Taxicab Depressions

A local college here has an English language immersion program that brings students from all over the world to be dunked in America, from K-Mart to the Kardashians. I have met college kids from Spain, France, Qatar, Thailand, Brazil, Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Germany, India, and several other countries. The common denominator: Foreign kids don’t tip… tipping a taxi driver seems to be a uniquely American custom. And even American college kids don’t stand out as good tippers…

So I pick up 4 female students at a college night event at a bar… two are Americans and two are Asian, from China I would guess… I dated a girl from Taiwan for some time, and I can tell the difference between Korean, Japanese, and Chinese when I hear it. These girls are pretty drunk, just wasted enough to be funny, rather than obnoxious. Lots of laughing and yelling on the way back to the campus… and then about halfway to their destination, the wasted Chinese girl in the front seat says to me, “Can I ask you a question?

“Sure, ” I say.

With a completely straight face, she says, “Do you like penis…?”

Howls and screams of laughter erupt from the back seat. I said, “Do I like penis? Well, I’m kinda fond of mine… why do you ask?”

She says, “I LOVE penis… I was eating penis at the bar tonight and they are all laughing at me…”

The three girls in the back seat are shrieking with laughter… I say, “Wait a minute… you were eating penis at the bar?”

Gales of laughter from the back seat. “Why are you laughing at me???” the girl in front yells.

One of the girls in the back explains that she’s trying to say PEANUTS, and while her English is pretty good, she just can’t seem to get the “T” sound into the word because of her Chinese accent. It is coming out like “peenuss”.

“Yes,” she says… “Peenuss.”

The girl in the back says, “Pea-NUTS… PEA-NUTS…” But try as she might, the best the drunk Chinese girl in front can do is “Pee-NUDZ”. And since the girls in the back are not letting her in on the joke, I thought I would jump in.

I say to the Chinese girl, “Well, America has a long history of eating peenuss… in fact, the 39th President of the United States was a peenuss farmer. He was a terrible President, but he sure knew his shit about peenuss…”

(screaming, raucous laughter from the girls in the back)

“And we had a famous American scientist and inventor named Carver that REALLY knew peenuss… he came up with a hundred recipes and ways to eat peenuss, and he invented something like two hundred other things you can do with peenuss besides eating them. You can make paint, diesel fuel for cars, plastics, even explosives from peenuss. Did you know that you can make peenuss explode, like a bomb?”

(choking, gasping sounds from the back seat)

“In America, we have this game called baseball… do you know it? Many people think the best place to get some peenuss is at a baseball game… they roast them right there at the ball park, and you can get them still warm from the roaster… hot, salty, mouth-watering peenuss are great with a beer during a baseball game. In the southern United States, a lot of people like to boil peenuss, and they cook them with Cajun spices, but personally, I’m not crazy about the taste or texture of boiled spicy Cajun peenuss…”

The girls in the back are having trouble breathing, and tears are rolling down their cheeks… “But you know what is really great…? My sister makes the best peenuss butter pie… it has that great nutty flavor, but it is really creamy and smooth… just melts in your mouth…”

“Stop it!” one of the girls in the back screams… ” My ribs hurt… I’m gonna pee my panties…!”

So I drop the girls off at their dorm, and one of the American girls pays the fare, tips me better than a college girl ever tips, and says, “You are the most awesome cab driver ever!” She gets out of the car, and all three of them are giggling and wiping tears of laughter.

And the drunk Chinese girl says in a thick Chinese accent, “Why are you all laughing at me…?”

You never forget your first puker. Within a month or two of starting this job, I got a call to a tavern nearly an hour after bar close, so I assumed I was getting a waitress or some other staffer. The parking lot is almost deserted of cars, but there is a young guy standing out front with a bicycle. I pull up and he turns back to a little courtyard beside the bar and gestures to somebody back there to “come here”. I get out and the guy says to me, “Hey, I just need to go a short way, but my girl can’t drive… can I throw my bike in your trunk?”

