mellowed a little.

"I'm sorry mom but the rule are the rules."

"Ain't no rules like this before," she said.

I drove the car and parked across the lot.

"I can't walk that," she said.

"Don't worry," I told her, "I'll get you a wheel chair."

There weren't any wheel chairs available so I went over and got in the cop's face. I mean I was a couple of inches away from his face but I was calm and polite. I just kept on saying over and over again,

"The lady is old and sick. She can't walk. There are no wheel chairs. I have to get her into the hospital. I need to park near the door."

He kept on telling me that the rules were the rules. But I wasn't leaving until I had her inside the hospital. I kept on saying the same thing over and over again. And he kept telling me about the rules.

I noticed an expensively dressed Hispanic man watching us. As I continued arguing with the cop, the man's expression became one of increasing wonder and disbelief.

A subtle change took place in the cop. He gradually came down from his power trip and began to soften. I could see that he wanted to help the woman but he was stuck with his rules. I had an inspiration.

"Whatda say we carry her?"

He thought about it for a minute, then with sudden enthusiasm said,

"Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it."

We were about the same size and she weighed only about 120 pounds. The cop and I crossed arms and locked hands. The woman rode on our forearms into the hospital.

"Just like Angel's wings," she said.

The cop and I traded high-fives and parted like old friends.

The Hispanic man wanted the taxi but he couldn't speak English. We communicated in my butchered Spanish. In an Agentinian accent, he told me he wanted to go downtown. Perfect. An ideal ride.

The meter said $18 when he arrived. He handed me a fifty dollar bill. Clearly a mistake.

"Demasiado much," I told him, holding the fifty in my left hand while I brought out a twenty with my right, "bente es bueno."

He pushed the fifty back into my fist and folded his hands over mine. He gave me a warm smile and a look of gratitude.

"Es perfecto," he said, "muy muchas gracias."

I guess they don't argue much with cops down in Argentina. The man was giving me way too much credit. Mostly, I just like to fight. It's how I got into cab driving in the first place.

Size Matters?

2009-08-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

"My girlfriend just told me she's dumping me because my dick's too small for her."

" ... "

"I mean what kind of bullshit is that?"

" ... "

Well, yeah, it's a little small but I compensate for it. I do martial arts. Deep breathing. I'm in control. I know how to move it really well."

" ... "

"Nobody's ever complained before ..."

" ... "

"Well, yeah, there was this model lives in my building. One afternoon she asked me up for drinks. One thing led to another and next thing we were doing the nature thing ... I guess I had too much to drink ... it just flopped there on her stomach. She wouldn't talk to me after that. It was humiliating. "

" ... "

"But it wasn't size per se ... but my girl friend's got nuthin to complain about. I mean, I've had her moaning and calling out for god, crying "don't stop! don't stop!" over and over again and I didn't stop."

" ... "

"Yeah, she's playing some kind of game. Whatdaya think?"

" ... "

Boredom

2009-08-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

"I'm a whore," he told me, "or a boy toy - depends on the action. Woman or men. I do 'em both. Tonight I'll be a harlot and a gigolo."

If this sounds like a strange way for a stranger to start a conversation, it's because you've never driven cab. I didn't know what to say so I drove on in silence.

"I'm famous. I'm in all the porno magazines. Last night, I did a well-known female politician from Washington. I get customers from Europe. You have to book me three months in advance."

I looked him over in the mirror: average height, average built, average face.

"Nothing personal," I told him, "but you're not going to make anyone forget Leonardo DiCaprio."

"I'm hung," he said laconically.

"How'd you get into the business?"

"I started doing Polk Street perverts when I was 15 and went up from there. Tonight I'm doing a husband and wife professor team. They say they want to use me for research."

"Meaning?"

"Oh, I don't know ... he'll probably fuck me in the ass while I fuck her or visa versa. Once they see my cock they usually want to suck it. Maybe we'll do a wheel."

"Wheel?"

"A circle 69."

"Sounds exciting."

"It's not," he said as he paid the bill.

He stepped half out of the cab then turned back to me, saying in an exhausted voice,

"You can't believe how boring it all is."

Class Warfare

2009-08-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

Two women try to hail a cab: one in her early twenties, the other in her sixties; one open and friendly, the other closed and sour; both wearing haunt couture; both with the same nose, chin and eyes: granddaughter and grandmother.

