“Hola, ¿cómo va?”
“Bien, ¿vos?”
“Bien. Ehh, bueno—Suipacha y Juncal, porfa.”
“Bueno.”
“Gracias.”
“No, a vos.”
Well, that’s how. Nothing tricky there.
Perhaps, then, a better question is not how, but rather, why should you talk to your taxi driver?
I’ll answer with an anecdote, not surprisingly, about a taxi ride.
It was late March, and I was leaving La Bomba, which is a drum circle directed by a conductor who uses a language of cues and gestures to create combinations of rhythms between the drummers, in real time. Very cool. It was a correspondingly energetic crowd, featuring all of the festivities that such crowds often offer. Namely, I was drunk (legally—this is Buenos Aires, okay?). But that night, I was feeling a little off, not really grooving with the vibe, maybe missing home a little. It had been a good night already, even before the concert, so I decided to call it quits and stumbled my way out of the crowd onto the street.
I hailed a taxi.
I had precisely the conversation transcribed above.
Then I slumped back in my seat feeling grateful for cushions and wheels and the fact that I didn’t have class until 14:00 the next day.
The driver—an older, mustachioed guy with a cross hanging from his rearview mirror—asked me how I was doing. Tired, I replied, saying that I wasn’t really feeling it tonight. He asked where I was from. I gave him the spiel: I’m from outside of Boston, Mass., here studying sociology, Spanish, and art, living with a host family, and yes, I like Argentina very much.
We had a very pleasant conversation about how corruption is present in both of our countries (but perhaps only more obvious in Argentina), the role of religion in our countries, the recent election of el Papa Argentino, and so on. Somehow, late-night drunk Spanish conversations always flow so smoothly, or perhaps that’s just how I (don’t) remember them.
He asked about my family and friends and whether I missed them. I said yes, of course, though I especially miss my girlfriend, who is back in los Estados Unidos. That’s probably part of why I wasn’t feeling it tonight, I said. Concerts are better with girlfriends.
Then he asked me, “Y qué tal con los mujeres acá? ¿Te la están dando?”
“Cómo? No entiendo..”
“El sexo! El fuckey-fuckey, el baile sagrado. Y qué de la novia, ¡no la vas a ver por cinco meses!”
I laughed, mostly in reaction to his sudden burst of colorful language, but also a little unsure what he was getting at.
“I mean, yeah, that’s true. I will not be having sex for several months. Quite the conundrum,” I replied, not seeing where this was going.
“What if I told you that I could take you right now to a place where you could choose from four rooms; from four photos. For 110 pesos (about 15 dollars) I can take you there and you can see the photos, and for 450 pesos (about 65 dollars), you can do anything you want to whichever one you choose.”
It probably appeared to him as though I were actually contemplating his offer, as it took me solidly 30 seconds to sort out what was actually happening.
“What? Like, what? Now?”
“Sí, ahora. ¿Vamos?”
“Whoa, whoa. No! No, hombre, no tengo ningún interés! Tengo novia. Tengo…dignidad!”
He said okay and kept driving, acting as though nothing had happened. It got silent for a full minute. I was still five minutes from home. I finally asked him, “So you, like, do this? With like, prostitutes?” He said yes. I asked for how long. He said about 20 years. Whoa, okay. I paused; considered the situation. I felt almost as if I were watching someone else being taxied through Alto Palermo. I don’t talk to taxi-driving pimps every day, okay? Suddenly, I realized the opportunity at hand and became very intrigued by my situation, almost in an academic sense. There he was, “the oppressor,” driving along, nodding to the cumbia playing quietly in the background. Now that I see him, what do I say?
Well, I’m not sure how I feel about it now, but at that moment I felt compelled to get on my horse and spout that righteous academia to which I generally do prescribe: I talked about cycles of poverty and abuse, and about how every person is just as logical within their bounded rationality as each other person. These women probably don’t want to be selling their bodies, but they do so because they have ended up in situations in which it has become the logical course of action—which is tragic, on an institutional and human level.
I pretty much ranted, knowing I had only another two or three minutes to make the impression that I needed to make. This was my shot to exert direct influence, however insignificant, upon this global patriarchy. After each of my sentences, he nodded his head in silent accordance, and when I finally had gotten my points across and we were pulling up in front of my apartment complex, he said only, “Sí, sí. Muy triste, muy triste.”
I paid, said goodbye, and then went up to my room and asked myself whether I had just imagined the whole thing. It’s not that strange an event—we all know those people do exist in the world—but I will admit that at that point in time, it was a shock for me to meet one of them.
So then, to answer my question: Why should you talk to your taxi driver?
Because that’s where life gets interesting. The moment you step out of your daily bubble and touch upon that which is foreign and new, you open yourself up to seeing a world you have never seen before. Yeah, he could have been dangerous, and I could have unwittingly ended up at a whorehouse. But in retrospect (and even in the moment), I realized that this was something so removed from my customary sphere of interactions that I would never have come across it had I not talked to my taxi driver. Obviously, there is much more to discover from the taxi drivers of the world than prostitution rings: everyone—including yourself—is living hir own unique experience, and in my opinion, it can only benefit you to open yourself and learn from them.