While Las Vegas Sleeps…

Outside of my taxi there’s a man screaming obscenities at his friends… or at least the ease with which he insults them implies a long and deep friendship with the group of assholes that just won’t get into the cab fast enough. When they finally get to the taxi it is immediately apparent that this is the most unusual group of people that I’ve ever driven around: the original yelling man looks kind of like Kyle McLachlan …if he was on a diet consisting entirely of cheese. The woman that he lets into the front seat between us looks exactly like Mama Fratelli from the Goonies, and the beefy, high-school football player-looking guy that gets into the back, is apparently her son. He is sitting on one side of a very cute girl with a broken leg and on the other side of her is the biker from Erin Brockovich. None of them can decide on a destination as I drive around aimlessly, but eventually, the extremely drunk “Kyle” convinces them to all go to his house and I modify my destination.

I’m barely five minutes into the journey when Mama Fratelli starts bad mouthing Kyle and telling him to stop what he’s doing. This is where things get strange because as far as I can tell Kyle is not doing anything. I can see him in my peripheral vision and he’s holding a beer in one hand and has the other one resting on the edge of the window. Mama Fratelli barks “Stop it!” in his direction one more time and he makes some comment along the lines of “maybe you’d like it better if I shoved my tongue down your throat?” - something that seems unrelated to anything that has come before. They are all so drunk that I rule out psychedelics even though things between them seem to be taking place on a level of reality that I have no way to access.

A couple more completely mysterious and confusing comments bounce back and forth between them, and a few more things float up from the back seat, and then, all of a sudden, I’m being directed to pull over at the next bar to let these people out. The vibe has completely changed during the drive and I’m more than happy to comply. It turns out that the cute girl and Kyle will be continuing the cab ride and all of the others will remain at the random location to fend for themselves.

As Mama Fratelli is sliding out of the seat she says something rude to Kyle who then wastes no time calling her a cunt. In the two seconds that follow this declaration the son somehow exits the taxi on my side and travels completely around the cab to sucker-punch Kyle in the side of the face. Then, reacting on what seems like instinct, Kyle lashes out with the beer bottle that he is still holding. The bottle breaks on the son’s head and I watch the beer pour out. The whole incident seems way more surreal than any comparable scene from a movie… I mean, he wasn’t even holding the bottle backwards like you’re supposed to when you get into a street fight.

The biker guys manages to break things up and then Kyle is back in the front seat and the doors have been locked. “Just get out of here” seems to be the unanimous verdict and I am once again on my way with a few less passengers than when I started. The entire bar detour lasted probably three minutes and we all seemed unable to process things at first, but after a block or two Kyle starts thinking that he should contact the police. The cute girl says “Forget about it… It’s over. Let’s just go home,” but Kyle can’t let it go. He decides to gather a posse of friends in order to extract some street justice because the call to the police doesn’t go exactly how he planned. The destination changes for what seems like the fifth or sixth time and it turns out that I’m taking them back within a block of where I originally picked them up. Unfortunately for Kyle, he can’t seem to handle the stress of the last stop light and he exits the cab without warning and wanders across the street leaving the cute broken-leg girl with the fare.

Unfortunately for her, she has no cash and has to get her friends to pay when I drop her off. I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned somewhere in this tale, but the only thing that stands out to me is “Try not to look like characters from movies.”

Tags: Las Vegas, Las Vegas fights, Las Vegas stories, Las Vegas taxis, taxicab confessions, The Goonies

The girl that’s about to get in my taxi is jumping around, full of energy and obviously happy just to be alive. I might even go so far as to say that she’s “buzzing with excitement.” …….but only because she’s dressed like a bee.

Her ladybug friend has on some kind of boy short/thong hybrid that exposes most of her butt and, much like a ladybug, is less frenetic. She makes sure her wings don’t get crunched in the door as she gets in the front seat. The guys with them have no costumes and, from what I can tell, have probably been switching out their full drinks for the girls’ empties all night.

They all seem to want to drive to different destinations and, not surprisingly, the bee girl wants to find the next place to party. I don’t think it’s ever been so loud inside the cab. Miss Bumblebee and Princess Ladybug are talking at the same volume that they must have been using inside the club. One of the guys says, “Stop whispering! Can’t you guys speak up? I don’t think he can hear you.” The sarcasm doesn’t seem to have any effect and then the other guy says, “I’m sure this cabbie is having a rough day. You should show him your tits.” I don’t know what kind of guy he thinks he is… but I like his style.

Unfortunately, the new comment has no effect either. It takes a few more variations of “c’mon, flash him!” before Miss Bumblebee finally catches on. “Do you want to see my boobs?” she finally asks. “Absolutely yes. Very much so,” I think, but why I don’t say that I’ll never know. Instead I say “you really don’t even have to ask” or something equally dorky and she pulls down her top…revealing a black tube-top type bra device. She laughs and then almost immediately screams out the window at some guy in a truck asking if he wants to see her boobs. He says “Absolutely yes. Very much so” or something like that and then her boobs are out. They are pert, perky and pierced…and I completely understand why it was necessary to free them from their elastic prison.

