Fun times

I had a good night.

I realized just now, as I wrote those words, that I don't think I've ever written them before. If so, I certainly don't remember it.

But tonight was great, actually. I had perfect luck and a stable mindset throughout the whole shift. And the biggest shocker? Traffic didn't totally suck.

All night long, each good ride led to the next. It started out early, when I got over the bridge and someone took me to Union Square. From there, I picked up a woman who wanted to go way up to 125th and Amsterdam. I overheard from her cell phone conversation that she'd been going on auditions all day. We made it up to her building in record time.

As I passed Columbia on my way back downtown, I got flagged by a very pregnant, thirty-something lady dressed in hospital scrubs and a stethoscope. She had a phone to her ear and, when she got in, said, "59th and Amsterdam." But then a second later, she said, "Actually 59th and 3rd." And then another second later, "Let's make that 59th and Lex."

Finally she hung up the phone and said, "I'm sorry. My husband was barking orders at me on the phone."

We didn't talk for the rest of the ride.

Downtown, a very young, probably late teen or early twenty-something blonde girl got in. She had one of those blue boots on one foot, the kind you wear on a broken part of your body instead of a cast. On our way over to 5th Avenue and 10th Street, I got to listen in to her end of a phone conversation. It went something like this:

"Yes, he was coming to propose .... Are you still at Burberry? .... Oh, for your therapist? .... Fun times, Fun times."

Then she launched into a whole tirade about how her friend Aaron got into an argument with the promoters at the club Marquee and how he had to be kept separate from Jordan. It was just starting to get juicy when I dropped her off. Sadly, I'll never know what finally happened with them. Damn.

Moving on, I took some girls from the Upper East Side to dinner in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. As we got close to the restaurant, one of them said to the other, "Oh wow, there actually are nice parts of Brooklyn."

On my way back from that, as I was approaching the Brooklyn Bridge, Diego called and said, "Laguardia's stripped," meaning the airport was empty of cabs. He went on, "All these flights were canceled, so tons of people are dying for cabs. Someone actually offered me $800 to take them to Toronto! Can you believe that?"

Apparently the intense heat and haze had caused problems with visibility or something and it grounded most of the planes in the New York area, so the airport was lucrative chaos.

I said, "Don't tell me you're on your way to Toronto right now."

"Hell no! You kidding me? That's a two-thousand dollar job. No, I got someone to midtown and then I'm racing right back. You should go."

I hopped on the BQE and sped over there. It was still stripped and I got someone going back to the city. He was coming from Atlanta and had been sitting in his plane on the runway for four hours before they finally took off for their hour-and-a-half flight. I remarked on his mood, saying, "You seem pretty happy for someone who just sat on a plane for that long."

He replied, "I've had a few drinks."

Later on, I ended up getting extra lucky when I got a job to Edison, New Jersey. It's always good money when you take someone out of town. The guy was from California and got screwed over on his hotel so he was staying at the Hilton out there.

When I dropped him off, I got out of the cab to help him with his bags. As he left and went inside, some fat middle-aged dude with a cane came up to me. He'd been standing outside the hotel, and as he approached me, he said, "Are you the driver?" I said "Yes," and then he looked around, leaned in real close, exhaled his cigarette smoke, and said, "I'm looking for a strip club around here."

Apparently he'd had a few drinks too. Sorry to disappoint, I told him I was a New York cab driver and couldn't help him in this area. He hobbled back to the sliding glass doors as I got back in my cab and hauled ass back to the civilized world.

Book update

This is a just a quick update about the book, because that's what's been consuming me and my time lately. But, as a side note, I don't really want this space to be used too much for book stuff, so I've crossed over to the dark side and created a MySpace page. This is where I will post updates, information, reviews (only if they're good, of course), and any other crap that relates to the book. Go and befriend me! The page is at www.myspace.com/melissaplaut.

But for now I need to share something here because it's kind of big news: The book is going to be published as a hardcover after all! Fucking awesome, no? And it will still be out on August 28th so I'm getting pretty damn excited.

Anyway, now the thing will cost $21.95, which is still not too out of control and I hope you will all still consider picking up a copy. I'm not sure how this change affects the Amazon pre-orders that have already been put in, but I imagine -- and this is just a guess -- that they'll probably send out an email giving those people the option to buy the book at the new price (that is, when Amazon figures out that there is a new price). As far as I know, they don't charge your credit card until the book ships anyway, so you won't be screwed over.

Also, a few New York readings and signings will be happening in September. The first is at the Barnes & Noble in Greenwich Village, on 8th Street and 6th Avenue, right across the street from Gray's Papaya, where I've eaten many a late-night cabbie dinner of hot dogs and papaya juice with my buddy Diego. It's also across the avenue from the McDonald's in which I've peed on many desperate occasions. Plus, there's a "taxi relief" stand just up the next block. So it's a pretty good spot for my first official book reading.

The event will take place on September 11th at 7:30 PM. Definitely not the happiest day in the world, but it was what the store had available, and who am I to be picky? Plus, in a way it almost makes sense since it will be the third anniversary of my very first shift in the cab back in 2004. (I got my license a week and a half earlier but I was too chicken-shit to start right away.) So this B&N reading will be a cool confluence of events that relate to my career as a cab driver.

There will be another reading the following Tuesday, September 18th, also at 7:30. That one will be at the Barnes & Noble in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It's my home borough so hopefully all the Brooklynites will show up and represent!

Meanwhile, I plan to work tomorrow night if Richard has a cab for me, so I should be back to bitching about traffic and jaywalkers and gas prices by Wednesday.

Thanks Oprah

When I got to the garage last Thursday afternoon, my old friend Gary (seen above in deep concentration) was back from Vietnam, where he's been living and teaching English for the past five months. We caught up for a bit and then he went into the waiting room to play a game of chess.



I got out after an hour and a half of waiting, but spent another half an hour sitting in traffic on the 59th Street Bridge. I tried to think of Gary and his new Zen approach to driving and traffic. It actually helped a little.



