Well kids, I think we have a first draft of chapter one. I promised DU an exclusive on this so lets hope we can get this sucker published someday and we can all say we saw it here first. I wouldn't have it any other way. This place has been a family to me and the support I've recieved to start this project is really the only reason it may someday get done. I probably won't post anything else except maybe to select friends on here for critique but hopefully we'll have something you can all read someday soon. Here it is guys and gals. Criticism is greatly appreciated. You're my 99,000 editors.
S
The Front Lines from the Back Seat
Taxicab conversations about the war on terror with those who are fighting it
By Sxxxx Mxxxxxxxx
Chapter one-Driver Confessor
Psychiatrists, Bartenders, Priests, Cab Drivers. People will tell us anything. Of the four occupations I’ve listed, I’ve only been a cab driver. I’ve spoken to a couple psychiatrists over the years, priests I mostly avoid, and I’ve met literally hundreds of bartenders, but I’d wager I hear better stories than the lot of them.
The uncomfortable silence that exists when two strangers must share an enclosed space together that seemingly makes people retreat into their own bubble of solitude in say, an elevator, can have a dramatically different effect on the couch, in the confessional, at the lonely barstool and in the back of my taxi.
Not all of my customers feel the need to engage me past the necessary information of their destination. Many opt for the company of who they are with or who they are wired to via their cell phone, and those conversations are interesting enough. Some of my patrons, particularly when it is just one person and me, just really want to talk, about anything, and they do.
In the not so sacred confessional of my taxi I’ve heard the gamut of human experience described to me by its participants from stories of hope, beauty and bravery unequaled to tales of sexual exploits that people wouldn’t write to an xxx rated magazine forum, <“Penthouse” if rights can be obtained> and sorrows and sins they wouldn’t even share with family, friend or priest. I occasionally have to endure hateful speech that would make Hitler proud. Daily I witness the destruction of our youth as I have to drive another heroin or crack addict to their dealer. Men have admitted murders to me, men have asked me to help them kill themselves, and women have related tales of rape to me. Every now and then I also get to help a frail old woman to her apartment or give a poor family a few bucks break on their cab fare or engage someone in passionate important debate so at least there is a good side of humanity I get to experience as well.
I discovered that even if my passenger isn’t the most talkative person in the world, sometimes, I can cause them to be. It’s probably not completely a natural talent. I’ve technically had some training from attending SUNY Morrisville for journalism in the early 90’s and I’ve worked in the broadcast media as a radio personality and commercial producer. It’s made me a good talker if nothing else and a good cab driver. I can bullshit you. I can put on my acting hat and play the part that will open you like a library to me or at least make you think I’m a friendly so you don’t decide to start or continue your serial killer career with me. Believe me I’ve had some fares where that felt like a serious possibility. Not to mention I have been robbed at gun point before so I’m still a little edgy from that.
Our story begins when I made a not so triumphant return to the taxi profession after about an eight year absence. It was a job I said I’d never do again but times were getting tough financially so I found I had no choice. The face and pace of the cab company had changed a lot since I’d been away. There were new owners who seemed to care about vehicle maintenance, and wisely so, more than the previous ones and business was booming.
Fort Drum, the base we are located near and that probably constitutes a full seventy percent of our business houses the 10th Mountain Division and as of this writing is currently moving in other units from around the country <possible fact confirmation>. Since the beginning of the war on terror they have been the most deployed base in the country and a high percentage of the casualties <check % reference> are from units here. It is the raw tales of combat, military life and the mindset of our soldiers that inspired the genesis of this book.
I found that like my many other customers, occasionally aided by the inhibition shedding powers of alcohol and other substances that some soldiers would open right up to me or indeed even confess to me graphically detailed accounts of their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. So I started pushing and fishing and tried to get them talking as much as I could.
Over a year before I went back to driving I joined and had been a semi-regular contributor to a Democratic Party themed internet forum called The Democratic Underground and once early in my new cab career I posted asking people on the board what they wanted me to possibly ask our men and women about the war. I knew I was in a unique position to hear things about this conflict, good or bad, from the people right back from or in some cases going to the front lines. The response on DU was amazing and many great suggestions came from it. My method was not going to be standard reporting 101. I wasn’t going to identify myself as a journalist, I was simply going to be a cab driver, remember what I’d heard and recount it to my new friends in cyberspace.
The stories I started hearing ripped me to my very soul because many of these soldiers held absolutely nothing back in their recounting of the horrors and indeed some triumphs they had experienced. I always tried to approach my queries with an unbiased voice. I was against the war in Iraq from its beginning and I knew it was a fine line I had to tread to not let my politics offend my passengers, for more professional than personal reasons. Also I’m a more effective reporter that way. Disarm your subject and make them trust you and their deepest secrets are yours. It is the fleeting yet intimate nature of the priest/confessor, cabbie/customer, doctor/patient relationship that allows people to dump anything in their soul no matter how vile on to a perfect stranger. Am I breaking some ethical journalistic code by now recounting the tales of these men and women who mostly thought they were speaking to the night air alone? I will struggle with that and I’m sure some will chastise me for it but in my defense, I never learned the identity of any of my sources and after a time I did start telling many soldiers of my intention to possibly publish these tales. I haven’t encountered one yet that has discouraged me from doing this.
That I am even writing this now may prove that I was better at my explorations than I even expected to be. I started writing the stories as a regular column on The Democratic Underground and they took on a life of their own. It was more simple therapy for me than anything. I was finding that the brutality of some of the stories I was hearing and the simple and obvious facts of what the war was doing to the emotional state of many of my customers was giving me a vicarious experience that I did not want. These men and women had to dump on me and I dumped on DU. Surprisingly, instead of telling me to quit depressing them and scaring them, they were embraced and I was encouraged to craft this volume you now read.
This book is a compilation of many of those original columns and many more I hadn’t yet put to text. It approximately encompasses the time from March of 2006 until the present and a hodge podge of experiences from my entire if fractured fifteen plus years of driving. More than that, it is an exploration into the individual experience of war as told by dozens of the individuals involved in it. It is my hope that these stories will help connect citizen and warrior in a way that is not encouraged today by the mass media. These are the stories of you and me if our worlds had been turned upside down and we were made to live in a combat zone for a year or more on end. These are our bothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters and it has been both my privilege and my burden to hear what they now live be it heroic or horrible. Obviously none of these stories can be proven beyond what they are. A small and specific oral history of our times and of the overwhelming “war on terror” told to me by the men and women who are living and fighting it. The ride begins.
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