Diary of a Taxi Driver

May 10th.
Thank God for the rain, which is help wash away
the garbage and the trash off the sidewalks.
I'm working long hours now.
6 days a week, sometimes 7 days a week.
It's a long hustle, but it keeps me real busy.
I can take in $300, $350 a week.
Sometimes even more, when I do it off the meter.
All the animals come out at night.
buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies.
Sick, venal.
Someday, a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.
I go all over.
I take people to the Bronx, Brooklyn.
I take them to Harlem.
I don't care. Don't make no difference to me.
It does to some. Some won't even take spooks.
Don't make no difference to me.
Each night when I return the cab to the garage,
I have to clean the back seat.
Some nights, I clean off the blood.
12 hours of work and I still can't sleep.
damn.
Days go on and on. They don't end.
All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go.
I don't believe that one should devote
his life to morbid self-attention.
I believe that someone should become a person like other people.
Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere.
In bars, in cars... sidewalks, stores, everywhere.
There's no escape.
I'm God's lonely man.
June 8th.
My life has taken another turn again.
The days move along with regularity, over and over...
And suddenly... there is change.
June 29th.
I gotta get in shape now.
From now on, it'll be 50 pushups each morning.
Fifty pull-ups.
From now on, it'll be total organization.
Every muscle must be tight.
The idea had been growing in my brain for some time.
True force.
All the king's men cannot put it back together again.
You talking to me?
You talking to me?
You talking to me?
Then who the hell else are you talking?
Talking to me?
Well, I'm the only one here.
Who do you think you're talking to?
Oh, yeah?
Okay.
Listen, you screwheads.
Here is a man who would not take it anymore.
A man who stood up against the scum, the dogs,
the filth.
Here is someone who stood up.
Now I see it clearly.
My whole life is pointed in one direction.
I see that now.
And never has been any choice for me.