Business was pretty steady all night, but I had a long lull when I made a few back-to-back trips to Brooklyn. The first was to Midwood, a suburban-ish neighborhood largely occupied by Orthodox Jews. It was a decent job but it took forever to get there for some reason, so I hustled back to Manhattan as fast as I could. When I finally got over the Brooklyn Bridge, I turned south down Broadway and was immediately hailed by a Hasidic man.

When he got in, he said, "I'm going to Brooklyn, take the tunnel." He was, of course, going to Borough Park, just a few neighborhoods west of Midwood.

Later on, when I talked to my fellow cabbie Allen about this turn of events, he said, "What? You picked up a Hasid?" Allen himself is an Orthodox Jew. "And he went to Borough Park?" When I said yes, he laughed and said, "Well, what did you expect?!"

Again, it took me forever to get back. The BQE was backed up so I decided to take the surface streets instead. Nearly 60 blocks later, in Park Slope, I picked up a passenger. I felt lucky for a second, thinking he was going to the city, but as it turned out, he was only going a short distance, out toward the Brooklyn Museum, a six dollar ride.

He was a young guy, good looking and a little drunk. When I asked what he'd been up to that night, he said, "Oh there's a group of us that started a gay volleyball league. We had a game and then went to the bar."

Then he launched into the very astute observation that I am a female cab driver, and asked if it was harder for me in terms of having to pee. I said, "It's not the easiest thing in the world, mainly because it's hard to park."

He said, "You know it's funny, because I was just now talking about this with my friend and it was the last conversation I had before I left." He gave me some backstory. "Okay, so apparently Oprah has this word for her crotch -- she calls it her vajayjay. Have you heard that?"

I said no, and he went on, "Well my friend made up a parallel term for guys and so before I was leaving tonight, he was telling me about his majeejee."

O-kayyy. I figured he was talking about the penis, and having not much to say on the matter at the moment, I just nodded and watched the street.

He continued, "Yeah, because he was about to go on a date with some guy he'd never hung out with before and the conversation centered around whether or not he should clean out his majeejee."

It took a second to sink in, and I said, "Oh! Wait-- You mean?-- Ohhh...I thought you meant like the front. But I guess you're talking about the back. Huh. Okay." I wasn't quite sure what to say from there, but he was eager, seemingly happy to be communicating, and continued, "Yes! It's our 'mangina.' Hence, majeejee."

Then he stopped for a second, looked around the cab, and said, "Wait, I'm not on 'Taxicab Confessions' right now or anything, am I?"

I said, "No. But you should be."

I dropped him off, raced back to the city, and didn't have a ride back to Brooklyn for the rest of the shift.

Thanks Oprah.

One block

Sometimes crossing the Brooklyn Bridge isn't all that bad.



There are many ways to get through the long 12-hour shift. Reading a book while stopped in traffic is only one of them.



Tonight was pretty good overall. I mean, it wasn't perfect. I did indeed get my window punched by some stupid angry road raging bitch in Williamsburg (because I wouldn't let her cut me off, mind you), but that's so annoyingly typical, it barely merits mention at this point.

Otherwise, business was steady and people were in good spirits. My favorite fare of the night originated in the theater district. A somewhat elderly couple flagged me down in the middle of 45th Street just as the area began spilling over with the post-theater crowd. They instructed me to go to 79th and Lex and then began an animated conversation with each other about how much they hated the play they'd just seen.

He said, "Well, I didn't think the acting was too bad."

She disputed this. "It was dismal! How could it be any good when they had such terrible material to work with?"

They carried on trashing the play the whole ride uptown and then, as we crossed east on 79th, they told me they were actually going to make two stops. The man would be getting out at Park Avenue and the lady would get out a block away at Lexington. No problem.

When the man closed the cab door behind him, the lady addressed me and said, "Oh goodie, this way he makes sure I get to pay."

I responded with something vague yet polite like, "That's not so nice of him."

She said, "No, actually it's okay. We used to be married and we see each other practically every night so we just switch off paying."

I asked the obvious: "You see each other every night but you're not married anymore?"

"Yeah," she said, "after 42 years, we realized that we get along much better when we live apart." I guess they only needed one city block to make their relationship work.

She continued, "Our kids think we're bizarre." I agreed with her kids and then, as her doorman approached to let her out of the cab, I said, "Just out of curiousity, what play did you guys see tonight?"

"'Deuce.' The one about tennis. It was lousy!" And with that, she got out and the doorman closed the door behind her.

I hate Second Avenue, but I still love New York

So, I finally drove a cab again after all this time.

When I showed up at the garage for my first shift back yesterday afternoon, my buddy Sam updated me on the situation on the streets these days. This is what cabbies do at my garage. They tell each other where the cops are waiting to give tickets, where there's construction, where they found good fares, and so on. But yesterday, knowing I hadn't driven in a while, Sam warned me about the recent surge in traffic, saying, "When you get out there, you'll find it a lot harder to move than the last time you worked."

I caught my first passenger right away, at the bottom of the 59th Street Bridge. He was a young, hipsterish-looking guy with long bleached blond hair. He was going to Central Park West and 73rd and when he got in, he politely asked me if he could eat his sandwich there in the backseat. I said, "Sure, as long as you don't get it everywhere." He promised to eat it over his bag, and I felt lucky that my first passenger in all these months was a nice guy with good manners. Though I was trying to keep my expectations low, it made me almost hopeful for the rest of the shift.

Of course, things took a turn slightly for the worse an hour later when I had my first near-accident/near-death experience of the shift. I was on Third Avenue and 23rd Street and there was a shitty Hyundai on my left that was running into a construction area and decided it wanted to be in my lane. It looked like they were about to rail right into my door but I had no room to get out of the way, so I just slowed down, leaned on the horn, and braced myself for the hit.

Luckily, at the last second, they skidded to a stop in front of the orange cones and waited for the flow of traffic to break so they could get in. It's a totally regular occurence on the streets of New York but still, I hadn't driven a cab in so long, I wasn't used to the aggression other drivers direct towards cabbies and I found myself a little shaken up.

