The Whore In The Park

 

There is nothing funny about prostitution, and I know that people who become prostitutes have very sad reasons for doing so. But, an encounter with a prostitute and/or her pimp can be an amusing story.

This is about an encounter I had about four years ago. I do not use, or hire prostitutes. But they and their pimps can be quite enterprising. Phoenix does not have a prostitute district, or an area where hookers are numerous. It used to have such an area, on East Van Buren Street in east central Phoenix, but they were run out of that area by the local constabulary about twenty years ago.

Now, they are thinly spread all over the metropolitan area. Although it’s not a frequent happening, you can be approached by a hooker or a pimp almost anywhere around here.

This encounter happened in a large city park in the north central part of Phoenix one bright and sunny morning. I was out for my morning walk, which is usually about 4 to 6 miles in length, when I was offered the services of a hooker in a very unique manner. 

I was so taken with the creativity employed by the hooker-pimp pair that I was compelled to write a poem about it. here goes! 

I saw today a whore in the park

She was with her pimp, and he was quite dark

Her skin was white, so brightly it shone

And it was one hundred percent continuous tone

No tan lines, just butt shines

Was all I could see

As the whore in the park

Beamed her bare ass at me

With a dress so short

Way beyond thigh-high

I passed, she bent way over

And not the least bit shy

He back was towards me

But she didn’t need to see

Her pimp was her eyes

And he was looking at me

A conductor, a director

A maestro was he

The whore was his work

And a  masterpiece was she

An ass man I am

And have always been

And often I’ve taken

A good drink of sin

Beautiful ass she may have had

My feelings for her were only sad

I silently wished her the best

And a sincere smile I gave

Though I knew for her

On her chosen path

There was only an early grave

My step quickened and I moved along

But to the whore in the park

On this brilliant blue dawn

Only one thing really mattered

Finding the next willing john

There is nothing funny about prostitution, and I know that people who become prostitutes have very sad reasons for doing so. But, an encounter with a prostitute and/or her pimp can be an amusing story.

This is about an encounter I had about four years ago. I do not use, or hire prostitutes. But they and their pimps can be quite enterprising. Phoenix does not have a prostitute district, or an area where hookers are numerous. It used to have such an area, on East Van Buren Street in east central Phoenix, but they were run out of that area by the local constabulary about twenty years ago.

Now, they are thinly spread all over the metropolitan area. Although it’s not a frequent happening, you can be approached by a hooker or a pimp almost anywhere around here.

This encounter happened in a large city park in the north central part of Phoenix one bright and sunny morning. I was out for my morning walk, which is usually about 4 to 6 miles in length, when I was offered the services of a hooker in a very unique manner. 

I was so taken with the creativity employed by the hooker-pimp pair that I was compelled to write a poem about it. here goes! 

I saw today a whore in the park

She was with her pimp, and he was quite dark

Her skin was white, so brightly it shone

And it was one hundred percent continuous tone

No tan lines, just butt shines

Was all I could see

As the whore in the park

Beamed her bare ass at me

With a dress so short

Way beyond thigh-high

I passed, she bent way over

And not the least bit shy

He back was towards me

But she didn’t need to see

Her pimp was her eyes

And he was looking at me

A conductor, a director

A maestro was he

The whore was his work

And a  masterpiece was she

An ass man I am

And have always been

And often I’ve taken

A good drink of sin

Beautiful ass she may have had

My feelings for her were only sad

I silently wished her the best

And a sincere smile I gave

Though I knew for her

On her chosen path

There was only an early grave

My step quickened and I moved along

But to the whore in the park

On this brilliant blue dawn

Only one thing really mattered

Finding the next willing john

Encounter with the Pen Man: An Armed Robbery of Sorts…

When I first moved to Arizona in 1977, I was lost at sea. I had few friends, but I needed work. I didn’t know my way around very well. So, I started driving a cab. We tend to go with the familiar, and I had a lot of experience driving people around.

In the prior four years, I had never been robbed. I had been ‘defrauded’, which is the legal term for not paying your cab fare. But never outright robbery. I soon found out, however, that robberies can take some very bizarre forms.

The following events occurred after I had gotten off of work one afternoon while I was walking home.

