Taxicab Confessions

WARNING: This post contains explicit language that may be offensive to sensitive readers.

After growing up in the spacious landscape of suburbs and smaller cities, it's always instructive to witness the sociological armegeddon that happens when heaving masses of humanity are squashed together. In other words, New York City never fails to disappoint. One might hope that the great mixing of cultures and races has produced a brilliant example of a true international city--one in which people from all corners of the world can intermingle peaceably. Of course, anyone who has spent 5 minutes in Manhattan knows this isn't true. Everybody hates everybody, blackout goodwill be damned.

Saturday night:
Six of us are sardined in the cab at 1am, heading to the next bar. The cab driver reaches the end of a block, only to find that it has been barricaded by the bouncer of the bar on the corner. The bouncer is standing defiantly by the barricades, instructing the ever-growing mob of traffic to simply "back the fuck up." Our cab drive, a small man of some indeterminate Arab descent begins to rage. He wants me to go tell of the bouncer. I tell him to keep dreaming. We sit there in confusion for sometime, until a young man gets out of his car, grabs the barricades, and throws them to the side. Our cab driver, needing to release his pent-up rage, screeches through the newly opened gap, rolls down his windows, and calls to the bouncer:

"YOU WILL EAT MY DICK YOU BLACK DICK!"

We of course explode into laughter, which only encourages our driver to launch into a racist diatribe, half in English, half in something-or-other, but definitely containing the word "motherfucker" an awful lot. Finally he reaches a phrase we can understand:
"WHO GAVE THESE BLACK PEOPLE FREE? WHO GAVE THESE BLACK PEOPLE FREE?"

This would throw any good liberal off-balance for a moment, but not our good friend Omar, who is never at a loss for words. Pausing in his hooting laughter, Omar says: "Abraham Lincoln, fool. Abraham Lincoln."