Then around 5:30, I decided that I despised Second Avenue. It was the third time in less than two hours that I got caught in a bad jam there and I realized Sam wasn't kidding about the traffic. The only saving grace was the increase in the waiting time/traffic time on the meter that happened back in December. It made a significant difference and allowed me to relax a tiny bit despite sitting in hellish traffic. Without that increase, we would all be screwed and I don't think there would be many cabbies left in New York.

But things perked up again a little later. I was taking a guy to a screening at the Tribeca Film Festival downtown on Chambers Street and along the way we realized we both grew up in Rockland County, New York, about an hour north of the city. He was fifteen years older than me, but we had both gone to the same junior high and high schools and chatted about that for awhile. He was running late and we were trying to figure out the best way to the theater from SoHo and we agreed we absolutely must avoid Canal Street. It was just past 6:00 PM and Canal is always backed up because it lead in to the Holland Tunnel. It's seriously like a recurring nightmare for any cabbie.

So we went down Mott with the idea we would cross west at Worth, but Mott, of course, was backed up so we were like, fuck it, and turned down Canal anyway. And -- will wonders never cease -- Canal was clear! We were psyched, and we laughed about how sometimes New York can really suprise you. But, seriously, how pathetic is it that the big gift New York offered us last night was merely no traffic on Canal Street at 6:00 PM?

At 7:00 I passed another female cab driver as we were inching down Broadway, but she looked miserable and so I did not say hi.

At 7:45, I was turning past a couple standing on the median on West Street and overheard them say, "She's kinda young to be driving a cab."

At 9:30, I dropped off a passenger in Elmhurst, Queens. I called Diego to chat on the way back since I was empty but, turned out, he was dropping off just a few blocks away from me in the same neighborhood. We decided to race down to JFK since the hotline said they needed cabs there and it would give us a chance to hang outside of our cabs.


When we got there, it was like a big family reunion. I ran into Joy (pictured above), a female (obviously) cabbie I met three years ago, right after I got my hack license. We used to call each other every now and then but then lost touch. She seemed to be doing well and it was nice to see her again after all this time.


Then Diego and I went inside to get some food in the cafeteria and it was a madhouse as usual. Being in there is sort of like being a Moroccan souk or something, with the Greek guys behind the counter calling out prices and food items as fast as auctioneers and a motley crew of drivers mobbing the coffee urns and registers. I managed to skip most of the line since I only got a bottle of water and a bag of pretzels.


Outside again, I ran into another cabbie I knew. He does a Reggae radio show late night on 93.5 and I met him through another cabbie buddy John who does a radio show on WBAI. We all stood around talking shop and bitching about the TLC -- the usual. It's moments like that when I realize that I didn't so much miss driving the cab itself these past few months, but I missed the drivers, I missed the culture and ultimately, I missed the city.

Anyway, I got a good job out of the airport after only about a half hour and the night ultimately ended without any real mishaps or shake-ups. I considered it a good welcome back.

This makes me remember something else Sam said yesterday afternoon at the garage: "This job is like being a drug addict. You have one great night and you're hooked and keep coming back for more. But when you have those bad nights, you just wish you could quit."

I had a decent night. I'll be coming back for more.

The Cover!!!!!!!!!

How fucking exciting! Of course, the actual book is not out yet. Plans for a hardcover edition have been scrapped so it will be a paperback original, which means it'll be more affordable. And it looks like August 28th is the big date, but you can pre-order it from the Random House website by clicking here.

I seriously can't wait.

In the meantime, I'm off to the garage for my first shift in a good long while, so there will hopefully be a story or two here tomorrow, but for now I just needed to say HOLY SHIT I WROTE A BOOK.

Not happening

I went back to the garage today. It had been the first time in months and I was all geared up to work the shift. When I arrived, it was busy and bustling like always and all my old buddies were there. We stood around and caught up for a while as the day drivers trickled in and Richard dispatched the night guys out.



I found myself actually feeling a little nervousness, since I hadn't driven a yellow in so long. I knew I was rusty and wasn't totally confident I could find my way around as easily and naturally as I used to. Luckily the garage has this sign (shown above) posted on the wall outside, just in case.

Not too much else was new around the old garage. The only exception was the sign shown below. I guess the level of general retardation has risen pretty drastically, along with the gas prices.





After about an hour, Diego got his cab and took off. Here he is, trying to look mean but not really accomplishing it. I hung around a little while longer until I heard my name over the loudspeaker. I went inside, but it was a false alarm. Turns out Richard wasn't gonna have a cab for me today after all. He was overloaded with too many guys and not enough cars and had, in fact, already sent a few other drivers home. I couldn't really be upset about this since I did just sort of show up at the garage unannounced.

Oh well, it wasn't a huge deal. I'll work next week and it'll be fine. Plus it was great to catch up with everybody and see their faces again. I do kind of love just hanging out at that garage sometimes. Really the only shitty part was that, as much as I've been dreading and procrastinating getting back in the cab, I was actually pretty disappointed to not work tonight. I mean, I wasn't fucking heartbroken or anything, but I had gotten myself all psyched up to get behind that stupid wheel and make some money. Oh well. So now my big prodigal return to cabbing will have to be postponed for one more week. I better enjoy it.

Civic duty

So shit is finally slowing down, thank goodness. The book has finally been sent to the printer to be made into bound galleys. After much back and forth (and stressing out on my part), it is officially titled HACK. There is also a subtitle, which is: How I Stopped Worrying About What to Do with my Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab. I think it's coming out on August 28th but I'm not totally sure about that.

The past few months were pretty hectic. In the midst of finishing up the last edits of the book and dealing with the whole confusing "publishing process," I got called to jury duty. The last time I had been called was about six years ago when I lived in Manhattan. I was dismissed after two days and all I really remember of my time there is that the chairs were comfortable, the lunches were long, and there was a guy sitting near me whose name was Jack Russel. Also, no one had cell phones really, and only a handful had toted along their clunky laptops.