In the mid to late 1970s, downtown Phoenix, Arizona was a very different place from what it is today. Today, it is devoid of personality, with “cultural” centers and other government funded or subsidized monolithic structures everywhere you look. Big and sterile is the impression given by present day Downtown. Although there are a few eateries, there is little resemblance to what most people would think of as a community anywhere to be found.

Not so in the 70s. Although there were many areas in need of repair, the Downtown area of Phoenix was certainly a community, with places to shop, affordable restaurants, pharmacies, movie theaters, grocery stores, and places to live along with long term residents. And I was a resident of Downtown Phoenix.

One appealing aspect of living Downtown at that time was that, if you worked in the area, you did not need an automobile to have a life. This is in direct contrast to  most of Arizona. The car is an object of worship here. But for me, the lack of a car and living Downtown was a result of the less than amicable ending of a relationship with a girlfriend.

Railroad tracks divide many communities, and they divide Downtown Phoenix also. South of the tracks is  a predominately industrial and warehouse area, and that is where I worked. It was a walk of about eight or ten blocks from where I worked to where I lived. There was nothing about the area that anyone today would consider dangerous. The number of transient, indigent, and homeless individuals numbered in the dozens then, as opposed to in the thousands now.

I worked weekends sometimes, and one beautiful Sunday, late in the afternoon, I was crossing the railroad tracks on my way home after work. Phoenix is a rail hub, and there are lots of tracks in the Downtown area. There were perhaps ten or more sets of tracks where I was walking, so it was necessary to step carefully to avoid tripping. From where I was, I could see the old Union Pacific train depot just a couple of blocks away.

As stated above, the number of street people were few, so when I noticed an individual a little ways from me, I simply noted him and kept on minding my step to keep from tripping on the tracks.  There was no one else in sight.

I was surprised then to notice this man standing and blocking my way a few yards in front of me. Mindful of the need to watch my step, I gave the guy a quick glance while I stepped to the side. And he immediately stepped sideways and forward to block any further  movement by me.

I looked up with the intention of querying this person as to what he was up to, but my thoughts instead immediately focused on the large hunting knife that was pointed at me less than a foot from my throat.

That was my first realization. The second was that this person was bedecked, from head to toe, in writing pens. He was wearing a ball cap, with pens attached to the brim as well as pointing up from the rim of the cap all around his head, like some insane crown. He wore a long sleeved shirt that had dozens of pens in both shirt pockets and all the way down the front pleat. There were pens all the way around his collar, and on both cuffs. He had pens in his pants pockets, and all the way around his waistline on his belt. He had pens in the cuffs of his pants.

There were pens of every possible description. Some were obviously very expensive, like an executive’s fountain pen. Others had seen better days, and were beaten up as if they were found on the street. Every possible color, shape, type, and size of writing pen was on him fastened some place or another. He had a clutch of pens in one fist. And in the other hand he held the knife.

I was speechless still, and could only look the guy over. He was perhaps fiftyish, maybe five feet seven inches tall or so, with a very stocky build. He had a weathered, puffy kind of face, in which there were buried unreadable eyes.

I looked at him, and he looked at me. Not one word was exchanged between us. And with slow, deliberate movement, so as not to provoke him, I reached into my shirt pocket and handed him my pen.

As soon as I did that, he grabbed it quickly, and his attention was focused completely on his new acquisition. And I gingerly stepped back from, then around him. He took no further notice of me. He was totally absorbed in the pen I had given him (a typical writing instrument such as the kind purchased in a convenience store). I was making my way as quickly as I could, still having a few tracks to negotiate, when I turned once to see what the guy was up to. There he stood, his back towards me, still studying his new pen.

I made my way home, picking up a six pack of beer on the way. I was pretty shaken up, and I  finished up the six pack quickly. I did not call the police. In retrospect I suppose I should have, since the guy was obviously a danger to the public. But the episode was so strange that I was concerned about what the police would have thought of me.

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays, and several times in the years since my encounter with the Pen Man I have dressed for Halloween parties much as he was dressed that afternoon. At the various parties I went to so dressed the reaction from other partygoers was always very tentative. Personally, if I see an unrecognizable costume at a party I will ask the person wearing it what he is supposed to be. But no one has ever asked me that when I was the Pen Man. At least, not right away.