We arrive at their hotel instead of another club and I get one more glimpse of ladybug butt before they disappear. I love Halloween. We really need more fun, dress-up holidays….

One short skirt girl friend of theirs yelled to her three short-skirted friends as they exited the taxi: “Don’t show your Britneys!”

[editor's note: Nick, our resident taxicab driver and taxicab confessional writer/aspiring screenwriter has been suffering from acute penographer's infarction, or API (writer's block,) so this is his first article since mid July. He's feeling a sudden burst of creative cab-juices lately, so I think we can possibly expect a bit more from him in the near future. Let's us cross our fingers and take full odds on cabs #6 and #8... And hope Nick the Cabbie figures out he needs to start bringing us so damn pictures!]

Tags: after hours, alcohol, blog, cab confessions, cabbie, cabby, debauchery, drinking, girlfriends, Halloween, naked, Stories, story, taxicab confessions, writer, writing

“You’re a cool guy,” the two drunk people in the back seat of my cab have decided. I think they’re right. Even if I didn’t, it seems so obvious to them from their current altered state that I’d have to give it some serious thought. They seem sincere for some reason - not at all like those other drunk people that I’ve encountered. Maybe it’s because they have a coolness about them - a certain Fonzitude, if you will - and if these guys are cool, they should definitely know, right?

Moments before, the guy - let’s call him Mike - was trying to get me to confirm the hotness of his girlfriend. I tell him that I’d turn around and look if I wasn’t afraid that I’d run into the concrete barriers on the side of the road, but I’m really more concerned about what I would have to say if I don’t happen to agree with him. (I’m so meticulously selective with girls that it’s almost criminal, but that’s probably a topic for another time.)

We chat about various things as I drive down the Strip: where I lived before I moved to Vegas and where they will eventually return, the importance of word selection when dealing with the subconscious mind, how much some of the other cab drivers suck, how I’m not really into sports at all… (I’m completely nonsportical.)

Next they ask my age and when I tell them Mike says, “I bet you a hundred dollars you have a wife and kids.” When I mention that I don’t even have a girlfriend at the moment I hear them both from the backseat, “Damn. I would have lost that bet,” and, “Aww! You totally should. My friends are all hot… I should hook you up.”

Before I can fully process what I’ve just heard their journey is over and the girl gets out (just for the record: she’s totally hot.) Mike pays and then tips me more than five bucks and then they wander into their hotel… [editor's note: Apparently an over-five-dollar tip is some sort of Las Vegas cabbie threshold of what makes a really good tip on a regular fare.]

As I drive away I remember: “Wait! What about your hot friends?!@#$?” Next time I’ll remember to ask before they get out of the cab.

See… I told you they were cool.

Tags: after hours, alcohol, blog, cab confessions, cabbie, cabby, girlfriends, Stories, taxicab confessions, tipping, tips

That’s right. Pilot. He thinks “driving a cab” just doesn’t sound quite right so he looks at it as being a pilot. I kinda like that. Not only is he probably the best driver I know (and a great personal friend,) he’s available for his drunken, debauched friends when in need of a lift from Rehab or various other clubs around Las Vegas! That’s right…. Our personal, Las Vegas driver, VIP style. Okay, well as VIP as you can be in a taxicab

How does one go about ending up a cab driver? Well, apparently a good way to start is being a screenwriter, because that’s what Nick is. In classic Hollywood mogul fashion, he has a half dozen or so scripts in various stages of production..

Being a great, old friend of mine, I’ve been trying to get Nick to move out west to Las Vegas for a number of years now. This town is the perfect combination of glitz, glam, girls, gratuitous iniquities, gossip, and probably a lot of other things that begin with a “g.” Such an environment is perfect for a writer looking for inspiration as he works on his next screenplay. (I didn’t want to alliterate with “s” or this would be way too long.) So I finally talked him into moving…

So what’s a move without a plan? I figured, hey if it’s things to draw from that you need, what a more rich environment to be in than driving a taxi, and in Las Vegas, no less?? Plus, the gig pays well! (You get bonuses every time you take someone to a strip club or send an escort to someone’s hotel room.) So for Nick, driving a cab is something of an international work-study program, if you will.

Nick always has funny stories to share when he gets off of work… Like the one with Ron Jeremy and his out-of-control female friend that he won’t write about because he made a promise to Ron. That’s our Nick - a cabby with ethics and a story to tell. Go figure.

So in the next day or two Nick’s first story will be posted on here and they are going to keep coming once or twice a week. Just look for the heading - “Nick’s Las Vegas Late Night Cab Confessions.” This is gonna be good.

…And if you are coming to Las Vegas or are already here and need a driver, shoot Nick an email

Tags: cab confessions, cabbie, cabby, cheap Las Vegas, convention, Conventions, Entertainment, escort service, escorts, film, lap dance, Las Vegas strippers, movies, porn star, pornstar, Rehab, screenplay, sin, Southern Nevada, strip club, strippers, taxicab confessions, VIP service, writer, writing