This time, I arrived at the Kings County Supreme Court Building at 8:30 in the morning and waited in a great long line to get through the security metal detectors with a few hundred of my fellow unlucky Brooklynites. Then I proceeded to the Central Jury Assembly Room which, according to the sign on the wall, has a maximum capacity of about 600 people. I'd say, by the time everyone had filed in, there were about 400 of us. We watched a low-budget instructional movie starring Diane Sawyer and a perfectly diverse cast of characters. I think it was supposed to get us all excited about performing our civic duty, but I got distracted because Diane was so obviously reading her cue cards, it was disconcerting. But I guess it was a good thing because, with the lights all dim, it was the only aspect of the movie that kept me from falling straight to sleep.

When the movie was over, a large man with a white goatee sat down behind a grand table at the front of the room and slowly read through the categories that would qualify one for exemption from jury duty. He would call out each category over the microphone and then would wait for the people from that category to get up and file out through some doors to his side. He started by saying, "Are there any jurors in this assembly room who no longer live in Brooklyn? Please come forward."

At this, one lone guy got up in the middle of the giant room and made his way to the front. As he was walking, the guy with the microphone joked, "When you go through the doors, you're gonna have to write an essay on why you left Brooklyn." Everyone in the room gave a tired little chuckle as we watched the poor guy leave. Then he moved on to the other categories, which included non-citizens, caregivers, felons (about 40 people got up), people who've performed jury duty less than four years ago, and people who had a medical reason to not perform their duty.

The last category was apparently his favorite because he kept referring to it the entire time and telling us it would have the largest response: "If anyone in this assembly room has difficulty understanding English -- or understanding me -- please go through the double doors." A hundred people got up and went through the double doors. How they knew to go through the double doors was a mystery to me, but it didn't phase the guy in charge. When they were all gone, he smiled and said, "I told you that category would clear the room. But don't move over to their seats just yet -- the majority of them will be back." And then with a little wink, "They're just giving it a shot."

An hour later, I got called with 70 other people to go up to a courtroom. When we were out of the big room, our attendance was retaken and I thought it was funny how almost all 70 of us responded to our names by simply saying, "Here," except for the two people who felt it was important to distinguish themselves by saying "Present," and the one jolly old man who said "Good morning."

Up in court, we were told we were gonna be interviewed to see if we could sit on a murder trial. Of all the questions they asked, and all the answers given, I was surprised by how many people answered yes to the one about "Have you ever been the victim of a crime?" More than half of us had been, with the crimes mainly being burglaries and muggings, though one person had been held up at gunpoint, and another woman had the misfortune to witness her godson get murdered right in front of her. It was all pretty depressing. They also asked if the police got involved and how we felt about how they handled it, and it was even more depressing that almost all of us were less than thrilled with the NYPD's actions regarding each of our cases.

At one point in the selection process, the judge instructed us on what "prejudice" means. Naturally, he used cabbies in his example, saying, "Suppose you hold the belief that all cab drivers are terrible drivers." At this, there were a few nods of the head and even one "amen" muttered in the galleys. Ignoring this, the judge continued, "If there is an accident between a cab and another car, you might automatically blame the cab driver, right?" More nods. He went on, "We don't want you to do that here. You need to see the man in front of you as an individual human being and look at the facts of the case. Do not judge him based on what you think him to be beforehand -- that is what prejudice is -- when you pre judge someone based on your beliefs."

The day ended up running long and the lawyers hadn't been able to agree on twelve people so they made those of us who hadn't been interviewed yet (which included me) come back for a second day. The next morning, when the lawyers finally got to me and asked what my occupation was, I said "writer and cab driver." The judge did a double-take, then smiled and said, "Sorry about my cab driver example yesterday." I just said, "It happens all the time."

Around 2:00, the lawyers decided that most of us were not what they wanted on this particular jury and I was, much to my relief, dismissed.

Stars fell on Alabama

It's getting down to the wire with the book. I'm almost there. Just a few more tweaks to the last chapter and then I only have to spend the next few months plagued with self-doubt and insecure thoughts about how much it probably truly sucks. Oh, and it turns out Villard doesn't love "New York Hack" as the title... Don't really know what to do about that for now since I haven't been able to think of a non-suckass alternative.

In the meantime, while I continue to procrastinate getting back in the cab, I've found myself driving around the city here and there in a friend's car. (I got rid of my Buick a month ago. Junked it and even made $25 off the transaction!) But, what I've realized is that, even though people hate you and drive against you when you're behind the wheel of a yellow cab, you still at least get a little bit of respect. The car I've been driving lately is quite possibly the least respected car on the road: a white Volvo station wagon with motherfucking ALABAMA license plates. Shit, I don't even respect myself when I'm driving that thing. It's just embarrassing.

The worst part is, my sensibilities and ego are so offended by the other dickhead drivers, mainly because I know they think I'm some hick driver from down south. I have never been cut off more in my life than I have been in this goddamn car. And now I understand why out-of-towners say New York drivers are assholes. Because it's true, WE ARE ASSHOLES. I would probably even cut myself off if I was behind me in this car. If that makes any sense.

But aside from the unfortunate vehicle, for the past few days I've had zero tolerance for being in a car at all, regardless of whether I'm driving or passengering. This is because I have finally gone ahead and quit smoking. It's been fairly easy so far and, surprisingly enough, I've actually been feeling pretty mellow and spaced out...except when I'm in a car. Then, all of sudden, it feels like I'm at war with the world, everyone is an enemy -- or just frustratingly stupid -- and I lose my shit entirely. It's a pretty ugly scene. So my plan for now is to just take the subway everywhere until the war ends and hope that I'll be able to eventually get back to work without feeling tempted to smoke my stupid brains out.

Or maybe I should just give up the cab for good and drive down to Alabama where I clearly belong.

The Five-Nine

The 59th Street Bridge was a wreck yesterday. I know this not because I was behind the wheel of a cab sitting in the traffic myself, but because I caught up with a bunch of my old taxi buddies yesterday while they were driving, so I got to hear all about it.

