Barry Alpha is a livery-cab driver for Arecibo Car Service based out of Park Slope, Brooklyn on 5th Avenue. He arrives a couple of minutes early and the two of us try to throw everything in. He looks at me and I look back. We shake our heads. It's cold as hell and the luggage won't fit in the back. He's in his late 30s, originally from Guinea and spends 8-12 hours of his days, six days a week, glued to the leather seats of his Dodge Ram, tied to the radio where a guy in his early 20s decides whether or not he will have a customer.
I introduce some forced chit-chat into the cab once we get moving, ask Barry about the sticker on his windshield, that diamond-shaped license issued by the Taxi Limousine Commission of NYC. He tells me that it used to be the case that people didn’t need these things, that it was easier to get by without the hassle of the inspections. But now, he tells me, all that has changed. He pays $550 every two years to get that small sticker on his windshield, but there is talk that they will now require drivers to come in every year. And if a violation is found, not only will they receive the standard fine, but drivers will be asked to come in regularly for inspections, taking them off the road and away from the possibility of making any money on that given day. This seems like a fairly standard procedure to me, but he is upset by it and says that others are as well. I listen to him speak, but more than his words, notice his posture, look into his eyes. People can say any number of things, especially when bored, and it seems more common than not for people to speak much but say very little. Bodies and how they are held, however, tell another story, perhaps one closer to the truth of what is really going on. This is Barry’s 5th hour on the job, he is already tired and sighs in between sentences. His shoulders slump forward and close his chest cavity. He lifts each leg every so often to keep them from going to sleep and arches his back to the sound of cracking vertebrae. His fingers roam listlessly over the radio dial, nothing keeps his interest and he decides to shut it off. He keeps his lips neither pursed nor loose. They are utterly indifferent.
We talk of nothing in particular. I do not ask him about his family nor his journey to America. I do not ask him what he expected to find here in this “land of opportunity,” nor do I ask him what he thinks of American people, his customers. We carry on in plain banter because it is comfortable for both of us, strangers meeting through a monetary transaction. I know very little about Barry, he knows very little about me. I know the common narratives which are told: he is unhappy, longing for opportunity and education, has hopes and dreams gone unmet, perhaps he has many children, he is poor, doesn’t want to be doing what he is forced to do via circumstance. But these are not Barry’s stories; they are the stories created and nurtured by so many others and myself. Some might well be true. Perhaps he is unhappy, longs for more money. But then again, perhaps he is content, makes more money than he ever dreamt of making, is proud to own his own car and have a job to attend to for most of the week. These are unknowns precisely because I do not ask. Nor does he ask me what my story is, perhaps because he feels it is an intrusion, perhaps because he simply does not care. Perhaps again, it may be something different altogether but he, no doubt, has his own stories about people such as myself. It is odd how as perfect strangers, two people can feel as though they know something about the other. I simply know that I do not know.
Words are not necessary to speak to the nature of his work though which is, so often, the nature of work in America. The car he drives is at once his vehicle to sustenance and his prison. He drives mile upon mile every day and night but never leaves his seat. He is one amongst many experiencing the crisis of perception in this country, the shackled limitations upon personal creativity and longings for a work more satisfying, somehow more meaningful. Dragged beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital, Marx writes, and the ride is over, I pay, and we both go on our ways. The days go on.
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