It's rush hour and there's a major convention in town. They're standing in front of Vidal Sassoon but the cabs racing by are all full. The women are becoming desperate.

I'm not working but I decide to help. I feel that improving our image is my personal duty, besides the older woman's nearing hysteria. I walk over to them, give them a friendly smile and say, "relax -I'll get one for you."

I walk down a block. An empty taxi is rolling toward the curb. Two New Yorker guys are stepping in front of a couple from Iowa to steal it. As it stops, I step in front of them and grab it.

"Hey!" one of them says.

"Thanks for holding it," I say with a smile.

"Your mudder!" he responds, flipping me off.

I tell the driver the situation and he's cool with it so we go down to hand over the taxi.

I get out and open the door for the women with a magnanimous gesture.

The granddaughter smiles with gratitude. Grandmother looks me over with a cold eye. I'm wearing the designer sweater, shirt and slacks that a friend chose for me at Goodwill. But the old woman isn't fooled. Maybe it's the Reboks.

She holds a dollar bill out toward me.

I give her a friendly wave and a gesture of refusal.

She thrusts the bill out again, this time with an expression of hostility and distain.

Who am I to think I can be friends with her?

The Yuppie Panhandler

2009-08-15T10:25:00.000-07:00

"You must help me. I have AIDS!" she exclaimed, incredulous and amazed, not believing that anyone could refuse to help her ... HER. It must have been her first day and it was amazing.

She was 28, a fresh faced beauty like Jean Seberg or Tea Leoni. Her blond hair had been freshly cut just below her ears. She wore a beige blazer over a navy blue business dress, nylons and polished blue shoes with three inch heels.

She'd clearly done everything right: she had the degree, probably an MBA, she'd worked hard and had risen to middle management. She was neither an addict nor a drunk. And yet ...

Can you imagine the people she must have gone through before arriving on the street? How many rejections she must have had from family, lovers, friends, relatives, colleagues, associates, acquaintances, welfare agencies and charities? And she still didn't get it. She still believed that she was the center of the world.

Nevertheless, she was smart. She'd figured out the business right away. She came over to me at Pine and Van Ness - maybe the best corner for panhandling in the entire city. Cars get stuck at the light, three across and at least three deep, for several hours every day.

I saw her every evening for a couple of weeks and then periodically after that as in time-lapse photography.

The next time, there were holes in her nylons and she no longer told people she had AIDS.

Then her hair turned brown, she had no socks and her clothes were dirty. She'd broken the heel on one shoe and hobbled over to collect her money.

I hadn't seen her for about a month, when she showed up wearing an army jacket over her business dress and Converse All Stars. Her shoulder length hair was tied back back in a bun.

I didn't have a dollar and was looking through my brief case for one that I'd misplaced when a couple climbed in the back of cab.

"Do you have change for a $5?" I asked them as I dug through my things.

They responded with a deep, silent pause so I glanced up. I saw two aging people dressed in black that had the clean-cut, Americana look of a Norman Rockwell painting - only they'd been warped and embittered by too little affection, unpleasant sex and too much money.

The woman stared at me, offended. I finally found a dollar and gave to Seberg-Leoni.

"You shouldn't do that," the woman snapped. "It just encourages them."

"To what? Keep eating?"

"If you feed them, they won't work," the man stated.

"I don't know if she can work - she has AIDS."

"Whose fault is that?" the woman asked archly.

"Actually," I told her, turning around with a smile, "it's mine."

The pair spent the rest of the trip pinned back on their seats, looking as if they were riding with a boa constrictor.

I saw Leoni-Seberg one last time, about a year later.

She looked ageless - as if she'd she'd been born on the streets. She wore jeans, beat-up tennis shoes, a sweat shirt and an army jacket. She'd roughly cut her hair back to her ears. She was still lovely but you had to search for the beauty beneath her raw and reddened weather-beaten skin.

She hadn't lost her sense of self - no small feat living the homeless life. She still stood confidently and asked for money as if it was owed to her. She stared at the people who passed her by with contempt.

She took my dollar without recognizing me and, giving me a businesslike "thanks," waved to a homeless man across the street. He dressed like she did and, like her, looked as if he'd never been anything except a beggar.

He came over and the two of them walked off, striding together, gently bumping shoulders and elbows, talking intimately, counting and pooling their money, planning their future.

Half a Story

2009-08-13T06:52:00.001-07:00

A lot of guys try to impress women by demeaning cab drivers but this was the worst case I've seen.