First I called Gary back. We hadn't spoken in maybe six or seven months, ever since he left the garage to do alternating 24-hour shifts with a private taxi owner for a cheap price. Gary is an actor and a playwright, in his mid-to-late fifties, completely bald, and totally sharp and edgy. We became very good friends when we drove out of the same garage but sometimes when people leave a place and you don't see them regularly, it becomes hard to keep in touch, no matter how much you like each other.

Apparently, since the last time we talked, he'd been traveling around, and had settled into teaching English at a Buddhist temple in Thailand. He left me a message telling me he was back, and when I got him on the phone last night he was sitting in a back-up on Crescent Avenue, leading in to the lower level of the bridge, and telling me about how he was saving up to go to Vietnam for four months starting in mid-January.

The entire time we were catching up, he was stuck in this traffic. At one point he said, "I can't believe this. It's so bad, cars are starting to drive on the sidewalk to get up to the front of the line."

I said, "You must be going nuts, huh?"

But Gary replied, "Actually I'm not. If I learned one thing from the monks in Thailand it was this: 'See clearly and you will always act morally.' It sounds a little simple, but I've found it really works. So like right now, I figure, I'll get in to New York when I get there, and I'll make the money I'll make, and the night will be what it is."

So Gary's doing well, getting all Zen and shit, and enjoying his life.

After talking for nearly half an hour, we hung up as he finally made it onto the bridge.

Next I called Elliott back. He picked up on the last ring, right before his voice mail got it, and said, "Hello! Good to hear from you! But I'm driving and the city's a mess. I'll call you later."

When I woke up this morning, there was a message from Elliott at 5:00 am, just getting off his shift, apologizing for not calling me back sooner.

After that, I reached Allen. Allen has a funny, childlike way about him. He's also in his fifties, is an orthodox Jew, and lives with his mother and his brother in Williamsburg. He picked up and we just said "Hello?" back and forth to each other a few times until he realized it was me. Then he said, "Melissa? It's Allen!"

"Hi Allen. I knew it was you -- I called you... How're you doing?"

Allen simply launched in and said, "Yeah, so I was thinking about your book yesterday. I got an idea for you."

"Oh yeah? What were you thinking?" I knew it was gonna be weird, whatever it was.

"You should make some of your characters into cartoons!" He said this with glee in his voice, clearly thinking it a brilliant and clever idea, but also knowing I would never do such a thing.

"What?"

"CARTOONS!"

"Uh, yeah, okay, but I don't think that would work so well with the rest of the story. You always have the weirdest ideas."

Allen didn't say anything because he was laughing too hard at his own bizarre joke.

I changed the subject. "Where are you?"

"Brooklyn. The five-nine is all screwed up. You can't get into the city. I got some jobs and then got taken back out here. Now I'm trying to get back in."

"Traffic's bad, huh?"

"It's terrible."

We talked for a few more minutes and, as we started wrapping up the conversation, Allen assured me that he would come up with some more ideas for the book. I thanked him and wished him a happy Hanukkah.

I had been off this marathon phone session for about two minutes when Diego called. Me and Diego still talk regularly, so it's much more casual with us.

"What's up Diego."

"Nothing. I'm pulling in to LaGuardia. The 59th Street Bridge is all fucked up so I took the tunnel and the second I got through, right across the street at that corner, a woman gets in and takes me to the butt-end of Astoria. I didn't even call the hotline, I just came straight here."

"Yeah, I heard the bridge was bad. Is the airport full?"

"Nah, it's not that bad." He must've parked already because I heard him going up to the coffee shop in the taxi lot and buying a pack of cigarettes. Then he said, "Yo, you ever coming back to work or what?"

"I hope I won't have to, but I might. If I don't find something else, I'll probably come back in February."

Diego said, "Well I miss you, buddy. I wanna see you soon."

We hung up while he was still at the airport.

It's true. I've been working hard on this book (almost done with Draft 2) and I really don't want to go back to the cab, at least until it's finished. If I can avoid it for a while longer, I will. But if my bank account and bills demand it, which may be sooner than I'd like, I'll have to get back behind that wheel.

In the meantime, I'm much happier keeping in touch with the streets vicariously through my cabbie pals.

Hi

I'm still here. But I am not driving the cab these days, which is why I haven't been writing online. Instead, I'm hauling ass on Draft 2 of The Book. And so after each day of work on this, I'm too burned out to write something even marginally interesting here. I feel bad about it, but more than that, I feel bad about not driving the cab. It has been such a huge part of my life and identity for the past few years, it's just weird to not be doing it. I keep saying I'm simply on hiatus, but who the fuck knows? Maybe I've actually quit and I just don't know it yet.

Strangely, my life has never been more insular and sheltered than it is now, which is the total opposite of what it was when I was driving. But each day I'm reliving my experiences in the cab and writing (and rewriting) them all down. It's not the easiest thing in the world, but it's a lot more fun than actually driving. My body has never felt better either, so that's another thing that's keeping me from going back. I never fully realized how sitting in a cab for 12 hours at a time was destroying my muscles and my kidneys and my mental health.

Anyway, this is just to check in and say hello. A lot of people have written with questions for me and I've been really bad at writing back. So I'll address two of the most common questions here:

1. The book is tentatively titled "New York Hack." Very original, I know. It is slated to be published in the fall of 2007.

2. Seems a lot of people want to become cab drivers and want advice on how to go about getting their hack licenses. I can only recommend you do what I did and go to the TLC website and follow their instructions. But make sure you follow them very carefully, because if you make one little mistake, they will make you start the whole damn process over again. Good luck with that.

This blog totally sucks now

But that's because I'm writing a book, which I'll be reading from tomorrow night. You should come!

It's part of a reading series called "Writers at the Alliance" and there are two other readers, both much more accomplished than me, so it shouldn't suck.

Anyway, it's FREE, so come out if you can.

