Epiphany

Every now and again you have a day in which something happens to make you re-evaluate your life and your beliefs, a day that grabs you by the scruff of the neck, shakes you violently, and makes you just stop and think and question. I had one of those in June 2002. Everything you could think of went wrong on me, but it ended in epiphany.

That day didn’t start off very well. When I was walking to the post-office that morning along along the quays, I became the victim, believe it or not, of a drive-by nail-gun attack. I don’t like the victim mentality, but seriously, I felt victimised then. Some fucker in the passenger seat of a white van with a Longford registration decided it would be a fun thing to do to fire a nail-gun at ordinary people going about their daily business. The nail hit me on the front of the left shoulder. It didn’t do any permanent damage, but it stung like anything through my lined overcoat, sweatshirt and the t-shirt I had on underneath. When I turned to see who had fired I saw this little fucker’s face looking back out the window of this van, and I immediately got the reg. The cops were helpful, but it never ultimately came to anything and the guy to whom the van was registered swore that he didn’t have it out that day. That was the start of the day.

At that time I was driving a rented hackney (these are cars with a plate, not a roof-sign, and they can only be called by telephone, and can’t pick up off the street like a taxi). I had promised my cousin and his wife that I’d take them to the airport. They are of that ilk who don’t like taxi-drivers, because “they’re all crooks and thieves, they never turn up on time, and they pull in anywhere without indicating, same when they pull out, and they slam on their brakes so that you crash into the back of them and then make you pay for them to take their holidays while their car’s being fixed”. I swear, that’s what my cousin, a normally intelligent man, said. Anyway, to him I’m obviously the guy to challenge that mindset, and they both very kindly gave me the chance to redeem all of taxihood of its previous transgressions by turning up on time and bringing them to the airport.
Only guess what?
There I was on Kildare Street at 3.00pm thinking I could do one last little job before picking them up at 4.15. I’m listening to the calls coming over the radio, not responding to any because either they’re too far away, or the journey will take me away from where I need to be at 4.15. And then up pops the perfect job. Dept. of Agriculture on Kildare Street. I’m looking at it for Christ’s sake. And Dept. of Agriculture jobs are usually short little hops around the Green to Foreign Affairs, or some other fairly centrally located Government Department or instument of the State (before they went mad with this decentralisation thing).
So I’m in like a shot and they give me the job and within seconds I’m pulling in at the Department of Agriculture (incidentally built on the site of my former primary school...), and I’m just about to get out of the car and go in when two guys come out and they’re carrying, and I mean carrying, a woman between them and they’re heading directly towards my car.
One of them opens the front passenger door, and they carefully place this woman on the seat and fasten her in.
-You’ve to take her to Leixlip, says one of them. I look at him, and then I look at her, and then the penny drops. She’s dead drunk, it’s 3.00 now, and Leixlip is about 22 Km away, down one of the busiest roads in the country, and I’ve to be in Harold’s Cross at 4.15. Okay, if I’m lucky I can do it, don’t panic, I think to myself, and I immediately set out.
First thing I try to do is get her address off her, which isn’t easy. She doesn’t want to tell me, because she thinks it’s none of my business, but eventually I persuade her that it really is my business as I’m trying to bring her home, and she slurs it out.
I have to find it on the map, which I place on my knee and gradually zoom in on the place in question while stopping in traffic. It’s an area I don’t know at all, and then she starts abusing me for not knowing where it is. Eventually I find it and by this time we’re well on the journey, but traffic is heavy and it slowly dawns on me that if it keeps like this, I’m not going to make it to my cousin’s in time, and redemption for all of taxihood will be delayed for another millenium.

