One question that’s plagued humanity for thousands of years now is “What is hell like?” One great movie (Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey) put forth the theory that Hell is whatever you fear most in life. If that’s true then my Hell is an eternal cab ride.
I hate riding in cabs. Hate, hate, hate riding in cabs. You get into a smelly old American car (Hondas go to heaven, Fords go to hell) and pay someone who barely speaks English a per-minute rate that would make a phone sex operator jealous to take you on the most circuitous possible route to your destination. And all that would even just be slightly sub-purgatory if it wasn’t for the fact that the cabbie always wants to talk to you.
Why is that? Why can’t cabbies just drive silently? None of them ever do. Not one. I can’t imagine the average customer wants to talk to their cab driver. All the conversation I want is me telling them where to go when I first get in the car and them telling me how much it cost at the end. We’ll both exchange “have a nice day”s at the end and then go our separate ways. Deal?
I usually only ride in cabs when I go to Las Vegas. But it’s gotten to the point where I just rent cars now so I can avoid them. And when I absolutely must take a cab I try to find the least Caucasian looking cabbie I can. It’s the white guys who want to be your best friend. Indians or Mexicans may engage in a little small talk, but whitey always wants to know every last detail about your life, as if a situation might some day occur in which they can use the fact that they know your third grade teacher’s name to their advantage.
On every trip to Vegas I get one cabbie who is totally insane, the way only a middle-class white male can be. Last time it was “Blowjobio guy”, so named because he called The Bellagio, our destination, The Blowjobio at least ten times on the way there. And every time he did so he looked at the three of us waiting for us to break into tears laughing. I just wanted to yell “BAHAHAHAHA. Did you hear that guys? He called the Bellagio the Blowjobio! Get it? Blowjobio! That’s funny because it has blowjob in it, and that’s a sexual term! Blowjobio! Hahahaha! That’s funny!” But he was behind the wheel and we were barreling down Tropicana at 60 miles per hour, so I decided to exercise a little restraint.
(I should mention that I’m the sort of person for whom that sort of restraint does not come naturally. I always, in the back of my mind, weigh the odds on jokes like that. It’s my own form of dementia and I expect that one day, after it causes me to die in some horrific manner, it will even be named after me. Maroon’s Syndrome has a nice ring to it.
Often something so funny pops in my head that I’m willing to risk life and limb just to say it. I’d probably dodge a draft, but I’ll gladly throw myself in harm’s way for comedy. And the blowjobio monologue, if delivered properly, might have been the funniest thing I’d have ever said, but the risk was high (other than the small probability of him intentionally driving off a bridge, there’s the risk that he would kick us out of his cab for my being an ass, forcing us to walk miles through the 110 degree heat). Still I probably would have just gone ahead and said it (he might have been dumb enough to not realize I was making fun of him, that happens more than you might think) but I didn’t feel comfortable potentially putting my two roommates in that situation. Instead I just chose to make fun of the guy with Ethan and Mike for the next two weeks and then get this blog entry out of it.)
That cabbie had numerous crazy quirks (a bad sense of humor isn’t really insanity) that I won’t bother to recount here, but was still only the third nuttiest cab driver I’ve had this year. Maybe it’s just been a banner year for loonies in the Las Vegas taxi industry. Or, maybe, like in poker, I’m just running bad in the cab driver department. Or maybe cab drivers are just fucking insane.
Still, even the craziest of cab drivers are tolerable when the conversation stays away from the topic of poker. A couple years ago, when I was new to the whole going to Vegas ten times a year thing, I would gladly tell cabbies why I was there. “I’m here for the World Series of Poker” or “I’m here for the World Poker Tour Championship”. Or, if asked what I do for a living (possibly the most common American small talk question) I’d tell them “I’m a professional poker player.” It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I quickly learned that there is nobody in the world I’d less rather discuss my career with than a Las Vegas cab driver. Not that I particularly care for talking about it with anyone; I usually just tell people I’m a writer to avoid being asked the same questions over and over. But cab drivers are the worst. They come up with the most idiotic questions known to man. “So, if you have an ace of clubs and a five of diamonds, do you fold it or call it? What about an ace of diamonds and a five of clubs?”
If I’m ever a cabbie (and it’s certainly not impossible that I someday will be) I’m only going to speak when spoken to. I’m not going to ask people what they do for a living or why they are in town, unless the conversation that they began leads to that point. I’m also not going to play hair metal on the radio, because that’s just wrong and possibly criminal, but that’s a topic for another entry.
Either way, if any cab drivers ever read this please don’t take this as a scathing indictment of you and your peers. It’s just that when I get into a cab I don’t want to talk. I’m not a cab talker. A lot of people aren’t. I just want to get to where I’m going as quickly and quietly as possible. I’m sure some of your customers would love to talk, and they will initiate a conversation. If you want to talk to someone for hours on end, get a wife. They sell them in Russia for less than you charge to take me from Mandalay Bay to the Bellagio, and I’d be more than happy to purchase one for you if we can just make that trek down The Strip in silence.