He actually wasn't bad looking. I figured him for 15 years away from being his high school's star quarterback. Except for a pot belly, he was still in decent shape.

Of course he didn't say hello or greet me in any civil manner. Instead he barked out a command in a tone of voice that told me that I'd already displeased him and had better watch my step. Then, he immediately started talking to his date. Or, rather at his date. She didn't say a word. He interrupted his monologue every block to give me new directions. I'm not lying - every block. And we went straight most of the way.

I decided to have fun. I accentuated his absurdity by parroting an order every time he gave me one.

"Go straight!"

"Going straight!"

"Go right!"

"Going right!"

He keep glaring at me but I think to actually comment on my commentary would've been uncool. It would've meant acknowledging his lack of absolute control.

"Stop here!"

"Stopping here!" I said, hitting the brakes and bouncing him off the back of my seat.

"No!" he snapped angrily, "in front of the store."

"Stopping in front of the store," I said, slowing down gradually this time.

He got out, gave me a fierce stare and went inside.

"What piece is this?" the woman asked about the music playing over my radio.

I turned half around. She had moved from behind me and was leaning on the middle of my front seat with her chin on her forearms. She was long and slim, open and lovely.

"Brahms isn't it?

"Yes, but I can't place the symphony."

"I think it's the third."

"Of course," she said, slightly snapping her fingers. "Hi, I'm a cello."

"Hi, I'm a base."

"I thought so."

If I was doing satire I'd write something like "small world isn't it" or "it must be fate" but the truth is that there was a click, an instant connection. I can't tell you how rare it is to meet a customer who can tell the difference between Brahms' symphonies.

"I'm not with that asshole," she said. "He's a partner at my sister's law firm. I gotta make nice."

"Too bad ... Maybe you can help me? I'm looking for a good recording of that little solo mediation by Hindemith - do you know it?"

Why such an obscure piece? I was looking for a good recording of it but the sad truth is that I'm a music snob. I wanted a woman who could go beyond Brahms.

"You mean the Op 25 #3?"

"Yeah - that's the one."

"I've played it."

It was fate.

"I'd love to hear you play it."

"Is he bothering you?" The all star had returned with a stern, school master's expression.

He'd been gone less than two minutes and I'd forgotten he'd existed.

"Not at all," she said, sliding back behind me.

He gave instruction for the next six blocks but I no longer felt a need to comment. When we stopped, he gave her a command,

"I don't like his attitude - don't tip him!"

She gave me $7 for a $6.70 ride. They climbed out. I heard her say, "Oh, I forgot something." She came back and slipped me a twenty folded around a business card. On the back she'd written:

"Hindemith."

Buddy

2009-08-12T08:35:00.000-07:00

If I'd realized how drunk he was I never would have let him in my taxi. I wasn't paying attetnion when he came out of the bar. He'd already flopped into my front seat before I had a chance to do anything about it.

He was tall and wearing an expensive three-piece suit, 50 years old and 50 pounds overweight. He was so loaded he could hardly speak. I needed to have him repeat his address several times before I could understand his slurr.

"San Carlos ... San Carlos."

That was a relief. We were already in the Mission. It was little alley six or seven blocks away. I wanted to dump him as soon as possible.

As we approached his street, he recovered some of his gift of speech.

"Don't take the long way, buddy," he slurred, "I was born in this town."

"I'm not taking you anywhere but home, buddy - what's the address."

"San Carlos. I told ya San Carlos buddy."

"Were on San Carlos, buddy."

"No - San Carlos buddy - top of the hill."

"You mean the city of San Carlos?"

"Right buddy - top of the hill."

"That's meter and a half. It'll be $70 or $80.

"Yeah yeah, meter and a ass. Top of the hill buddy."

Just when I was beginning to like him, he ignored my "No Smoking" sign and lit a cigarette.

"There's no smoking in here," I told him pointing to the sign.

"Whataya gonna do about it?" he asked as he leaned forward and, keeping the cigarette in his tightened lips, blew smoke in my face.

I pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and threw it out the window.

"Hey buddy!" He wheezed, sizing me up for a punch.

I put my right forefinger between his eyes, an inch from his face, and said,

"You can chase it if you want."

"So that's how it is," he said, backing off.

"That's how it is."

I turned on the classical station. The music tends to pacify drunks. We drove for 30 or 40 minutes without talking. By the time we reached San Carlos, he'd sobered up enough to give me clear directions to his home.