I get to the N4/5/6 and the traffic is horrenduous. Taxis are sailing past me in the bus lane, but being a hackney, I can’t use bus lanes without being fined. I call into base, explain my predicament and ask them to send a car to my cousin’s address in lieu of the fact that I’m obviously not going to get there.
Meanwhile my drunken lady is unintentionally regaling me with her life story. She’s not talking to anybody in particular, I mean it’s as if she’s not talking to me, or she’s talking to someone she imagines is beside her, because the monologue is completely disconnected. If I was listening to one end of a telephone conversation it would make more sense. Disturbing little details come out, but I’m not really taking it in because I’m more concerned about the fact that it’s now getting quite late, and I still can hear the call going over the radio for a car for Harold’s Cross. I decide it’s time to come clean with my cousin and ring him on my cellphone. His wife answers. I explain as gently as I can the situation and she goes into shock.
-But... But ... But this isn’t a favour, it’s a gig, man. I mean, we’re paying you to do this.
All I can do is apologise to her and feel like shit. I actually owe this woman and my cousin a great deal. In a difficult time in my life they both let me stay with them in their home for nearly a year. I really am sorry about what I’m doing, I’m not just saying it. I really want to help them, it’s just that I have this fucking drunk in my car who I have contracted to take to fucking Leixlip...

We hang up and it’s not a good feeling. I actually feel like smashing this stupid drunk’s face against the dashboard a few times. She’a being really offensive now, calling me all kinds of things, and my stress levels are sky-rocketing. The traffic is crawling along, Leixlip’s still miles away, and this drunk won’t shut up. And then suddenly, she shuts up. My prayers have been answered.
Oh no they haven’t. She’s fallen asleep.
Some of you might think this is a good thing, and at the time, in my inexperienced worldview, it was a good thing, until she slowly pitched forward, seatbelt gently unreeling, to hang in sleeping suspension directly over the gear lever, making it next to impossible to change gear. I manage to find a way to reach the bottom of the gearlever without touching her person (we don’t want an assault charge on our hands), but I have to skip from first to third. Second isn’t available under these circumstances.
When I eventually get her home, a man answers the door.
-I have someone here who lives at this address I think.
-Is she in a bad way? he asks, the worry on his face. He is a bit uncomfortable, and so am I. It must be really difficult living with an alcoholic.
-She’s asleep now, but she’s pretty far gone.
-I can’t pay for this taxi, he says.
-It’s on the Dept. of Agriculture Account, I tell him, and he sighs with relief. He goes out to the car, and I wait for him to come back so he can sign the job sheet. It takes a while, but eventually he comes back with her, and brings her into a room in the house which smells of damp and neglect. He signs and I take my leave, trying not to make him feel more uncomfortable.
I go back to the car and check the clock. 4.45pm. It took me an hour and three-quarters to grind my way twenty odd kilometres, I possibly lost a friendship, only got £15 for the job (on a meter the fare would have been twice that), and feel generally miserable after the whole episode.
The day continues in that vein. Some jobs are ok, but there’s another one which has me going around all the back roads in west Dublin around by Newcastle picking up people one by one before finally heading to Marley park where some rock band are playing. (Oasis, shower of thugs.) A nice job in terms of mileage, but I get more abuse for not knowing the routes they want me to take.

By 9pm I’m fairly whacked and depressed and decide to head for home. Just one last job on the way, but it turns out to be the Epiphany i mentioned earlier. A real fucking perspective sharpener this one.
I’m to pick up a guy at A & E in St. James’s Hospital. I park the car where I think it won’t be in the way of ariving ambulances, walk into the waiting room and call out the name I have. Up pops this guy looking unusually chipper for someone coming out of A&E. He lacks the usual wrapping that such people have: a bandage somewhere, or an arm in a sling, or a crutch to lean on. There’s nothing to show that he’s been in any accident. Still he could be accompanying someone who has been, although they don’t usually get taxis on the Eastern Health Board’s account.
Anyway, he says: -I’ll just get me stuff.
And he goes to the corner of the room and picks up a large transparent refuse sack in which there is what looks like another transparent sack which contains a souplike liquid and some clothes.
-I was in the newspaper today, sez he.
-Is that right, sez I.
I’m half listening and the rest of me is thinking that there’s no way this guy is getting into my car with a sack of soup.
-You can’t put that in the boot like that, I tell him.
-Jayses, you’re right. I’ll just wring them out. he says, and while he empties out the bag and wrings out the clothes, I open the boot of the car. He places the sack in and I close the lid. He goes on:
-”Fireman pulls teen from Liffey”, it said. Front page. Evening Herald.
-Really? Where to? I ask, walking to the driver’s door and opening it, gesturing him to the far side.
-Eh, Iveagh Hostel please, he answers over the roof of the car.
We both get in and I start the engine, reversing out of the space.
-They called me a teenager. I’m thirty-one!
-My, you don’t look it, I reply. -And they pulled you out of the Liffey?
-Yeah.
(beat)
-And tell me, what were you doing in the Liffey?
- I jumped in, didn I?
(beat)
-And why did you jump in, do you mind me asking?
-Because I wanted to kill myself, he replies.

