Taxicab Depressions

I got a call one nite to pick up “Maria” at some yuppie apartments near downtown. A beautiful Hispanic girl comes out, wearing a very short skirt and a skin-tight top that really showed off her rack, and tottering on some extreme high heels. These were shoes that were not really intended for dancing, walking, or even standing… no, these shoes were specifically designed to look good perched on a man’s shoulders, if you take my meaning. She is holding her arms out sideways like a high wire walker, taking little 12 inch steps and struggling to not fall over.

She slowly gets in the car and tells me she wants to go to one of the more popular dance clubs downtown. She is stunningly beautiful, but dressed pretty trashy, and she seems somehow insecure…. She asks me if I think she looks OK, and I tell her that she looks fantastic. She doesn’t seem to really believe me though, and maybe I wasn’t truly convincing. On one hand, she really was beautiful… Long dark curly hair, big eyes, her perfect bleached teeth seem to glow bluish-white in the darkness. But on the other hand, her slutty shoes, scanty outfit, erect nipples, and garish makeup gave her a whorish look, but she tells me that she was a contestant in a well known and high profile beauty pageant a couple years ago. In the interest of her confidentiality (and not getting myself sued), I’m not going to say whether it was Miss America, Miss World, Mrs. Universe, Miss Galaxy, or whatever… But I Googled her up when I got home that night, and yes, it was true… there are numerous photos of her online, wearing her gown, sash, and crown, and some photos wearing a whole lot less. Suffice to say she was from a predominantly Spanish-speaking country in the Western Hemisphere… Let’s just call her Miss Bolivia.

Anyway, Miss Bolivia was talking on the way to the club, and in just a matter of two or three minutes, I found myself wishing she would just shut the fuck up. Her English was excellent, though clipped and concise, and with a thick Spanish accent… but she is yammering on incessantly about her family, her job, her pageants, her hair, her modeling aspirations, her stupid Vietnamese nail tech, her immigration issues, her cell phone problems, just a litany of shit I really wasn’t interested in. I’m not sure why this was so annoying, other than she just talked constantly, barely taking a breath. But whatever… If this is as bad as my night gets, it is gonna be a pretty good night.

So we get to the club, and she starts rifling through her little clutch purse for some money. Her fare is like 9 bucks and change, and it seems she only has a ten. I thought to myself, “Who goes to a bar without any money?”

And then it almost immediately occurred to me that a girl that looks like this has never bought a drink or paid a cover charge in her life.

With a sincere and pouty look on her face, she says, “I feel baaaahhhd… You are a nice man, but I have no money for a teeeep…” I see a couple of credit cards in her little purse and tell her I can accept a card, but she says something about needing to preserve the money on her debit card for some extraordinarily complicated reason, which I can already tell is a loooooong and very complex story, certainly one I don’t have time to listen to now. I tell her that it isn’t a big deal and she can get me next time. She says in her thick accent, “I feel baaaahhhd…”

Then her face lights up with inspiration. “I know! Would you like to see my bressstsss? Many photographers have told me I have beautiful bressstsss…”

She is about to pull up her top when I tell her that it really isn’t necessary. Her face pulls back and her bottom lip curls out in a pout… apparently she is unaccustomed to a rejection like that, and I was thinking that it might have played into the insecurity I seemed to be picking up from her. Then a sly smile creeps over her face, and she says, “What if I showed you my poooozzzeee…?” She leans back, hoists her left foot up on the seat, throws her knee back, and her pantyless crotch is on full display. She parts her labia in the classic 80’s Hustler style, and says, “Don’t I have a pretty poooozzzeee?”

Another one of those positively surreal taxi moments…. Here I was, looking at the split vagina of a pageant queen, while my mind wrestled with the question of, “How is this happening? Who the fuck shows their snatch to a stranger in a taxicab, let alone a beauty pageant queen?”

“Lovely… You are a beautiful girl… Have fun at the club, Maria.” She smiles broadly and gets out of the car, and slowly and methodically makes her way to the door of the club, arms extended out to the sides like one of The Flying Wallendas, balancing on her slutty shoes.

*    *    *

Later that night, I got a call to pick up “Joe” at a house in a nice neighborhood not far from downtown, and he comes out with the arm of none other than Miss Bolivia wrapped around his neck, helping her balance on her increasingly impractical footwear. If it was hard walking on these shoes sober, it is all but impossible after a few drinks. Joe helps her get in the car and I said, “Maria, mi amor! Como te va…?”