"Here we are buddy," he said, pointing at a large bungalow, "second house from the top."

I pulled up and he got out, staggering only slightly. The meter read 64.75. Ordinarily I would've have lowered it to 55 because we did go a little out of the way but not for this jerk.

"Let's just say 64 plus 50% equals $96."

"Well ... you can forget the 50%, buddy. I'm not payin it."

"But I told you up front."

"I don't care what ya told me. I'm gonna to give you some money and you're gonna take it."

I thought about this. I hated to give in to the prick but this wouldn't be exactly a high priority item for the cops. It was friday night. By the time they came, if they came, I would have lost the $32 and more in time.

"Okay just give me the $64."

I made a mistake by folding so quickly. He became drunk with power in addition to the alcohol.

"I don't have cash," he said, smiling in a way that let me know that he was lying, "can you take a credit card?"

"We're not set up for it."

"Lucky for you," he said laughing, "it isn't any good anyway."

"Listen buddy - I took you home. You've heard great music. We've played your game. It's been fun but I've gotta work. Just pay me ... please."

"You're gonna have to take a check, buddy."

"Can I use your telephone? My cell isn't working."

He graciously invited into his kitchen and handed me a phone. I called 411 and loudly asked for the number of the San Carlos police. Buddy thought that this was really funny. When I told them the street number, they didn't recognize it. He took the phone, gave them the street again and started complaining that I wouldn't take his check. He gave the phone back to me and the cops told me that the address was actually in the city of Belmont - a half block away from San Calos. I had the wrong police department.

"Let me make the call," Buddy said smiling in triumph and taking the phone.

He started boring the Belmont cops with a monologue about his check and the current climate of mistrust. I went looking for a bathroom. As I walked down a hallway, I head a tv playing in the distance. I followed the sound and found a wiry woman with with brown, greying hair watching the tube.

"Don't freak out," I calmly said as she began freaking out. I quickly told her the tale ending with, "he's making me call the police."

She shot out of the chair and walked to the kitchen so rapidly that I could hardly keep up with her. She grabbed the phone out of Buddy's hand, apologized to the police, hung up and, without saying a word to her husband, opened a drawer and counted out $110 for me. Then she opened a small purse and gave me an additional 40 cents. Despite her shock, her anger, her anxiety and, probably, her despair, she tipped me exactly 15%.

As I walked toward the door, Buddy started after me.

"Nobody messes with my family, buddy," he said threateningly.

"Stop it!" his wife snapped in tone of voice that let us both know that whatever shards of a sex life had remained between them were now history.

I'd had smoke blown in my face: I'd been insulted and threatened, taunted and demeaned: I'd let myself be humiliated: I'd lost at least $30 in time.

But hey - this is cab driving.

There's a grand view of the Bay from on top of the hill, one hundred ten dollars and forty cents isn't bad for two and a half hours' work and I may well have delivered the coup de gras to a truly horrible marriage. Not a bad night so far.

I head for the airport. Friday night. It should be moving.

Rookie

2009-08-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

My first day they gave me a cab that wouldn't go up the steep side of Nob Hill.

"This must be some sort of initiation," I told my refined lady customer as I drove around to a more gradual slope, "pay what you like."

That didn't turn out to be much but she did give me invaluable advice. "Don't wait in hotel lines or spend too much time at the airport. Not if you want to make money."

Yellow Cab had hired me because I had a perfect driving record. What they didn't know was that I'd been traveling and hadn't driven a car in six years. I'd pretty much forgotten how to do it. I was afraid to make lane changes. I'd get on the freeway and just stay in one lane. Some customers of course bitched but I learned another invaluable lesson. What your driving teacher told you was true: it doesn't do any good to speed in traffic.

I'd get on the freeway during rush hour, find my lane and stick with it. Another taxi would get on right behind, blow past me and go into a frenetic lane changing mode. We'd arrive at the airport at about the same time. Once in awhile, I'd even get there first.

The company gave me the worst day shift. There were about ten cabs for every customer. The radio dispatchers didn't "hear" me or, if they did, it was was for grocery pick ups. They never gave me trips out of the city. Half the time when I showed up my rides weren't even there. Other drivers cut me off and stole my fares.

