During the years that I drove a cab I experienced something similar to what you seem to describing. We had a saying that, “Discretion is the better part of being a cab driver.”
Only it wasn’t just sex and it wasn’t just women. There were offers of sex, both for the fare and just for shits and giggles, I suppose. Besides the fact I was happily hooked up during those years, none of the offers I ever got were from objects of my true desire.
It occurs to me to mention as an aside that the city I worked in had, as do most cities, an active commercial sex trade that employed many women. The nature of business as well as my life at the time was such that I got to know quite a few of those so employed. Cab drivers, along with the bouncers, doormen, djs, etc., were all sort of stagehands in the big show, and thus I didn’t get hustled very often - the situation there was more like that of being a co-worker. I did make a point of not becoming personally familiar with the streetwalkers, although I certainly knew where to find 'em.
But the OP brings to mind the general indiscretions of passengers. Besides women wanting, offering or just talking about sex (or getting it - while I wouldn’t let a hooker service a john in the cab, people did occasionally become amorous - eh, discretion), people tended to treat the hack like the fly on the wall. During my very brief stint as a day driver (I spent most of those years on graveyard), office workers would flag me to drive around downtown while they smoked a joint. The assumption, obviously, was that the cabbie wouldn’t mind.
Or the traveling business man whom I pick up at one of the better hotels. He wants a hooker, and not of the nice variety. It goes without question that he’d not want his business associates or his family to know that he’s up for negotiating a $1 blowjob, but that’s the first thing about himself that he lets me, a perfect stranger, know.
One woman I carried several times, always early in the day (~sunrise), had me cruise apartment parking lots until she found his car. After a while, she started leaving notes on his car. Angry notes, I could tell. One time she had nothing to write on, so I gave her a blank trip sheet; didn’t bother me at the time. Then one day we do the same routine again (I looked forward to her trips because they were long, meandering meter pumpers at a slow time) and on the way back, she grabs my shoulder and half-screams, “I’m gonna kill him! I’m gonna KILL him!”
And she did. Later that same morning. I took her to the police station to turn herself in, with her next-door neighbors. And she told me beforehand. Just the fly on the wall.
But there’s another aspect operating as well. It’s not just the indiscretions (and the above are but a small sample) of passengers, but also the assumption of what a cab driver represents. Several despondent people plopped themselves in my cab, like the coed who flagged me down and said, “Take me outta here!” She was crying and appeared suicidal, and I was more interested in running the meter. She had nowhere in mind to go, and it was obvious that talking her down was the priority.
Or the guy who’d fought with the staff and subsequently checked himself out of the State School. Zero life skills, but he can’t go back for 30 days. Gets in my cab and says, “What should I do now?” How about turn your life over to a perfect stranger?
I got him a room at the Y. I have no idea if he lived out his month of perdition.
Maya. I’ll not post her full name, although I remember it. A beauty, one woman who stands out in my memory as such. And a nice, engaging sort. When she wasn’t drunk.
I had to arrest her once. She’d passed out in my cab and had nothing with an address on it in her purse. What do you do with someone like that? I called the cops on the radio and a patrol car met me outside the jail. Cop showed me something you might like to learn - if you squeeze a passed out drunk’s wrists they will come around, albeit briefly.
Damn, that mustang had some fury to her! Has the cop on his back on the trunk of my cab when he tells me to cuff her. I retrieved his cuffs and did so.
She was sweetness and light when we met a few days later to settle the fare. I carried her a few more times, and the last time I remember. It made me sad. I had a firm address and, when we got there, she was out cold. I checked her and she had a pulse, so I carried her upstairs to her apartment, found her keys, paid myself out of her wallet and left her passed out on her apartment’s living room floor. I hope you’re doing well, Maya.
That whole excursion was meant to examine something besides the “fly-on-the-wall” phenomenon. I think, and I may well be wrong, that relative to whomever else you find out on city streets at 3:00 AM, cab drivers appear “plugged in” or functional, or relatively stable. Beacons in the night, so to speak.
Anyway, darren, I notice you’re new - welcome to the board, and stay safe, pal.
P.S. darren, it was my impression when I drove a cab that I’d recognize anyone I’d ever picked up before. What do you think?