Up until this point there has been no indication whatsoever that this guy is on the edge. He’s bright, he’s chatty, he’s breezy, he’s a good talker, articulate, seems a like a well rounded individual. And suddenly he's just told me that he’s been pulled out of the Liffey because he tried to commit suicide. Well, I’ve committed myself to the conversation, so there’s no point in me backing out now.

-And why did you want to kill yourself? I asked, incredulous now.

And with that a great weariness fell on him, and he started to speak more slowly, as if putting more effort into the words.
-Because I’ve no home, I’ve no job, I’m thirtyone years of age and I’ve no girlfriend, never had a girlfriend, thirtyone years old and I’ve never fucked a woman, I’m still a virgin. I’m living in a hostel.
-I know, I said, trying to empathise. -It’s hard to get a job when your address is the Iveagh Hostel.
-Ah it’s not that, he says emphatically. -It’s this. And he pulls up his sleeve and holds out his forearms for me to see and I am shocked because there are long parallel diagonal scars all the way up each arm, maybe five or six of them.
I realise now that this is a seriously disturbed person.
-So you’ve tried to commit suicide before then, I say, not revealing how I feel.
-Yeah. I’ve never managed to cut deep enough, he says.
-And have you no family who could help you that you could turn to? I ask.
-Nah,. Me brothers and sisters are all in England. Sure they don’t give a damn about me.
-What about your parents?
-Look at that, and he holds his left hand up in front of me as I’m driving. There is a 3 centimetre scar running between the phalanges in the centre of his palm.
-Me da tried to kill me he did. He pinned me hand to me chest with a kitchen knife. I woulda died only for I put me hand up and he pinned it to me chest. Another time he hit me on the head with a hammer. He’s a schizophrenic, he’s mad, and that’s what’s wrong with me too. I’m a schizophrenic. I was on medication in St. Pats last week only they discharged me but they didn’t tell me where I could get more medication, and once the stuff they gemme had run out I’d no more and I went off the rails, so I did.
-You mean they let you out and didn’t give you access to medication? I asked
-They gave me a prescription, but the chemist took it and he didn’t give it back to me ‘cos it’s supposed to be a repeat prescription but they didn’t put on it that it was and he wouldn’t give it back to me so he wouldn’t..
-And what about your mother. Could she not help you in any way at all?
His voice softened.
-Ah Me Mother’s dead. She was angel she was. An angel. She died when I was fifteen. She was the only one who cared about me. I really loved her.

We have reached the Iveagh Hostel at this stage, and he is concerned that they won’t let him in because of his previous suicide attempts and his psychiatric history. I’m thinking that if it was me I’d be thinking twice about letting him in too. The guy needs help. He shouldn’t be out on the streets. What kind of a health system do we have that discharges such disturbed people from its care and leaves them on the street?

As we part I hold out my hand to him, and he reaches out and takes it.
-Listen, I say to him. -Today I got hit by a nailgun, I was abused by my friends, abused by a drunk who then fell asleep in my cab over the gearlever, I got abused by some people going to the Oasis concert in Marlay Park. I thought I’d had a shit day, until I met you. I want you to know that you’ve put things into perspective for me. I wish you all the best.
-It was lovely talking to you too, he said, and we realeased eachother’s hands and he walked up the steps of the Iveagh Hostel. He turned at the top, raised his hand in a wave. I returned the wave and smiled. He smiled back, then disappeared into the hostel.
Christy, if ever you read this, I want you to know: you changed my life.