The Guy From Tremplo

    I was driving cab a few summers ago, running the 3p-3a shift on a Friday night. The boss hated having women drivers working nights. She said she was worried about a defenseless woman on the road, alone with drunk people. She swore that the only way she would allow a woman to drive the night shift was if she was threatened with a discrimination lawsuit. Direct quote, that last line was, and happily no longer the policy of our company. I did my part to change that policy with my own performance. I slipped through, working my way onto the nightshift by looking intimidating, proving over time I could take care of myself in any situation. I gained a lot of experience, in the early years of being a night-time cabby. Drunk people talk openly about everything. The darkness of night compels a person to connect with others, I’ve found, in a more intimate way than they ever expect. P.M. customers are the oddities of nature, just like the cabbies who drive them. They are tourists checking out the nightlife in our small river city, and mature townies sampling the old downtown hang-outs, regular folks working third shift. But they are also hookers and crack dealers and college punks and little girls out way passed their bedtime, and the thing they have in common is their permanence in my memory.
    I have favorite regular night riders just as I do day people. The guy from Trempealeau is one of my favorites. Customers like a good story from a driver. The ride goes faster and often results in a bigger tip. For those customers who tease me about taxicab confessions, challenging me to tell them something outrageous that I’ve experienced behind the wheel, I spin them my favorite story.
    It was later evening and there was a bright, full moon hanging high in the sky. Around 9pm, the temperature was just right for having windows open as I drove cab. The sun's last light was spilling over the horizon, streaking the western sky. The Mississippi River was painted with sky’s last light.
    Bearman was on the radio, that night, dispatching calls and amused commentary with equal fervor. I loved working when the Bear was on the desk because he was a feeder. That is, if he liked a driver-as he liked me-that driver got gravy all night long;nothing but fat tippers and long runs to the 'port. I was running pretty solid, pick up a three dollar call, drop two blocks away from the next call, which was a $7.00 run where a "personal" was waiting for me to driver him to the airport for a late flight out of town.
    Difficult drivers, guys who get out of the car without telling the dispatcher, the idiots who can't remember simple radio procedure, they did the six block grocery runs on Bear's shifts. They did the vouchers charges no one wanted, the kids who acted suspicious on the phone, prone to run out on a fare, and the cigarette delivery runs to the senior high-rise apartment down the block. Shit runs, in contemporary cabby parlance. I’ve never driven cab like that, as long as the money is green I’ll drive wherever I must to grab a fare.
    Working with Bearman that night, I cleared at the port for the third time in as many hours, and he dispatched me to pickup a personal call at a biker bar on the north end of the city. I knew the place, it had a tough reputation with every crowd-especially among its regulars-and I could not imagine who would ask for me there. I know a few bikers around the area, but didn't expect to see any of them at the bar. None of them would have known I was driving that particular night, as it was not one of my regularly scheduled shifts.
    As I pulled my taxi in front of the bar, a shadow parted from the cramped space between the bar and the alley next door, and became my personal customer.
    "How's it going tonight, honey?" he fondly greeted as he slipped into the back seat, passenger side. "I want to go to Trempealeau."
    COOL! That's easily a $40 dollar ride for me, and I can crank the stereo on the solitary drive back to town. So I radioed my pickup to the Bear-man, thanking him for the impromptu out of town run. It wasn't my turn to go out of town, Bear knew I was hungry, knew I liked being fed by a subtle dispatcher, so he gave me extra good calls.
      The fact I never saw this man in my back seat before didn't faze me, I knew the
routine. Start the meter, start the wheels turning, and get acquainted with my fare. We started out on the fact he just got off work(construction), that he worked for a company named and owned by my sister's-significant-lesbian-other's father(got that? the father of the lesbian my sister shared a life and two kids with, owned a construction company this customer in my cab worked at). Yes, folks, this is a small and twisted world we live in, no doubt.
    I admitted my unsanctioned-by-god relation to Jessie, and left out my own similar lifestyle. He laughed, asked me if I knew she's a lesbian? Geez, I wonder if my sister knows? I retorted in a fit of imagined wit. We chuckled amiably together, and he introduced himself as Scott, announcing that he and Jessie went to prom together.
    “Small world,” I agreed, leaving out the twisted aspects. He asked me to stop so he could grab smokes, offered me a soda, coffee, anything else, I sat and waited while he ran into the convenience store, watching the horizon darken as quickly as my meter accrued his total. Scott climbed into the front seat beside me, when he returned, but I didn’t think much of it. This area is pretty safe, people still leave their cars unlocked, day and night.
    Driving north towards Trempealeau, through Onalaska, Steve started talking about the weather, says he'll feel better when he can get home and changed out of his dirty work clothes. Then he says, "As a matter of fact, I'd be a lot more comfortable if I could take off my clothes right here, and ride the rest of the way in the nude."
    “I think I'd be more comfortable if you left your clothes on, thanks," I laughed out loud. I thought the gently friendly man was joking.
    He wasn't, of course.
    "Seriously, now. Why can't I take off my clothes on such a hot, beautiful night?"
    "You'd stick to the imitation-leather seats, for starters, and I don't want to look at your naked body all the way to Trempealeau."
    "I always wanted to get in a taxicab and masturbate as the driver drove me home with the meter running," he reflectively volunteered. "Maybe instead of riding naked you could let me jerk off in your cab?"
    WHAT!? I was shocked, so flabbergasted I couldn't even pull over and kick him out of my cab. "I have to clean this car!"
    "Oh, I'd clean up after myself," Steve confidently assured me, having apparently
thought about this in detail. "All you have to do is drive, and at the end of the run I'll pay you for the fare."
    NoWAY-it's creepy and I said so. He disagreed, in a downright pleasant sort of
manner. We discussed this openly and casually as we sped north towards the old
highway. I wasn't offended, merely curious as to where this was leading.
    "How about if I sweeten the deal? You let me masturbate, I'll pay the end meter and I pay you $20 over the fare."
    Money brought it to a whole new level for me. Taxi drivers and cash-money glide
together like saddles and soap, mesh as elegantly as Sid and Nancy, and click like a pair of dentures in an old woman's mouth. His money was green, just like yours or mine.
    "I never drove for so cheap!" I huffed. "A twenty isn't enough."
    "$40 bucks and I clean up after myself."
    "Would you ask any of the male drivers for something like this?"
    "No, they'd think I was a perve or something."
    “Well, DUH!. Maybe I think you’re a perve.”
    Scott laughed but didn’t deny a thing. "I'll give you the fare, clean up the mess, and pay you fifty dollars cash if you drive real slow."
    We bargained all the way through the Trempealeau bottoms, adding prices and conditions every mile. I have to admit, I was ready to let him do his thing; I had $80 dollars cash in my right hand, and I was going for the hundred dollar bill I'd seen lying innocently in his wallet, when he ruined the whole thing. I liked hundred dollar bills.
    "I'll go an even hundred, but you have to take off your shirt and let me masturbate as you drive."
    I didn’t want any active part in his fun and my participation wasn't negotiable for any price. I handed him back his money and told him I wouldn’t let him do anything in my cab. Absolutely NOT!
    He tried cajoling me, bribing me, and cajoling me again. I was steadfast, though, and dropped him off at his house without incident. As he paid me my fare, added a generous $10 tip, I told him the unfortunate truth-had he just gotten into my cab, masturbated discreetly, I never would have known or cared.
    As I drove away he called out, reminding me to say “Hi” to Jessie the next time I saw her.
    Jessie’s response to this true story was: "Scott still doing that?"