I had a pretty crappy night, full of picking up dudes from the strip club and taking them on too long, too chatty, too punching-my-arm-y rides home.  Luckily it was book-ended with positivity.

As I was gassing up my cab, my favorite driver pulled into the lot in his personal car to start his day.  Patrick is a gentle-looking older fellow with a quick wit and quick grin.  We smile and wave at each other, then he says, “I’m just gonna look for my cab… OH!  There it is!”  I ask him which cab is his and he replies, “Number 38!  My exact age!”  His grin gets bigger, the cab number is nearly half his age.

I guess this isn’t necessarily a very funny exchange, but the gentle delivery and grin help wash away the frustration and anger I had from my earlier rides.  This is why he’s my favorite driver.  I haven’t actually ever ridden in a cab with him before.

The beginning of my shift started with picking up an older-than-middle-age couple from a downtown bar and taking them to a bar on the west side, 20-25 minutes away.  As I pulled up, they were making out like teenagers on the sidewalk.  I love PDA.  It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside and the older the couple the better I feel about humanity.

It was 4pm and the couple was bombed.  The lady asked several times most of the way through the ride where we were going.  She had confirmed at the beginning of the ride which bar we were going to.  When her boyfriend and I reminded her, she loudly and adamantly insisted that yes, they WOULD be going to that bar or ELSE.  By the end of the ride I was starting to get irritated with her whiny tone and nasally voice, but she redeemed herself by randomly blurting out, “MY VA-JAY-JAY NEEDS A KISS.”  I couldn’t contain my laughter and I replied, “I think every woman’s got that problem.”

Seriously.  I’m going to deviate here and instead of telling you about the shitty rides I had on this shift, I’m going to tell you about a ride I had last week.

I picked up an older woman at a sports medicine clinic who was walking stiffly with a cane.  I was low on social energy and the ride would be a long one, so I was hoping it would be a silent ride.  Fortunately it didn’t turn out that way, and fortunately this woman made me feel more energized during the ride instead of less so.  It probably had to do with how she was telling a story instead of asking relentless questions and requiring me to entertain her.

She lead with, “You’re a lady, so I can tell you how I hurt my butt.  I took a trip to France to be with a man who would be my lover and I guess I wanted more vigorous sex than my body could take at my age.”  Her story unfolded without shame or the desire for approval.  She had taken a trip to France to be with her lover for a couple weeks.  Yes, her husband knew, he helped her pack for the journey.  She mentioned how she was seventy and her husband was eighty.  This was the first sex she had in twenty-five years, she had been married to her husband since she was thirty.

She was taking me on a roller coaster of emotions.  I felt the same wonder with her of experiencing the pleasure of her body after a long, dry spell.  Joy that she wanted to share and encourage others to feel.  She didn’t really say it in those words, but as she smiled, giggled, and told me of her time in France, I could tell she was alive and vibrant like she probably hadn’t been for decades.  Half of the ride for me was joyful, wondrous laughter as if we were teenagers sharing secrets, and the other half was heartache.

I felt bad when she related that her husband was a bit too old for that sort of thing anymore.  I felt let down when she said that toward the end of her visit in France her lover had decided that it wouldn’t work out in the long run and he was starting a romance with someone else.  I felt despair with her when she said her husband didn’t want her to have another affair because it was hard on him.  “I blew my wad in France.”  (that is an exact quote out of a seventy-year-old lady’s mouth, fyi)

It hurts to know she could have chosen this vitality at any moment in that desert of twenty-five years and she is choosing now to return to it because she doesn’t want to hurt her husband.  It feels good to know that this seventy year old woman has been reinvigorated by a couple weeks of travel with romance.  I want to be her.  I want that vitality and joy she has, now through when I’m at the end of my life.

When we pulled up to her home, her husband came out to help her out of the cab and into the house.  She lingered a little, looking at me while I blubbered that she was awesome and I enjoyed our conversation.  I hope I have her in my cab again soon, I hope she knows she’s struck a chord in me.

I want it to be normal and right for women to demand satisfaction.