For one thing, my pens lacked the extreme variety of his, as mine were purchased in bulk at discount stores for costume effect only. And, I used a cheap rubber knife. One Halloween, I stayed home to give out candy, but having the holiday spirit, I was dressed again as the Pen Man. Phoenix Halloween evenings can be balmy, and I sat outside in a lawn chair to give out the goodies. Oddly enough, many parents would not let their children come into the yard once they saw me.

I do not know what became of the Pen Man. Years later I met an individual who had worked at a liquor store Downtown at time of my encounter and he remembered seeing the guy. I hope the Pen Man is doing well. And I hope he has lots and lots of pens.

Reflections of a Time Traveling Cabbie

For decades many people have told me that I should write a book of my experiences. I am what my wife calls a ‘weird magnet’ or what I refer to as a ‘strangeness attractor’. In other words, unusual occurrences always  seem to find me even though I never seek them out.

Many of these events happened during the ten years of my adult life spent behind the wheel of a taxicab. These ten years were not consecutive. They were from 1973 to 1979, 1984 to 1985, and 1988 to 1991. And, they were not in the same geographical area. The first six years were in the Tidewater, Virginia area, and the last four were in and around Phoenix, Arizona.

To this day I still consider myself a cab driver, though I’ve been successful at several other endeavors that have nothing to do with driving. And I don’t think I’ll ever actually haul human cargo for a living again. But, with the economic downturn, who knows? Once being a cabbie gets in your blood you’ll never be rid of the urge to immerse yourself in the side of humanity with very few pretensions.

I was twenty years old when I first got behind the wheel of a cab. I was attending community college and cab driving seemed like a good fit with the flexible hours and independence it seemed to offer. It was the first Nixon administration, the Vietnam War and the Cold War were in full swing. Men were walking on the Moon  and the sexual revolution was in full swing. I was single, and I was in a young single man’s paradise.

The primary tourist demographic in Virginia Beach in the late 60s through the mid 70s consisted of college aged men and women. This was in the days before Affirmative Action and the tons of government tuition programs, so there was a high degree of intelligence to be found among the tourists.  The Draft was still on and you had to maintain a C average to keep from getting pulled into the military. So the majority of the young tourists I met from out of state were pretty smart. But this is not to say that the tourists were mostly male. Oh no, not at all. Many young ladies came to the beach from Northern colleges and art schools in droves because of the many sailors and other young service men that were stationed nearby.

Forty years ago Virginia Beach was a small sized resort town that bloomed from Memorial Day to Labor Day. It was somewhat dependent on the three month long tourist season, but in the off season it had the advantage of being a bedroom community for the city of Norfolk.

As far as cab driving in Virginia Beach went, there were very few of the associated vices that go along with being a hack in the large urban areas like New York or Chicago. There was some prostitution along with a few other shady things, but it was easy for a cab driver to stay clear of those elements and still make a good living. Robberies inflicted on cabbies were not completely unknown, but in six years there I heard of just one of two and did not personally know any of the victims.

Probably the neatest thing about living and working at the Virginia Beach oceanfront was the fact that I did not need a car. My cab office was a few miles inland and the boss let me drive the cab to and from home. And when I was not working, I could do everything on foot, including shopping, entertainment, and partying. Virginia Beach back then was a unique mix of the military, counterculture, Southern heritage, foreigners, artists, spiritualists, and freethinkers. And I was a cabbie right in the middle of it all.

This first post is simply an introduction. I have many stories to tell, and though lots of them involve cab driving, many do not.

You may be wondering just what the term ‘high flagging’ means. It comes from a time when taxicab meters were mechanical and not electronic as they are today. There was a metal ‘flag’ that protruded from the front of the meter that usually was located on the dashboard of the cab. When it was in the ‘high’ position, the flag was up, meaning the meter was off, and was visible from outside the cab. When the meter was running, the flag was down. If you had a passenger or passengers and your flag was in the up (meter off) position, you were ‘high flagging’ and not reporting revenue to the company. It was an illegal practice as well as dishonest and the police would stop you if they noticed.

More to come.