"Doing alright
Little Driving on a Saturday night
Come what may
Gonna dance the day away"
"Driver's Seat"
Sniff N' The Tears

Night's rain slicked streets shone a water-warped reflection, a neon succession of strip club seductions. The arc sodium streetlights creating pools of misty abandon surrounded by the ebony texture of the twilight's unknown. Light-shadow shapes danced and skidded across the cab's yellow hood, chasing and merging, sliding off and forgotten. The driver's eyes, lit by the rectangular reflection of the rear view mirror, took in the sights of the strip, always aware and on the hunt for a fare. A staggering drunk, the bus stop bound, a sopping wet shopper, the hazard-flashing call of a stranded motorist; all of these were his quarry.
It was a sad fact that this job preyed on the misfortune of others. The young single mother who had to work until late into the night, long after the time when public transportation ceased to run, leaving work haggard and aching. The business suit whose connecting flight was cancelled and needed to be in Cincinnati by noon to make another connection. The legion of life's losers who seem to drift on the waves of welfare, needing transportation to the nearest Cashland to get their once a month gift from their favorite uncle, then to the nearest supermarket (and usually a liquor) store before returning to their subsidized housing to celebrate the moment. The driver didn't used to be this sardonic and jaded, but seeing the seamy side of life for so long, his ears full of the never ending excuses and the tired tirades making him apathetic out of sheer survival. You have to shut a part of yourself down to do this job or you become the quarry and your family goes without. Then what else is there to do but to become what you have learned to hate?
The hum-crackle of the two-way radio preceded the imminent nasal droning of the dispatcher. The driver stiffened a little and, not for the first time, wondered why a business dependent on communication would hire so many lacking in the basest of these skills. One of the cab companies even had a dispatcher that worked the graveyard shift who wore not one, but two hearing aids that were so large, he had to pick up alien communications with them. The dispatcher apparently felt that the rest of the world went deaf in a sympathetic show of support for him. He yelled into the microphone so loudly, that the modulation was blown to shit and the driver's were constantly asking him to repeat the last transmission. To make himself clearer, he would scream even louder into the mike. Most of the drivers believed that this was actually a secret plot to make them all deaf as well.
"I have calls in 12, 14, 15, 16, 23, a two cab call in 24, three down and the airport's been callin' with trips." the dispatcher droned into the mike in such a nasal tone, it would make Fran Drescher seem like the Queen of Elocution.
The city of Dayton was broken up into different quadrants to make it easier for the dispatchers and the drivers to bid trips. The rules of bidding were as confusing as they were arbitrary. No one really ever got the hang of it and the abuse of the system by dispatchers willing to receive a little kickback and the drivers that would pay it, left mostly bare bones for those who were either too greedy, honest or stupid to engage in such chicanery. To be a taxi driver in Dayton and be somewhat successful took a vast knowledge of the local and surrounding streets, restaurants and bars as well as a chameleon-like personality. A driver had to be able to converse with the business people out of the airport, calm the combative drunks, laugh with the droll, roll with the tragically hip, endure the abuse of the terminally wretched, endure the extremely ecstatic all the while maintaining a control.
Maintaining control of the client and the car, keeping an ear open for current cab calls, competing with all the other cutthroat hacks that are rabidly jostling for position to gain a cherry trip: the long haul call that will pay for your lease and gas all in one shot. The trip from downtown to Indianapolis that will allow you to breathe easy for four hours, safe in the knowledge that your ahead of the game with money in your pocket on one trip. Everything after that is just gravy, leaving you with the leisure of picking and choosing your trips for the rest of your shift. Not the gnawing pressure of whether or not you would come out of the night ahead, break even, or even worse, owing the cab company money for the privilege of working for twelve hours.
This driver's night was just starting and he was trying to work himself into the Friday night position. Having done this dance for as many years as he had, it was instinctual, the cardsharp watching the night deal itself out. Rain was always a good way to start a weekend. Many people do not like driving in the rain, especially when they figured that they would be a little more than impaired by the time last call descends at the bar. Running up the strip now, rain reflected promises of all girl revues and dollar beers glittering by, the driver signals, slows and pulls into one of the seedier go-go bars on the Dixie Strip. He slows so as not to scrape the undercarriage of the Crown Vic on the inordinately steep entrance to the parking lot, sliding the cab directly up to the front door.