I'd played sports in school but I never subscribed to a "winning is the only thing" philosophy. Like everyone else, I'd gone through a Buddhism phase in the 70s and had come to look upon competitiveness as destructive behavior. I wasn't about to race wildly down streets cutting people off like many of fellow cab drives just to make a little money. On the other hand, a little money was exactly what I was making - very little.

One slow Sunday afternoon (there are no fast ones), I took a radio call on 24th St in Noe Valley. Being given a call, however, was no guarantee of actually getting it. You still had to arrive at the address first. I got to the intersection, a few buildings away from the order, a clear 15 seconds before my competition. It was a busy two-lane street. If I pulled forward I would have had to double park and block off the other cab. I waved him on so that he could pass by freely.

To my surprise, he stopped in front of the address and, blocking me off, got out of his cab to ring the doorbell. He was thin, dressed all in black with a tattoo and an earring - a punk.

"What are you doing?" I asked incredulously as I stepped out of my cab. "I was just letting you by to -"

"I don't talk to drivers," he snarled, "you wanna steal my ride you can talk to Nate."

I snapped. I mean I went a little crazy. Being treated and talked to like that after I'd graciously done him a favor - threatening to get me fired when he'd stolen my ride - incensed me. I vowed revenge.

We worked the same shifts. I studied him for awhile. When he saw me watching him, he arrogantly stared through me as if I wasn't there. I started following him with my taxi whenever I came across his cab on the street, actually stalking him on slow days.

The first time I got even, he was stuck at a red light waving to a customer across the intersection. I swooped down the other lane and, timing it perfectly, cut him off just as the light turned green.

It felt good but it wasn't nearly enough. The Romans ruled their provinces by executing ten people for every one of their soldiers that was killed. It sounded like a good principle to me.

I lost track of how many times I stole one of his fares by either cutting him off or racing insanely to beat him to a radio call. I stopped counting at eight.

One time, I was hiding behind a small truck which was behind him at an intersection. I could see him in his side mirror but he couldn't see me. He frantically scanned back and forth. I had him paranoid. Seeing nothing, he finally relaxed. I made a double lane change, went out into a left-turn lane and swung back to cut him off and steal his fare again just as the light changed.

A few days later, I got a ride to the airport and decided to eat lunch while I was there. My favorite punk was sitting at a picnic table. He gave me a shy, nervous smile and started talking to me in a friendly way. I sat down. He showed me pictures of his wife and his little baby girl.

"They're the loves of my life," he told me. "It's okay if I don't make $100 every night but, if I come up short too many days, I can't cover the rent."

I ended the vendetta. I no longer cut people off or raced them for orders. But then, I didn't have to. Other drivers didn't steal rides from me anymore. The dispatchers were 'hearing" me. I drove better cabs and had been promoted to a night shift.

The Romans knew what they were doing. I had the reputation of being a driver that you just didn't want to fuck with. For better or worse, I was no longer a rookie.

You Can't Cheat an Honest Man

2009-08-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

A late Monday night in winter. It was so cold that I drove up Taylor through the Loin without even seeing a derelict or an addict.

A young black man came jogging down the street carrying a shrink-wrapped Sony digital video camera and looking repeatedly over his shoulder. He ran in front of me to cross the street then, glancing back, turned around and came over to the cab.

"Hey man," he said rapidly, showing me the box, "I think they're after me."

If the camera was actually in the box, it was the Sony digital video that sold for $2,000. I was in film school and this was the same digital camera I'd been lusting over for two years. Real movies had been made using it, not just documentaries ... if the camera was in the box.

"Come on man," he said almost in whisper as he continually scanned back and forth looking for cops, "just give me a hundred. Take it off my hands."

"Let me see it," I said.

"Hey man," he said, protecting the box. "You're not gonna try and rip me off are you?"

"Don't be ridiculous," I said, "I'm a cab driver."

He thought about this for a few seconds then handed me the box.

It felt right. I shook it and could feel the camera inside the packing. I quickly turned the box over and over. It had the original cellophane tightly stretched around it.

"Come on man," I gotta motor, "take it or not."

"I don't have hundred - it's been a slow night."

"Whataya got?"

"I can give you forty."

He took it. I grabbed the camera, hid it behind the seat and drove off. I stopped a few miles away after checking to see that I hadn't been followed.

It turned out that the box didn't have the original cellophane on it after all. The wrapping had just been cleverly pushed into the corners. I opened the box. It was tightly packed with newspapers. I dug through them and found a smaller box about the same size as a video camera. I opened it. It was also packed with newspapers. In middle of the papers was a rock.