Tuesday, October 17th, 7:00 pm
at the Educational Alliance, in the Mazer Theater
197 East Broadway
(F train to East Broadway, walk two blocks to Jefferson)



Here's the official info:

HERE IS NEW YORK: THEN AND NOW
Tuesday, October 17
7:00 pm
In his foreword to "Here is New York," written in 1948, E.B. White asserted that "it is the reader's, not the author's, duty to bring New York down to date." The Alliance has enlisted three very different writers with that task, beginning with Caleb Crain who chronicles the extravagances and vanities of New York's upper class in the nineteenth century. Next, Brandon Stosuy delves into the downtown music scene of the 1970s and continues through to 2006, noting outerborough shifts along the way. Finally, Melissa Plaut, a blogging cab driver, keeps us "down to date" with her present-day account of life behind the wheel in New York City.

CALEB CRAIN has written essays and criticism for The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, and other publications. He is the author of American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation (Yale, 2001), and is at work on a history of the divorce of the nineteenth-century theatrical couple Edwin and Catharine Forrest.
See http://steamthing.com.

MELISSA PLAUT was born in 1975 and grew up in the suburbs of New York City. After college, she held a series of office jobs until, at the age of 29, she began driving a yellow cab. A year later she started writing "New York Hack," a blog about her experiences behind the wheel. Within a few months, the blog was receiving several thousand hits a day. She is currently working on a book based on "New York Hack" to be published in 2007 by Villard. See http://newyorkhack.blogspot.com/

BRANDON STOSUY, a staff writer and columnist at Pitchfork, contributes regularly to The Believer and The Village Voice and has written for Arthur, BlackBook, Bookforum, LA Weekly, Seattle Weekly, and Slate, among other publications. His Danzig-heavy meditation on Sue de Beer appears in her EMERGE monograph (Downtown Arts Projects, 2005) and an essay he co-authored with Lawrence Brose is collected in Enter at Your Own Risk: The Dangerous Art of Dennis Cooper (FDU Press, 2006). He's currently curating The Believer's 2007 Music Issue Compilation CD while finishing a discussion with Matthew Barney and essays on Wayne Koestenbaum and Gordon Lish, also for The Believer. Up Is Up, But So Is Down, his anthology of Downtown New York literature, will be published in October by NYU Press. See
http://www.amazon.com/but-So-Down-Literary-1974-1992/dp/0814740111/sr=8-1/qid=1158554986/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-2161039-3765661?ie=UTF8&s=books

Writers at the Alliance, the Educational Alliance's reading series, brings together established and emerging novelists, poets and essayists whose work, in both form and content, reflects the energy, diversity, and history of dissent which have always characterized the Lower East Side.

For more details, visit http://www.killfee.net/alliance.

2007

When I got to work today, I was assigned a brand-new 2007 model taxi. It only had about 6400 miles on it, which probably makes it about six weeks old. It was clean and pristine and it still smelled new, and as I was pulling out of the lot, one of my fellow drivers joked and said, "Don't scratch it!"

Of course, within an hour, the bus seen above nearly took my right side mirror off. Luckily, I was able to avoid it, even though I was still a bit rusty from having not driven any kind of vehicle in a month.

It took me that first hour to warm up and get my rhythm and confidence back. But after that, everything was back to normal. The only real problem for the rest of the night was that I was constantly distracted by some gum on the sole of my shoe that kept sticking to the pedals.

Things could definitely have been worse.

Guess who's still not working?

I'm back, but it seems I've got a low level case of whatever this plague is that's been going around, the one with the incessant coughing and foggy head. It seems I caught it a few weeks ago, gave it to a few friends, got better, went away, came back, and then caught it again. So I'm avoiding the cab until next week. I wonder if those Canadian cigarettes had something to do with it.

And, on top of not feeling 100% health-wise, I'm having trouble finding the enthusiasm to get back into the swing of cab driving. Have I ever mentioned that I hate not only driving a cab, but also just driving at all? Or even being a passenger in a car? I much prefer the subway, even with all the pushing and positioning that goes on down there. It's just so much less stress. Even when I'm stuck in a tunnel in a crowded train, I'm still much more at ease than when aboveground, stuck in traffic.

My tolerance for the street was never this low until I started driving a cab. And now it appears I have some sort of visceral aversion to being strapped in to any kind of road vehicle. I've also become the worst back-seat driver that ever existed. If you knew me and owned a car, you would not want to take me anywhere at all, ever, because not only would I tell you how to drive, I would also tell you exactly which route to take and why you should take it. I would not only aggravate the shit out of you, I would bore you to tears describing traffic patterns, light times, bad intersections (and why they're bad), bridge & tunnel approaches, red-light cameras, and so on.

So, yeah, I hate to drive, but I'm real good at driving other people crazy.

Perhaps this means my next adventure should be some sort of job with the MTA or the Department of Transportation.

Or not.

Vancouver

[Updated to include photos]

So I'm in Vancouver. "On vacation," as they say. I haven't driven a cab in a few weeks. Instead, I spent that time completing the first draft of the book. Which I accomplished. And when I get back home next week, I will probably have my editor's notes for the second draft and get back to work on it. But I also plan to get back in the cab, even if it's on a minimal level.

Anyway, I arrived here in Canada yesterday and, of course, I'm experiencing a tiny bit of culture shock. It's been a little while since I left New York last, and everytime I do, there's a small transition. It's really quite beautiful here, and also incredibly quiet, to the point that it's creepy. I'm not used to it, but I can see the appeal.

So, of course, the first thing I did after leaving the airport was get into a taxi. The one we got was green and white, though there are plenty of yellow cabs around. I was a little skeptical at first that our ride would be slow and boring because this city seems so clean and pristine, but it turned out to be okay. Our driver had on flip-up shades under the brim of a tan Vancouver baseball hat. In the taxi, he sat up so completely straight that the top of his head was in constant contact with the ceiling of the car. He also had on spotless white gloves and drove with his arms at the strangest angle.