Putting the hazard lights on, the driver grudgingly shuts the engine off. An idle cab is anathema to a hack operator. Every minute the cab is not loaded is a missed trip, money lost…a failure. The cab driver reluctantly abandons the vehicle to retrieve the fare from within the confines of this bass boosted edifice. The thumping of hip-hop ecstasy could be felt through one's soles in the presence of this promiscuous promissory of perverse desires. The melodrama spills out into the evening, as the door opens, coupling with the dampness, which hangs in the air and clings to the lungs, like slow suffocation.
Making his entrance, an almost nightly performance, the driver glides into the narrow passageway, slow and strident. The black leather boots, silver studded sheaths, strike the adamantine floor in measured steps. The long leather trench coat flows out and back as the stale, smoky air rushes past to escape into the night. The strobe-lit interior offers flashes of staccato statues; the leering desperation of patrons enveloped in their own fantasies, unable to pierce through the reality to see the bored contemptuous glares of the dancers. The depths of sadness and disillusionment hidden by the staged illumination and set to the rhythms of a gyrating bass line, barely masking the screams of sorrow rising from deep within nigh all present. The driver stopped and stood at the edge of the crowd, scanning their faces trying to locate his regular trip. His eyes were shrouded under a shadow cast by the leather cowboy hat he perpetually wore, pulled low onto his brow. He appeared incredibly out of place, displaying a hunger of a different variety. Hands slid around his coat and laced themselves just above his belt buckle. The driver showed no emotion of surprise on his unshaven face. He just grasped the hands, pulling them apart, maintaining a slight grip on one as he turned to acknowledge the owner of these wandering appendages.
"Hi baby!" The words swallowed up by the driving pulse of the Dance. It was the one he sought, his regular fare.
"You ready?" he said, bending down to her short stature to be heard. After nodding her assent, he asked "You the only one right now?" She shook her head and he gestured for her and the others to get ready…they had to get moving.
She disappeared into the side dressing room holding up her finger to indicate she would be right back. He sidled up to the end of the bar and the barmaid automatically brought him a Coke with no ice.
"Anything interesting?" he yelled to the barmaid, a once pretty go-go trooper who still had the personality to gain tips, just not the body. Time and gravity are ravishing beasts while the drugs and alcohol seem to be the final parasite, cleansing the carrion of whatever dignity it may still possess.
"Pick up Destiny and Babydoll and try and get them here by midnight. We barely got any girls after you take them out of here." She yelled back in the universal Marlboro whiskey voice of almost all barmaids.
"They know I'm comin' to get them?" he yelled back.
"I'll call 'em, let 'em know. You got their cell numbers?" she asked, letting the foam spill over from a pitcher of beer she was drawing.
He nodded and he went back to casing the crowd as she ran down to the end of the bar to hand off the pitcher to the lingerie-clad server. The driver had a good gig going. When he first started driving hack, it was out of desperation. Finding himself financially fucked, a friend suggested cab driving. The driver's first night was an abortion and a lesson in the cutthroat nature of the business. The driver was never that type of person and found, throughout his life, that he never would be, but he could usually laterally think his way out of any situation beneficially. In this case, he noticed that a number of trips were coming out of a particular area and going untouched by the other drivers. He printed himself up some business card with his cell phone number on it for about $30.00 and sat in this particular area, bidding and getting almost every trip that came out. He would take the trip and at the end of the fare, if the customer was decent, he would give them a card. Every one of them were so appreciative because of being stranded on more than one occasion by various cab drivers and companies. He ended up with a majority of his clientele being strippers.

"You're lost little girl
You're lost little girl
You're lost
Tell me who
Are you?
I think that you know what to do
Impossible? Yes, but it's true
I think that you know what to do, yeah
I'm sure that you know what to do
You're lost little girl"
"Your Lost Little Girl"
The Doors