Smuc! Idiot! Liar! Thief! Sucker! Loser! Me.

Who ever said that writing the truth was easy?

Pizza

2009-08-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

Eddy and Leavenworth, the lower depths of the Tenderloin. Addicts are milling about, talking, looking for a connection.

A ten year old boy spots a pizza carton on top of a trash can. He opens it. There is a piece and a half inside. Pepperoni and sausage, I believe.

He turns to his crack-whore mother to offer her part of it.

She grabs the box with her left hand and wildly slaps the shit out of him with her right, knocking him to the ground.

She puts the box back on the trash can and takes out the pieces that are melded together. She eats. Her eyes glaze over as she chews, showing neither pleasure nor desire nor guilt.

A Cruel Hoax

2009-08-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

A cab drivers nightmare.

A dumpy, blond woman of around 30 stood in front of the hospital arranging a dozen 40 gal bags. I could see it all in an instant. It would take me 15 minutes to both load and unload the cab. She'd go three blocks and would have a voucher. I'd neither be paid for my time nor get tipped.

A nurse came over to help her and they both turned toward me as I walked over from the taxi.

"What's this?" I asked, " a cruel hoax?"

"You don't have to help if don't want to," said the woman heatedly.

"Oh, lighten up Mary," the nurse said with exasperation. "He's just making a joke."

"Come on," I said as I grabbed one of the bags, "show me how you want it packed."

The nurse kept smiling at the stupid jokes I kept making while I loaded the car. Mary quietly chatted to herself as she re-arranged every sack I put in.

When we finished she told me, "They stole my husband from me."

The nurse folded her arms and looked at Mary with deep and helpless sympathy.

On the way over to her new half-way house, I got to listen to Mary's chatter. They used to call it "word salad" - words tossed about without subtext, context or meaning. But it wasn't that simple. Most of it did sound like disconnected gibberish but it obviously meant something to her.

Besides, some of the things she said made perfect sense. She was moving across town to Bernal Heights, one of the most complicated neighborhoods in the city. She gave me precise and exact directions on how to get to her place. The bizarre thing was that her instructions were wrapped inside of rambling clauses and seemed to have nothing to do with whatever else she was saying.

Other things that she said make perfect sense and were insane at the same time.

"I'm really Mary Queen of Scots," she told me. "It was Elizabeth that took my husband because I'm beloved of the people and she isn't."

She continued the chatter while she helped me take her bags up a few dozen steps to her porch. I wished her luck and was about to leave when she said, with deep and pathetic despair,

"I only want them to give my husband back to me."

I kissed her on her forehead - the seat of her manic, twisted, disconnected world. I couldn't have done her any harm. Nothing else had helped.

Runners

2009-08-09T11:37:00.001-07:00

He was 20 or so, tall, white and athletic. The moment we stopped, he bolted from the back seat of the cab and flung himself over an eight foot fence.

Runners are actually rare and, for those interested in racial profiling, I've never had anyone of Asian or Hispanic descent try to run on me. I think I can remember every person who did. It's usually more a matter of sport than economic necessity.

I picked up three black male teenagers on a slow Tuesday night. They wanted to go down the Peninsula to Millbrae. I told them that I needed to see the money up front. They showed me $40.

We arrived at their apartment complex and I was just saying, "I didn't know they had housing projects in Millbrae," when they bolted from the Taxi and dashed off into the night. Clearly more athletes.

One of them was also a decent student. He left behind an essay on The Great Gatsby with a B- circled on it. I think his teacher was unduly harsh. The kid's spelling was even worse than my own but the paper was well thought out. I think it deserved at least a B+. He left his name and address at the top. I returned the essay and wrote to his mother asking for the fare but I never heard anything from her.

My next racer was a Marina woman of about 35 for whom the word "bitch" was merely a description, not an insult. She was drunk and belligerent. When I told her to put out the cigarette that she had lit despite my "No Smoking" sign, she tried to hide it in the crease of the back seat - in the hope, I guess, of starting a delayed fire.

When we stopped, I was making a note on my waybill (an argument against) when she slowly bolted (if that's possible) out of the cab. I almost caught her. She drunkly stumbled and giggled her way to the door, slamming it just in time to nearly squash my face.

In her eagerness to cheat me out of my money, however, she had dropped a small purse on the sidewalk with $80 in it. The meter read 6.70. I decided to pay myself a "pain and suffering" fee. I took a 20 and pushed the purse through a newspaper slot in the door. It was too thick for her mailbox.

Yes, it occurred to me that someone other than her might find the purse but, as they say in Mexico, "no es mi problema es su problema."

My all-time, all-star runners were three black women in their late twenties carrying huge Macy's shopping bags. They were casually yet elegantly dressed in stylish jackets and slacks. One of them wore spike heels.

It was another slow Tuesday night. I picked them up at a bus stop on Valencia. They had a heated argument with an angry fourth woman who refused to get in the cab with them. It was only later of course that I understood what the fight was about.

I took them out to the projects at Sunnydale and Santos. We had a generally pleasant conversation but, as we neared their destination, two of them started bitching about how "cabbies" never picked them up.

I stopped on the outside of their building. They wanted me to drive into the parking lot but it was a cul-de-sac so I refused.

They bolted from the cab - and I mean bolted. They were carrying two shopping bags apiece but, Olympics aside, I have never seen women move that fast. And the lead sprinter was the one with the spike heels. As if a white male cab driver would chase them into the projects.

I got out and yelled for them to come back. I didn't care about the $15 fare. I had my video camera with me. I would've paid them another $20 to repeat the action so I could film it.

Playing Dead

2009-08-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

The taxi drove away while she looked through her purse for her keys.

A tall man grabbed her from behind, wrapped a huge hand over her mouth to muffle her screams and dragged her into the nearby bushes. She fought and kicked like hell but he easily overpowered her. He threw her down on her back, pinned her arms and used his knee to spread her legs. He pushed her scarf deep into her mouth. She kept kicking, trying to scream, trying to breath, trying to break loose.

But something was wrong. She didn't know what. It was only later that she realized that it was because he'd been taking too long. He should already have been inside her.

She opened her eyes. He was looking down at her with a sadistic smile. She understood. Her kicking and screaming, her powerlessness, her fear, her pain was turning him on.

She went limp and played dead, leaving only her eyes open to watch him like a zombie.

It infuriated him. He started slapping her and hollered, "You bitch!"

Lights went on and windows opened in the nearby apartments. He slapped her once more hard and ran off.

The last slap did him in. He cut his hand on her teeth and left his DNA on her clothing. It was his third offense. He hadn't even gotten off but they still gave him life.

She realized how lucky she'd been. She took self-defense courses and always carried one of those knives with a concealed blade that pops straight out of the handle.

"Next asshole who tries to rape me," she said, "gets it cut off."

The Perfect Short

2009-08-07T10:17:00.000-07:00

"You're about eight minutes out," my customer said glancing at his watch, "that's not bad for a Friday night. You're about two minutes behind but the traffic usually eases up when you hit Highway 92. Then you can start making back the time."

I took a close look at him in the mirror. He was around 50, wearing a brown suit and looking very fit.

"You seem to know a lot about my business."

"I'm Captain John Harrigan, US Air Force retired - I live right on top of 92 just before it hits 280. A lot of drivers tell me it's the perfect short."

He was right. It's a $35 or $40 ride. If traffic's good you can get there in 15 minutes. If you get back to airport within 30 minutes you go to the front of the waiting line. You get a fare downtown and you've had an $80 hour.

But, before he brought the subject up, I wasn't even thinking about a short. The traffic looked too heavy and I was hung over, hardly in the mood for racing. But Harrigan called it right. The left lane opened up as soon as we turned on 92. I switched into it and brought my speed up to 70.

"You could probably go a little faster," the Captain said. He was really into it. I pushed it to 75.

"If you do 80, you'll make up a minute by the time you drop me off."

"I don't speed with customers in the cab," I told him. "Call it a quirk."

He looked at me, a little confused. As we were rolling to a stop in front of his apartment, he handed me two twenties. He jumped out while the wheels were still slightly moving.

"All you have to pick up is 75 seconds," he shouted as I whipped a U. He pumped his fist - go.

His enthusiasm infected me. Why not? If the freeway cleared, I decided to go for it.

The road opened like the eye of a storm. A Friday night miracle. I blew down the left lane at a safe 9o, frantically checking my mirrors for cops. I took the curves at a smooth 80 and by the time I caught up with the traffic I was already back on Highway 101 - 22 minutes out and cruising at 65. I'd made up the 75 second plus another 90. All I had to do was coast back to the lot.

