New York City Gay and Jewish Cabbie on the Literary Map: Melissa Plaut, blogger and author Released Hack: How I Stopped Worrying About What to Do with My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab (Villard, $21.95)
Mss Melissa Plaut is one of the few female taxi drivers that you will meet in New York City. She has long realized that she has to take her destiny in her own hands. After graduating from the University of New Mexico, she found a job as a concierge with Miramax Films in Manhattan. She realized that working was hard labor there. She left the job and started traveling in Europe and Morocco. She returned to New York to get some other jobs. She was still trying to find out what she wanted to do. She quickly realized that she needed to do something to earn some money. She went to a Taxi-driving school. She became a taxi driver, a job that would help her with her fear of the unknown and satisfy her curiosity. She received her hack licence on her 29th birthday. She realizes that she has to keep moving to get some returns on her investment. She had to lease the cab, spend on gas and put in many hours without taking a break or dinner.
Melissa Plaut soon discovered that taxi driving is dominated by males, especially immigrants with Pakistani and Indian backgrounds. As she wrote about her new job, she could not get used to her new status. She felt "frustrated by my utter helplessness and powerlessness.. and irritated by the second-class citizen status that is assigned to you the second you sit behind the wheel of a yellow cab, no matter what race, sex, nationality or color you are."
She was ready to experience what non-white, no-American-born people experience on a daily basis. She was just experience the tip of the iceberg. Even though she was very tired, she wrote her observation and thoughts in Newyorkhack.blogspot.com. She also uploaded her pictures and filled in the details before forgetting them. She becomes our cab driver who writes or the writer who drives a cab. No matter what, she follows in the footsteps of 1935 musical comedy Broadway Gondolier from Dick Powell and 1976's Taxi Driver with Robert De Niro.
Melissa likes the experience of listening in on complete strangers who share her vehicle. The book describes why she began driving a taxi, what she has learned and passengers she remembers. She keenly remembers the passenger who introduced herself to her as a Dominatrix. She was complaining about her Wall Street clients. She is referring to the brokers, bankers, investors, hedge funds managers who consider themselves as self-important masters of the universe. They were lousy tippers. Melissa prefers passengers who are dominatrices, escorts, hookers and pimps. These people are in the service industry. They understand the importance of adding a few more dollars to the fares. Yet, moving to get the fares was a constant struggle for her. By the way, the dominatrix tipped her generously.
Melissa Plaut considers her moving taxi as a mobile theater. Her passengers have role to play. She writes about the young couple who were using telephone to talk to each other while riding in the taxi. Even other vehicles become characters in her moving play. She talks to other vehicles whose drivers want to cut in front of her. By the time she returns to the garage at the end of her shift, she knows how much she has made or whether she has recouped her investment.
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