Saturday, September 15, 2012

Hey Dawg

“Hey, Dawg, I bet you have some good stories.” The three of them; the usual giddy UCSB geeks, trying too hard to be hip, going to town from I.V. and they want a story. Any other time I might have obliged them but not tonight.
“Nothing you’d want to hear.”
“Try us, Dawg.” demanded the white, blond haired, Orange County, master-race looking pretender.
How I hate it when these white college boys try to talk ghetto. “Naw…”
“C’mon, any sex going down in the back seat… any blowjobs… y’know… Dawg… hookers, biotches?” the boy was drooling for a sordid tale.
“You really want to hear my favorite… My best? Naw, you don’t have the stomach for it.” I like DMZ and all that but I cranked up the Robert Johnson to tune them out…

Every time I’m walkin’
    down the streets
Some pretty mama starts breakin’
    down with me
Stop breakin’ down
    Yes, stop breakin’ down
The stuff I got’ll bust your brains out, baby
    Hoo hoo, it’ll make you lose your mind…

My Best Cabbie Story was from the previous night, if I would have, could have, told it:
Crushed, I returned to my room and tried to sleep before going to work. That night I got in my cab and drove around avoiding calls and flags. I’d picked up only a few fares since the shift started and it was already about three A.M. A call came over the radio: “89, Max.”
I picked up the mike, “89.”
He gave me an address on the Mesa. “Work out something, Max, I didn’t give her a quote.”
You never know when you get a call like that: a quote? It could be a long ride. That is what I needed too… as long as the fare doesn’t want to jabber all the way.
 A young woman dressed Goth; all black gear, Doc Martins and fishnet stockings et al, approached my cab. I could see she had been crying. Hmmm, crying… sketchy… volatile, things could change in an instant. I thought: A break-up? A drunk boyfriend? Sometimes rides like this end a block away when the little honey changes her mind and goes back to the turd.
“How much would it cost to take me to Newport Beach…?” Her words had to work their way out her throat through her grief. Something bad had happened.
“The meter would be about One-Eighty….” Back then one-eighty would have paid my lease on the cab, my room and my bar tab.
“One-eighty?” She cried… it was a heart rending cry. Not the kind of cry that is the result of a fight with a boyfriend or even the death of a pet dog. I recognized that this was the cry of a deep-felt grief that had no bottom.
“Hey, don’t worry  ... the meter ain’t set in stone. How much are you able to …?”
“I only have about ninety dollars” she sobbed, turning away… resigned and not even begging for a break.
“Hey, come on and jump in… it’s okay, I’ll get you there.” Hell, I’d thrown in the towel for the night anyway… hadn’t made any money and had already counted that night a loss. Ninety bucks would cover about my lease but not the gas… what the hell. Besides, I needed that long, dead-head, solo ride back… it was a godsend.
She got in the back seat and curled up. Every few minutes a heart wrenching, body convulsing, sob would make it out of her tiny body. She was an adorable young girl about twenty or so but my mind wasn’t there at all. I wondered, curious, what had torn her up? It must be something horrible. She hadn’t said a word since the ride started…. nothing but muted sobs. Dared I ask? Those sobs evoked a lump in my throat as I drove past all the Carpentaria exits. It was dark enough, along that stretch of 101 between Carp and Ventura, for almost thirty miles. It felt okay to cry with her: She wouldn’t see me. The tears flowed. I’d been holding it in. Two years of trying in vain. I just fuckin’ let it go and quietly, intimately, wept with her… I was holding her in my mind’s arms and crying with her.
We must have been past Ventura, near Camarillo, before my tears caught her attention… well, caught it enough for her to ask, “Are you crying?”
I didn’t want to say anything but I might as well admit it. It felt strange to let her know I was crying… I choked it back … that lump, “You caught me…”
“Why?”
“Oh… shit… I just gave up on a long custody battle for my daughter yesterday… and, hell, I’m sorry, I just figured you wouldn’t notice if I cried with you.”
“What is her name… your daughter?”
“Ariel…”
“Will you see Ariel again?” she asked in a flat and very restrained monotone.
“Maybe… to tell the truth, I can’t think that far ahead right now.”
The anger was as thick as it was animated… she bitterly let it out this time… “At least you will fucking get to see Ariel again!”
There was a finality in her tone that let me know someone very close to her… as close or closer than my Ariel, was lost to her forever.
We drove the rest of the way to Newport Beach… without saying another word to each other but the crying had stopped. We arrived in Newport with the rising sun at a parking lot where she had left her car the night before. I mumbled something about being sorry. I didn’t feel right about charging her money for this ride and tried to hand back the ninety bucks when she got out of the cab. She dropped it contemptuously; let it slip to the ground. I watched her drive off into the sunrise and scooped up the ninety bucks off the pavement. I understood her contempt.

I could tell this story to another cab driver like my good friend, Jim, but never to drunken voyeurs as entertainment. However, that was the story I would have told had they the stomach for it:

I can’t walk the streets, now,
to consolate my mind…
Some no-good woman, now,
she start breakin’ down…
Stop breakin’ down!
.
“No, really, you wouldn’t want to hear it.”
“Try me. I’ll tip you good…”
“…I don’t have time…” the meter read thirty-two-fifty… “Call it an even thirty… see ya.”

There was no tip.