Her face lights up in a drunken smile and she says, “Heyyyy…. It eeez mi taxi driver!”

Joe, a little drunk himself says, “You know him?”

I smile at her a little and say, “Yeah, we had something of an intimate moment a little earlier, didn’t we, darlin’…?” Joe doesn’t ask anything further, and I was glad he didn’t need any more explanation.

So it would appear that Joe is going to get lucky tonite… We need to make a brief stop at his place, a gated townhouse condominium complex on the north side of town, and then back to Maria’s apartment downtown. On the drive, the very tipsy Miss Bolivia is yapping away like a Yorkie on meth…. Just constant, incessant, endless, relentless, nonstop, never ending, don’t-you-need-to-fucking-breathe yipping and yammering about personal bullshit no one wants to hear about, and the alcohol is making it even worse than when I first got her. I remember thinking that I wished she had a mute button in the middle of her forehead. But Joe is playing along, nodding his head, saying “uh huh” and “really?” and “you don’t say”, just enduring her endless prattle and pretending he is interested, so he can hit that “poooozzzeee” when he gets back to her place… He’s acting like tapping this ass is a lock, just as long as he can endure her mindless monologues, and doesn’t say or do something stupid and fuck this up…

So we get to Joe’s place, and they both go inside his townhouse condo. They enter through the garage door, and in his two car garage, Joe has a Corvette and a trailer with two jet skis. His jacked-up Ford diesel dually and a boat are in the driveway… Joe obviously has some money for toys. They were in there for about 10 minutes, and just when I was beginning to wonder if he was nailing her bent over the kitchen sink, they come out to the car and we are off to her apartment.

They were in there just long enough to smoke a joint, and that was my assumption, and now Miss Bolivia is REALLY yakking it up. Joe has his arm around her shoulders and he is stroking her hair and her neck, just getting her a little primed up for the ass extravaganza that is coming up in the next hour or so.

About halfway to Miss Bolivia’s place, she says something about needing to call her cousin and she gets her phone out. Joe asks why she is calling her cousin this late at night, and she says that he is staying at her apartment and has to let him know she will be coming in soon. And in the mirror, I see a little hint of concern flash across Joe’s face, as he is obviously wondering if his beauty pageant queen pooooziepalooza is about to be derailed by a male family member in the apartment.

Miss Bolivia dials the number and says, “Heyyy, primo, it’s me… I’m on the way home… Yeah…. And you know what? You remember that ting I was looking for? You know, that ting? Remember, I was talking to you about it earlier…? You know… That ting? Yes! Yes, I met a very nice man and he helped me find that ting! Yes! So I will be home in just a little while, OK? And yes, I found that ting… I will see you in a few minutes…”

Hmmmm…. Maybe not a doobie, but a bag… sounds like Primo gets to smoke up, too. Maybe a blunt or two will make him indifferent to hearing the moans and groans of his cousin getting boned in the next room by a guy she just met in a bar…

So we get to Miss Bolivia’s apartment building, and she takes off her shoes and walks up to her door while I run Joe’s credit card. We watch her walking toward the front door, and he looks at me, fully cognizant of the fact that I understand completely what is going on here, and says, “Well, what do you think?”

I said, “Looks like an easy target to me… Probably not your most difficult conquest, I would guess. But hey… how often does the opportunity to nail a pageant queen come along? Back in my single days, I would have been on that like a rash…” The card approval comes back, and I said, “You’re all set… go tear it up, tiger….”

He says, “Fuuuuck… I’ll probably have to talk to her for a while… Hope this is worth it…” and he heads up to the door.

Well, it is late, and time to take it to the pumps and get the car cleaned up and ready for my day driver. I drive to the gas station, fuel it up, and start sweeping up the carpets, and I found an object beneath the seat. I reached under and pulled out a ball of aluminum foil. Upon opening the foil, I discovered a solid chunk of cocaine about the size of a walnut.

Guess I was wrong about the bag of weed. Poor Joe… Having to listen to Miss Bolivia bitch and moan about losing “that ting she was looking for…” I wonder if he still got laid after an hour or so of listening to THAT shit…