As a privileged middle class white woman, I’ve found myself in many cabs over the years. Cab rides are always fun because I’m usually riding in them completely obliterated and can often be coaxed into discussing my sexuality with the driver.
Do women actually ever drive cabs?
It is safe to say that for whatever reason, I am irresistible to cab drivers. Cab drivers are the only people on earth who ever attempt to hit on me. I have been solicited by twenty cab drivers in this past minute, in fact. It’s one of those mysteries of life. A mystery that I’m afraid to solve. The point is, yeah, cab drivers. They like me.
The most common question asked by a cab driver to me is “Do you have a boyfriend?”
While drunk, my most common response to this is to giggle uncontrollably and then bellow, “I’m a lesbian!! Hey, do you have a hot sister? She doesn’t have to be gay, I can turn her. I’ve done it before.”
Cab drivers are confounded by this. It’s like in all their travels downtown picking people up from clubs, they’ve never encountered a lesbian before. Then again, I’m sure most of them don’t feel the need to announce their sexuality to a stranger they’re trapped in a confined space with. And for the most part, I would never even bring it up. But you know, Bacardi...
“How do you know you’re a lesbian?”
“Because I like women. Women are awesome.”
“Have you ever been with a man before?”
Now, there is no way to answer this properly because if I say no, then the response is “Well then how can you know you’re actually a lesbian if you’ve never had sex with a man?” and if I say yes, it’s “Well obviously he just wasn’t the right guy. You should give us a chance.”
I don’t know why people think they know your sexual preferences more than you do and feel the need to tell you exactly how you ought to be but that’s another mystery worth pondering I guess. My hypothesis is that people are just insane.
I usually counter the cab driver’s words with, “By that logic, how can you know if you’re heterosexual if you’ve never been with a man?”
I’ve never yet encountered a cab driver who sighed wearily, cast his eyes down in shame and said, “Well I was with a man, actually. And I for sure found out I was straight that way.”
You’d think I could bond with the cab driver since we both like women. He’d be like “Aww man, I know what you mean!” and we’d high five and make comments about every woman we drove past on the street that all generally went like ‘I’d ___ her ___!’.
One cab driver, in his desperation, actually said, “When we get to your car, I can show you what guys like.”
I said, “I can show you what girls like.” (Warning: I don’t actually claim to know what girls like at all)
In the end, I just sort of threw money at him and got the fuck out of the cab because he wanted me to let him into my car so he could show me techniques for picking up men.
I’ve since become wiser and also much more sober in general. My response to the boyfriend question is now, “I’m engaged. The wedding is in July.” It’s generally a bulletproof statement. You’re taken, you’re probably straight, you’re committed.
Or I could just stare at the cab driver in the rear view mirror with a bug-eyed expression of bewilderment until he ceases his questioning.
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