Fake Taxi

"So where are you from?"
"Australia..Oh."

I've just climbed into the back of the shuttle bus that's going to take me to my hotel and the first thing I notice is that I'm not sitting behind the driver's seat as I thought. I knew that the cars here are left-hand driving but actually seeing these seats that are in the wrong place is extremely jarring. When I had left I had been confident that I would be able to drive myself about Michigan unaided but now as I do up my seatbelt my confidence begins to waver.

The driver thankful misses my small noise of surprise and we start going through the basics of polite conversation. Where are you going? How long are you staying? Meeting friends here? First time here? Each of the questions I answer politely with a small on my face as we pull out of the airport and it's then I ask a question  that, in reflection, I wish I had been more specific.

"So, do you know any good places to go in L.A.?"

"Oh yeah, pretty thing like you will have no problem picking up a man and having yourself some fun. Just head down to the beach or pretty just walk up to anyone you like and give them a bit of a wink and you'll be set. Unless you like girls, and if you do that's all good! People coming on holiday usually take the chance to experiment without the stigma of their town knowing. Yeah actually you'll be wanting to hit up West Hollywood, BIG gay scene there lots of pretty girls like you looking for other pretty girls. You know I picked up this girl and she asked me the same question she was like 'Uhhh I don't know if I'm gay or bi-sexual so I told her to go...'."

As you can imagine I'm quite stunned as he continues to rattle off his tale. In front of the bus a boeing 747 is coming in for landing over the street we are driving down and it can't be more than a couple of hundred meters above the ground. Luckily, it's enough to break my rather stupefied star of the side of his pudgy red face. He thinks I'm a lesbian? I do a mental check of myself to see why he would jump to that conclusion. Flannel patterned and crumpled shirt with jeans, short and messy hair, no make-up and I stink to high heaven... okay, fair call shuttle dude.

"So I gave her my number and I told her to call me after she goes and does her thing, we can get coffee and she can tell me how it all went. So we meet up for coffee a few days later and she tells me how it goes. I ask her if that's what she was looking for. Anyway we keep talking and I find out she comes from a small town. now everything starts making sense. I ask her if she knows the saying 'WHAM, BAM, THANK YOU MA'AM'  and she don't have any idea! I start explaining that most men are just there to get in and make themselves feel good. It's probably why she thinks she ain't like men. So we go up to her hotel room..."

Wait, what?

"And you know, we fool around, I go down on her and make her feel good. Turns out no man's ever done that for her and she goes down on me and I teach her a few tricks..."

Holy mother of god. Am I in a fake taxi? For those of you naïve of the tricks of the internet a fake taxi is a taxi with hidden cameras in which a man picks up easy looking women. After a short conversation he and the passenger agree that instead of paying the fare with money she'll pay with sex instead and it all gets recorded and put up on the internet in a genre known as, yes, fake taxi. My eyes flick around the back of the bus looking for places a camera could be hidden.

"This is one of the best jobs for picking up chicks. You know and it's not just the young ones who come to L.A. to mess around. It's old birds as well, married woman to. All of them come here for a bit of experimenting. I had this one lady, she'd been widowed for a few years and she asks me..."

I keep zoning in and out of the conversation, but the general gist of it is the same as the previous young lady. This can't be real, can it? Are all Americans this open to complete strangers? He's still rattling on to himself in his sexually promiscuous monologue when I hear a the lyrics of a song I have always thought as being purely American drift out of the radio,

"Jeremiah was a bull frog. Was a good friend of mine. Never understood a single word he said but I helped him drink his wine."

The short, middle-aged man with paunch, no hair and rather strong body odour drones on and on, breaking every so often from his anecdotes of debauchery to insist I mess around while I'm in L.A. I don't have the heart to interrupt him to explain that I have no intention to do so and when I asked about places to go I meant art galleries, restaurants, museums etc. It's still another five minutes to the hotel and in that time he covers how men need to have sex to live while for women its a nice optional salad on the side plate of a relationship. How its better to sleep with a person then start a relationship then getting to know them first. Also it sucks when you give men a wrong number when your not interested and its much better to tell them outright.

We finally arrive at the hotel and he takes my bag out of the back of the bus and after passing it to me offers me one of his cards. Of course I laugh nervously and refuse, thanking him politely for driving me here. It's the first thing I've said since asking him about places to go fifteen minutes ago.

In the shower later I swear softly to myself as a thought strikes me mind. I should have taken the card and told him, "Alright, but I'm transgender and I always pitch."