At the end of the ride, I decided I totally approved of his moves. I mean, he didn't do anything particularly special or out of the ordinary, but he definitely had that quick, efficient, get-you-there-in-one-piece-but-fast style that I have tried to perfect in my own driving.

The only other thing of note was that when I tried to buy cigarettes, they didn't have my brand. I didn't recognize most of the others either, so I resorted to treating the girl at the 7-11 like a salesperson who works on commission, asking her, "Can you recommend a good light cigarette?"

She handed me a pack of "Canadian Classics Lights" and said they were "popular." I bought them. They're alright.

Co-star

The woman pictured above was my first passenger last night.

Actually, she was my only passenger last night.

And, actually, it was all totally staged. Do you recognize her? In case you don't, she's an actress and her name is Tilda Swinton. I was recruited a few weeks back to play her cabbie as part of a project by artist Doug Aitken. He's working on a bunch of film scenes that will be projected on the facade of the Museum of Modern Art this January.

Last night was a little piece of the project and I was happy to participate, even though I don't think my presence will be too prominent in the end. Still, hopefully I'll be able to see myself on the MoMA walls it when it's all finished. There will also be a companion book that will feature, among other things, an interview with me.

Anyway, it was a totally new and fascinating experience, despite the initial waiting around that, I gathered, is the norm for any kind of film shoot. I showed up just before 3:00 pm and just sort of hung around for an hour or so while the crew got everything ready. Then Tilda pretended to hail me and I pretended to pick her up a few times. After that, the cab was rigged onto a trailer and we "drove" around the upper west side and Times Square.



I think that was my favorite part: Riding around a foot above the normal height pretending to drive a cab. It's far better than actually driving a cab. I was struck by how many people on the street gaped and gawked at us, took pictures, and yelled stupid comments. I'm so used to being sort of invisible in the cab, so this was utterly strange to me.

At one point, when we were passing FlashDancers, the Gentleman's Club, one of the doormen there called out, "A lady cab driver? Now I really don't believe it! There are no lady cab drivers in New York!"

Under normal circumstances I might have given him the finger, but I decided to hold off on that this time. The stupidest part of this guy's comment, though, was that I actually met him in my cab not too long ago. When a cab drops off its breast-hungry schmucks at FlashDancers, the doorman usually hands the driver an envelope containing a three dollar "tip," a letter written in every conceivable language encouraging cabbies to continue dropping off at this particular strip club, and a voucher or two for free entry to the club that we can give to our "favorite passengers." This very doorman, who couldn't believe a "lady cab driver" existed, had himself handed me this little package not too long ago. Clearly he has a short memory.

Overall, the night was a lot of fun. The lights were pretty, the not-actually-having-to-drive was wonderful, the people were all really great, and I think the project is going to look incredibly cool when it's finished.


At the end of the night, the director and his cast posed together for a picture.

Now I know what my next career move needs to be: Professional Fake Cab Driver.

The year in review

It's been just over a year since I started this thing, and since I'm not working this week, I figured I'd do a little yearly wrap-up/question-answering thing.

Basically, I started this blog last August after my dad gave me a digital camera for my 30th birthday. (And since so many people ask, it's a Canon Powershot SD 300).

I just turned 31 on Friday.

In the meantime, sometime around March I think, I got a book deal with Villard, an imprint of Random House.

Also in the meantime, over a million "unique visitors" (whatever that means) have looked at this blog.

I'm in the process of finishing up the first draft of said book, and these next few weeks are the final push, so I will probably be driving the cab even less while this is happening.

I've decided along the way that I'm not sure what's more difficult: driving a taxi in New York or writing a book about driving a taxi in New York.

Let's see. What else?

Even though I just renewed my hack license last month, I don't plan on driving the cab forever, or even for too much longer for that matter. But, then again, I've been saying that for almost a year already, so who knows. This job is like quicksand in that it just has a way of sucking you in, it seems.

I did my first public reading last month as part of a fundraiser for the Taxi Worker's Alliance. Despite my utter stagefright (I'm more afraid of reading in front of live actual people than I am of driving a cab at night in New York), it seemed to go pretty well and the Taxi Worker's Alliance gave me a free t-shirt. A week after this, a friend of mine took a cab home to Brooklyn and had Kevin Fitzpatrick, one of the organizers, as her cabbie. When she told him she saw him at the fundraiser, he gave her the ride for free and refused to take any money from her at all.

I will be doing another reading on October 17th at the Educational Alliance as part of a series called "Writers at the Alliance." I'm already scared to death.

Anyway -- and this is where it gets a little corny -- I just wanted to say that driving the cab these past few years, and even doing this blog for the past year, has made me feel brave enough to try anything, to embark on other adventures, and to push for a variety of new experiences in my life. That was the whole point of getting my hack license to begin with: I wanted to try something new and completely foreign to me while making a living and without having to settle and commit to some shitty "career" for the rest of my life. And it has worked out pretty well so far, all things considered.

Everyone knows I'm not in love with driving a cab -- I mean, it is indeed a love/hate relationship, but the hate definitely wins out as the more prevalent feeling. Still it's been precisely these ups and downs that have brought me the greatest amount of joy, heartbreak, and of course, aggravation, none of which I ever would have experienced to this degree doing any other job.

I'm still driving, though much less these days, as some of you have noticed. On top of trying to finish the book, I am in the process of trying to figure out what my next step will be job-wise. So, who knows, you may log on to New York Hack one day only to discover that it's the blog of an ex-cabbie turned animal welfare cop, or Red Cross worker, or Peace Corps activist, or weirdo ranch hand, or whatever else I may try my hand at in the future.

So, anyway, this is just to say happy new year! And thanks for reading.


