Taxi Driver Read Free Page A

only reason I could think of, though there were times when I was more than just sorely tempted. Though I did have some respect for women.
    On reds most of the time I couldn’t straighten up after an evening in that cab, and I would always be getting these terrible cricks in my back. I booked in sloppy sometimes. My head just fuzzed on me was all. My head fuzzed . . .
    One night I dreamt I got back to the garage after a typical day with over three hundred bucks in my pocket and all the spaces were taken. I’d have to go back out again on another shift. All I could see anywhere were yellow and blue and white cabs. Signs on the walls: BE ALERT! The safe driver is always ready for the unexpected.
    YOU CAN’T STOP ON A DIME!
    ALL NIGHT DRIVERS HAVING PERSONAL INJURY ACCIDENTS MUST PHONE IN AT ONCE.
    That girl in the massage parlor who wouldn’t let me touch her on top was in the personnel office and I thought this was just like hell. Hell surely.
    I went straight to the Adam, saw Six day Cruise, and Beaver Dam. Slept through part of Beaver. Only woke up when the guy next to me said I was falling against him all the time.
    People at those places are really weird. The guy who tears your ticket thinks he’s got something on you. The woman behind the candy counter. So goddamm unfriendly.
    I guess she thinks you stink on ice just for watching such pictures.
    One night I asked her name. “Come on,” she said, “just because I work in a joint like this doesn’t mean I’m that kind of girl.” And she wouldn’t give me her name. Even after I told her I was serious: “Really.”
    Well, then she says, “Want me to call the boss? What you want?” So cruel and cold like that time in Saigon when this girl said I could do anything to her I liked she would never come. That was strictly for her boyfriend a sailor.
    I ordered a big coca-cola—without ice—and a large buttered popcorn, and . . . some of the chocolate-covered malted milk balls. Kind that makes your cavities ache. It came to $1.47 and they didn’t have cokes so I took a Royal Crown . . . and that’s when this little sorta diddy started going around and around in my head: “Whatsa life without a wife a cunt without any kindness?”
    Little bits and pieces to that effect. Over and over again: “Whatsa cunt without a heart a heart without a cunt?”
    I don’t say it’s topflight, topnotch, really great stuff. I was only trying to express myself. Honesty. Better that than go altogether weird like the others. Those other safe drivers.
    “Whatsa heart without a head a head without a cunt cunt cunt, a head without a cunt?”
    Those other taxi drivers I knew, all they ever did was hate Mayor Lindsay and the dinge. Even the dinge. They hated him too, the big blond mayor, and all they ever did was jabber. Everything’s a remark. Must be because they were so bored they just had to let off some steam heat. Nobody at home knock knock for talking to. “Whatsa a cunt a heart a head . . .?”
    There’s Freak-Me-Out who lives in a cellar and does carpentry to order from ads he puts in the Voice. He used to say his wife had taken this lover and he would kill the son of a bitch if he weren’t so grateful.
    A woman answers his ad and he comes over and makes a closet for her. A loft bed. He says he makes a lot that way with his big electric drill and all. Just like in the movies, man or woman. He chooses his own hours.
    Well his real name is Rizzo and they just call him Freak-Me-Out some people because he liked to do crazy stupid things in his cab with the zipper on his trousers in the front seat.
    Says a guy can get a lot that way, too.
    Morny is in love with a lady driver. Big bull dyke, she won’t give him the right time of day. He wants to soften her. She aims to be a dancer, just moonlightening. He’s always keeping tabs on her when she’s driving. He knows all her fares and where she eats and who she’s seeing after work. Well she calls Morny a pig and he isn’t,