Most drivers hate sticking a bike in their trunk, and it happens more frequently than you might think. Good rule of thumb: someone with a bike probably isn’t going to tip worth a shit. But even though this young guy is on a bike, he looks clean and well-groomed, he’s polite, and he’s probably not a dishwasher or a barback somewhere. He’s dressed kinda “urban” in a ball cap, baggy shorts, and casual shoes, but they are nice shorts and nice shoes… he looks like he has money, or at least a decent job.

Then, in my peripheral vision, I see his girl… being carried out by two guys, with her arms slung around their necks, head lolled back, semi-concious at best. She has thick, curly blonde hair, wearing a short skirt with a slit up one leg, slutty heels (previously removed and carried by one of the guys), and a backless, loose, and plunging halter top sorta thing that showed off her well-done boob job quite nicely. This was a top that requires you to remain sober when wearing it, staying mindful of your pose and posture. But when you are wasted and not paying attention, your tits are pretty much on full display. Perhaps that was the plan all along, given the bolt-ons she was sporting…

Anyway, the guys plop her down on a concrete planter that is conveniently just under ass height. One guy is bracing her, keeping her upright. The guy with the bike says, “Thanks, guys, I got this now that the taxi is here… thanks for your help…” Two quick bro-hugs, and the guys get in their car and go. I open my trunk and get the guy’s bike wrestled in, and just as I was about to strap down the the lid, I look over just in time to see the girl keel over sideways, bounce off the top rim of the planter, and fall onto the pavement, doing a 180 degree roll midflight and landing flat on her back. It sounded like a 120 pound bag of loose porkchops hitting the street… the wet smack of meat on asphalt.

She’s out cold, lying on her back, one erect silicone tit out of her blouse, legs akimbo, no panties, and no pubes. She has a pair of matching 5-point stars tattooed on either side of her pudenda. What is with the stars, anyway? Did some porn actress or pop star popularize that? I see these stars on porn actresses and strippers, and now everyday slutty chicks at the dance club have them… on their asses, on their hips, on their shoulders, on their ankles…. what is up with that?

Rather than rush to her aid, the guy with the bike just looks at her, and says under his breath, “Fuuuuuck…”

I say to the guy, “Dude, she looks like she needs an ambulance, not a taxi…”

He says, “She’ll be OK… we just gotta get her back to my place.”

I said, “Why don’t you drive her car?”

“Can’t… got a dooey (DUI) a few months ago. We aren’t going far.”

I said, “How much money do you have? If she pukes in my car, it’s a hundred bucks.”

“A hundred bucks…???”

“Damn right it is a hundred bucks,” I said. “If she spews, my night is over. I won’t get to make any more money tonight, plus I have to pay to get the car steam cleaned. On top of that, the day driver will have to take the day off while the car dries out, so I gotta throw him a little money, too. Have you got it?”

He opens up his wallet and shows me about 200 bucks. So we pick up the girl and plop her in the back seat, where she promptly slumps over on her side. I go back to the trunk to bungee the lid closed, and she yacks. A lot. A tremendous volume of vomit. Her thick curly hair actually served as a filter to catch most of the big chunks, but the seat and the floor are soaked with puke, and my stomach is twitching from the stench.

The guy says, “Fuuuuuck…” He fishes his wallet out and gives me 5 twenties. He pulls the girl out of the car, sits her on the pavement with chunky vomit dripping out of her hair and off her face and off her tits, and I am off to the 24 hour car wash to spend the rest of my night steam cleaning the car.

Since that night, I have carried a 3 gallon plastic bucket in my trunk that has my Car-Vac, paper towels, Lysol spray, bungee cords, flashlight batteries, and other assorted items I find useful in this job. If I pick up anyone that looks like they are a puke risk, I dump all that shit out in the trunk and make them hold the bucket all the way home. I call it The Bucket Of Shame, and it has saved from cleaning puke out of my car at least a half-dozen times. And even if they don’t end up needing it, their friends usually have a lot of fun razzing them about having to hold The Bucket Of Shame. People have taken pictures of their wasted friends holding it after a hard night of partying, and I am certain that it is on FaceBook more than once…

Of course, the real tragedy here is that I have a job where carrying a puke bucket is a good idea… the shame is mine.