***[UPDATE: Because there seems to be some misunderstanding here, I would like to clarify that I have not quit yet! This was not supposed to be a farewell message or anything. I'm still driving and will probably pick up more shifts once the stupid UN General Assembly is over later this month (even though it hasn't even convened yet), because I no longer have the heart for that kind of traffic (see September 2005 Archive for why). Anyway, yeah. You can't get rid of me that easily.]***

You're alright

There was a weird vibe out there tonight. Maybe it was the rain these past few days, or the change of season, or the noticeably earlier sunset, who knows, but there was just some sort of odd mood happening. It should go without saying by now that business was slow. It's August. Everyone who can afford to be is out of town. And those that are left are not necessarily taking cabs.

I did get a little lucky out at LaGuardia this evening. I was flagged down by a hotel doorman on East 42nd Street and, as the trunk was being loaded up with luggage, another cabbie that was parked in front of the hotel came over and told me he was "giving" me this job because he would rather go to Kennedy than LaGuardia. Sucks for him, though, because I found out not long after that the Taxi Hold Lot at Kennedy was at like a thousand percent of capacity and moving slow.

I got to LaGuardia without any traffic hassles and waited in the US Air lot, which is next to the Delta terminal (seen above). It's always a gamble to pull into the airport, and then a further gamble deciding which lot to wait in. For the first time in months it seems, I made the right choice. The lot moved relatively quickly and I was on my way back to Manhattan with a passenger within 40 minutes.

Back in the city, though, the streets were tough. Competition was fierce and the regular "civilian" drivers were moving like zombies. I had one altercation that could've been bad, but ended up being a nice moment.

I was changing lanes at the same time as this Nissan Altima on the other side of Third Avenue. The problem was, we were both trying to get into the same lane at the same time but from opposite directions. I swerved back over just in time to avoid a collision, but not in time to avoid hearing the driver of the car, a young black man, call me a motherfucker. He sneered at me and I just shook my head and shrugged my shoulders, like, "Whatever."

As we approached the next light side by side, he took another look at me and said, "Oh, I thought you were a guy." His two passengers were now staring. I just nodded my head and looked away, not knowing what he was getting at and not really wanting to get into anything.

Five minutes later, we ended up next to each other again. Smiling this time, he called over and said, "You're alright, man. You're alright!"

I don't know what brought on this change of heart, but I didn't question it. All I knew was that, somehow, I went from being a "motherfucker" to "alright" in a matter of minutes. And it was certainly a better outcome than having him take his dick out at me.

If only it was always this easy.

Cow catcher

It almost seemed like the usual last-two-weeks-of-August empty-city curse might have been lifted when I got stuck in massive throngs of people walking in the traffic lanes near Penn Station, but, alas, the curse has hit, and hard. It took me 45 minutes to find my first passenger tonight, which is just frustrating. That's not supposed to happen in the beginning of the shift, and it makes the night look hopeless.

I often tell myself, All I need is the first one, and then everything will fall into place, which is usually true, but when getting that first passenger proves to be more difficult than it should be, my outlook starts to look real dark. Of course, eventually, someone deigned to get in my cab and pay me to drive them somewhere, and slowly but surely, other fares followed, but the damage was done. The night proved to be dead slow, worse than usual, and I spent a lot of time by myself between jobs.

Sometime during rush hour a man and his teenage son got in the cab. They were visitors from Canada. Shortly after getting in, the man commented on the "Passenger's Bill of Rights" posted on the partition. We laughed at how ridiculous it is, and how sad. And also what it says about how the city feels about its taxi drivers, and so on.

We also got along because, when a bunch of genius pedestrians walked in front of my cab against the light, the man suggested I invest in something called a "cow catcher." He explained that it's that slanty thing seen on the front of locomotives and they serve to move animals and objects out of the way and off the tracks. I agreed that I absolutely needed a cow catcher. Especially today when the pedestrians seemed particularly suicidal.

They told me they were visiting the man's brother and leaving tomorrow. The son had never been here before, the father hadn't been here in over 20 years. We had a pleasant ride together and when they got out, they left me a decent tip.

Anyway, when my next passenger got in, he handed me a wallet and said he found it on the backseat. I immediately knew it belonged to the Canadian man. It contained only a Canadian "Operator's License" and a credit card, nothing else.

Now, I have to admit, had this guy been a dick, I might've taken some pleasure in throwing the wallet away, but he hadn't been. So I found the 800 number on the back of the credit card and called the company. I explained what happened and gave them my number. I felt bad for the guy. There was no way he was gonna be allowed on a plane tomorrow without his ID.

A half hour later, he called and asked if I could go back to where I dropped him off and return the wallet, telling me he would make it worth my while. Those words are like magic. They just make it a lot easier to go off-duty during rush hour for a complete stranger. It's like, at least the person knows you're going to be losing time, which equals money in this business, and they don't have an unhealthy sense of entitlement, which many New Yorkers definitely seem to have when it comes to cabs. But it's also a gamble, because you never know at what rate a person values your time.

Still, at that point, it didn't really matter. This guy deserved a favor, and I was happy to do it, even if it ended up as a loss for me. I hit my off-duty light and, of course, that was the moment when a hundred people decided they absolutely needed my cab, but I was on a mission to do a good thing and be a good person for a change, so I ignored their hails.

When I finally made it back to him, I jokingly told him that I only did a little shopping with his credit card at Circuit City and Best Buy, but I hadn't maxed it out yet. He was so relieved that I came back, he just laughed. Then he handed me fifty bucks and said, "You're my favorite New Yorker ever."

The whole interaction, plus the generous reward, pretty much made my night. So, ultimately, I came out way ahead.

I'm totally gonna use that fifty bucks as a down payment on a cow catcher.

Reminder

I'll be reading from my book at the cabbie fundraiser tomorrow night at Rocky Sullivan's on Lex between 28th and 29th. The event goes from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm.

Also, I will be among a bunch of cabbies telling cabbie stories on WBAI tomorrow afternoon from 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm. Listen in at 99.5 FM or www.wbai.org. We will be taking calls too.


Update on how to hear the show:

You can hear the WBAI show live at www.wbai.org. About 10 minutes after the broadcast it will be up on the www.wbai.org archive under Radio Free Eireann.

The Saturday night show will also be available on www.nysoundposse.com by Sunday night.