Homage To My Day Driver (Why I Hate Gay Bashers)

Sunday, December 18, 2005

HOMAGE TO MY DAY DRIVER (WHY I HATE GAY BASHERS)

Ralph and I were taxi drivers. We worked out of that once famous taxi garage in the West Village, Dover. Dover by the way was used for the exterior shots for the TV show Taxi, and some of the drivers there had uncanny resemblances to the characters on the show. (But I digress.) Dover closed long ago, changed its name to Glenties and relocated to the South Bronx, and when they did that my day driver Ralph and I went with of them. (Many"Village type" drivers scrambled to stay based in Manhattan-that was the eighties-and there are no more "Village type" cabbies around).

The deal was this: Ralph took the car for the day shift and I took it for the night shift. I'd meet Ralph on the Northeast corner of 74th and Amsterdam at 4:00 AM and drive up to the garage and gas up. Ralph would pay his lease, get his trip card, I'd turn in my trip card and Ralph would drop me at my furnished room on East 7th Street and then go to work. I'd get the car around 4:00 PM, (I would pay my lease once a week, on Friday, thereby buying 6 consecutive days of "seniority",) take him to the area of 74th and Amsterdam and head out to work.

Now cabbies don't often trust each other. Yellow cab drivers live after all by cutting each other's throats. Ralph must have felt that if I had his phone number I'd abuse it by calling him to announce that I'm bringing the car to him late, as I would then (he probably figured) be out there hustling that (extra) last ten dollars (that would be his ten dollars). So when I got broadsided by a drunk from Massachusetts who didn't have a license one night I couldn't call Ralph to tell him I wasn't coming. The car was undrivable. (I was okay thank goodness.)
Ralph of course went to the assigned corner at the assigned time. As he waited for me he went into the Korean deli there on the corner, got a cup of coffee and stood there, waiting for me. A few doors up the block there is a famous gay bar. It lets out at 4:00 AM, New York's statutory "last call for alcohol." As Ralph was standing on the corner sipping his coffee the patrons of that establishment were streaming out, many headed south to the corner and to the deli.
As Ralph told the story a car pulled up and stopped at the corner. A big white guy who Ralph says he didn't know from Adam (and Ralph's white) got out, ran up to Ralph and punched him square in his left eye, ran back into the car and took off into the night. Now this creep was wearing either a bunch of big rings or brass knuckles. Ralph was a bloody mess. He took a taxi down to Saint Vincent Hospital (he didn't trust any other) and they stitched him up, but the vision in his left eye was mainly gone.

Now back then one re applied for his/her hack license every year. There is a question on the form that asks if the driver saw a doctor since the last reapplication. If you check off "no" they don't bother you. There were cabbies who according to this record had not seen a doctor in 25 years. Ralph, for reasons I couldn't understand, checked off "yes.". Now they wanted a letter from a doctor saying that he was fit to work. An old prescription that had never been filled was the key here. The Rx got whited out, the form was brought to a copy place and blown up to letter size and the "doctor" wrote his medical release.

Ralph could tell, though, that his driving days were truly over. Now why Ralph had this thing for Reno, I can't say. I never knew him to even buy a lotto ticket. He never talked about cards, or dice, or roulette, or professional sports. Ralph, who had years and years with no accidents and no tickets, was having both. Ralph told me that if he was going to be poor he would be poor where it was warm year round, and he took off for Reno, he said, to become a security guard or a non union construction laborer.

I got a letter from him a couple weeks later telling me how great everything was out there. He had this furnished apartment in this condo type place, he said, it was filled with model types who lounged at the pool all day and he was loving it. He urged me to quit my job, leave my furnished attic apartment on University Avenue (I had finally moved to the Bronx just before he headed out west) and come join him. He was living he said in the lap of luxury for $400 a month. He said that he had a job as a security guard and was working on his gun permit and then he'd be rolling in dough.

I wrote him back telling him that I'd take it all under advisement.

One day a few months later Ramon the dispatcher asked me to come into the office. The coroner from Reno was on the phone. He told me that Ralph was dead. He had been found hanging from a light fixture. He was broke. The room was littered with beer cans. They found my name, stuff with the garage phone number too, and they were trying to figure out his story. Some names have been changed to protect privacy but this is fundamentally a true story. The bar mentioned is Candle Bar which was seen in the movie Six Degrees of Separation.


THIS WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED TO DEMOCRATS IN AIRPLANES UNDER THE PSEUDONYM BERNARD MARX. IT IS THE WORK OF AND PROPERTY OF ME, EUGENE WEIXEL.