A brown Toyota pick-up pulled up on my left. A blond man is his early twenties honked his horn, shook his fist at me and shouted what appeared to be, "You're going too fast!"

I recognized the truck. I'd passed it about 5 minutes earlier. He must have driven 105 mph to catch up to me. I shrugged my shoulders. I was in lane 2. I saw an opening on my right so I made a lane change and speeded up to 80. The left lane was blocked so I hoped to loose the jerk.

Two minutes later, the Toyota cut in front of me, blind-siding me from the right. The driver flipped me off through the back window. I made two quick lane changes and sped down the left lane. The Toyota must have been on steroids because the lunatic cut me off again. I quickly cut back to right but he stayed with me. He slowed down, putting his rear fender almost on my bumper so I couldn't move around him.

I waited, looking for a break in the traffic. I was 27 minutes out and trapped in lane 2. I started flipping my blinkers like crazy: right-left, right-left, right-left, right-left, right-left. Of course I wanted to confuse him but, more importantly, I hoped that the cars behind me would think I was crazy and back off.

It worked. Suddenly, I faked right, then made a juke move left and went back right again. The wheel-base on the Toyota was too narrow for it to stay with the me: it rocked back and forth causing the driver to momentarily loose control. This gave me a thick inch to go by his bumper on the right. I floored it and cut straight across two lanes barely making the off-ramp into the airport. The Toyota tried to follow but the angle was too sharp and he was cut off by a semi.

I was 28.5 minutes out. Now I had to worry about Officer Rinaldi. He liked to hide his motorcycle just behind the struts of the overpass and nail cab drivers as they raced in to punch their tickets. I passed him at 44 mph. He looked bored. There would be more prey later.

I slowed down to the required 25 and flowed toward the ticket machine. I was 30 minutes out. The machine clicked just after I'd punched my card. I'd made it.

I drove into an empty waiting lot to get my time checked by one of the creatures that the airport hires for starvation wages to do nothing but check the time on the tickets. He was like 100 pounds overweight and looked like he hadn't bathed in three or four days.

"I make it!" I yelled, forgetting I was Mr. Cool, jumping up and down in my seat. "I made it! I made it!"

He slowly lumbered out of his chair and, staring at me with dead eyes, came over to check the ticket.

"I made it!" I yelled again.

He looked at the ticket and stared at me again. He handed it back to me then, in a fake southern accent, his voice dripping with sarcasm, said,

"That just makes ma whole week."

"Mine too."

The Seven Veils or How I Became a Gigolo

2009-08-06T08:55:00.001-07:00

I picked her up at the opera house. She was in her early 40s and elegantly dressed but a little plain for my tastes. She was, however, personable and chatty. She had just seen the version of Strauss's Salome where Maria Ewing did a complete striptease during the dance of the seven veils.

The performance was part of the schizophrenia of the period. At the same time as the SFPD was cracking down on strip clubs, pornography was moving into higher culture. Samuel Ramey had recently played the tittle role in a production of Mefistofele where the entire cast of around 150 tore off their clothes for the finale. Of course looking at those humongous naked bodies writhing and flopping about on the stage, it was easy to imagine that you were seeing Hell.

The lady and I agreed that Ewing's dance, while erotic, was tasteful and obviously aesthetically justified by the plot.

When we arrived at her small mansion in Pacific Heights, she went through her purse several times before turning to me with embarrassment and saying, "I'm sorry. I must have taken the wrong purse. I don't seem to have any money."

"Well," I told her, "I guess that leaves me with no choice but to call the police."

"A man with a sense of humor," she said as she opened the door and started to step outside. She looked back over her shoulder adding, "come inside if you're afraid I'm going to run on you. You can use the bathroom if you like."

Her bathroom was not only bigger than my studio apartment, it was cleaner. When I stepped out into her huge kitchen, the lights were dimmed. She was standing in the middle of the room wrapped in several, thin, ankle-length shawls and nothing else. I didn't count them but she looked like a woman with a fetish for detail so I assume that there were seven.

She turned on the Dance of the Seven Veils and proceeded with her own take on the piece. While not as professionally accomplished as Ewing's, her dance was more erotic - obviously justified by the aesthetics of the moment.

When she got down to three veils, I rhetorically asked , "You don't intend to pay for the ride do you?"

"That depends," she said slowly spinning and adroitly flipping a shawl around my thighs, "upon how good it is."