Life in rear-view

by RAF KATIGBAK

Steven Seagal is a really bad driver. When he gave me a lift from the ’80s S&M goth-rave I attended on Saturday, he was swerving like a motherfucker, cutting people off and gunning the yellow lights. He had the windows of the Toyota Corolla rolled down, so his long, greasy ponytail was practically whipping me in the face as I held on for dear life in the back of the cab. The shoulders of his cheap leather jacket dwarfed the grey fuzzy-textured driver’s seat and his chunky gold watch jangled dully as he jerked the wheel in and out of traffic.

He yelled to me from the rear-view mirror, “That girl you said goodbye to back there, very nice!” His approval had a Slavic twinge to it. “So, you like young girls?” I hesitated, fearing what kind of conversation I was about to get into. “Ummmm, I guess.” “Me too, I like young girls. How old do you think I am?”

I decided to play along since A) I was extremely inebriated and wanted something to occupy my mind from spewing the falafel and vodka shooter mash out the window, and B) I noticed that when he talked he slowed down and I honestly feared for my life. Now, I’m a really bad guesser when it comes to things like age. Maybe it’s that I can’t wrap my head around the abstractness of measurements like weight or height, or maybe it’s that I don’t really care. Alls I know is Gary Coleman is short, Emmanuel Lewis is short, Hervé Villechaize is short, I’m short, and pretty much everyone else in the world is normal or tall.

I shifted over to the shotgun side to get a better look. Steven Seagal was not short. In fact, his head almost touched the roof of the car. I noticed a dark spot on the roof above his head, no doubt the result of years of slicked back hair and speed bumps. For a moment, I imagined that spot smelling like a mix of Bryl Cream and Drakkar Noir, and I got a little more nauseous. I tell him he looks 35 and he laughs, confidently waving my idea out of the air. “Ha! I’m 42!”

I tell him that’s pretty good and that he probably works out, which is something I imagine you’re supposed to say to someone whose age you’ve just under-guessed. “Yes! It’s true, I love young girls!” he squealed. “All my friends, 30s and 20s, I don’t like hanging out with people my age. That is why I get the young chicks!”

I ask him if he’s ever had intimate relations with any of his clients. “Of course!” He explains, “Girls, they come into my cab after the club, they look at me, they see the hair, and they think, ‘Steven Seagal,’ and they say, ‘Hey I wasn’t lucky tonight, you’re sexy, let’s go do it!’”

That moment, I had a mental flash of the kind of woman who would actually proposition a Steven Seagal look-alike cab driver to “crash the custard truck” so to speak: leopard print spandex, ungodly amounts of hair mousse and lip-liner, check-check-and-check. I tell him I’m impressed and I egg him on. I ask how often he does it and if he does it in the car. As I ask this, I think about his hair stain and other mysterious car stains hiding around the back seat. “If I want, I can get three or four times a week,” he scoffs. “Usually I like to go into their place, I don’t like to stay in the cab, it gets very steamy. Plus, in the winter, it’s not practical. You know, to heat the car—gas process are so high you know.”

I love riding in cabs. Not because I’m a lazy asshole (which I am) but more because it’s where I get the most interesting perspectives on life in and out of our city. Want to know what’s happening in Lebanon or Haiti? Ask a Lebanese or Haitian cabbie. Have a question about architecture, engineering or medicine? Chances are you’ll meet a cabbie who’s graduated in the field but did not pass the proper accreditation courses to pursue his career in Canada.

One of my favourite things to do is to ask cab drivers advice about love; they’ve seen it all from their rear-view: passion, romance, heartbreak. How do you know you’ve found the right one? Do you believe in true love? I’ll never forget the advice one Haitian gentleman gave me: when you find the right one, hold on tight and marry them as soon as you can, because love is more precious than gold—but, he added, also have some girls on the side, you know, to keep it interesting.

Since he seemed like an expert, I asked Steven Seagal what his own secret to finding true love in this city. “My friend. This is Montreal! And now it is spring and true love is everywhere. I have true love three or four times a week!”

Thanks Steven.

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca