Winter in America — A Taxi Here and There
Getting a taxi in the nation’s capital isn’t easy for a black man. It didn’t matter that I was from England with money in my pocket.
Friends told me DC meant ‘Dark City’, so I packed my bags and headed for a year in the nation’s capital — Washington, District of Columbia, US of A. The day is a Saturday, 11th October 1995, and The Million Man March is scheduled for Monday.
I step off the plane with other brothers here for the day of atonement, scoop up my luggage, and move for the nearest smoking zone. The stench of exhaust fumes permeates the air, and the DC day is thick, hot, sticks to my skin, and leaves a foul taste in my mouth.
I’m puffing on a roll-up cigarette and sweating in the heat in the taxi line outside National Airport when the white woman standing six feet in front starts coughing, loud and exaggerated. She is turning up her nose, so if it rains, she would drown and looking back at me as if somebody just farted.
“Excuse me!” she blurts out, fanning away at imaginary smoke, and unable to disguise fear and loathing hanging in her eyes.
“Excuse you for what?” I say. “Move up!”
“I’ve got Asthma,” she spits out, “and I’m allergic to smoke!”
