He looked rather like Bob Dylan, but younger, though due to his cigarette habit and poor nutrition, he appeared ten years older than his real age. He was in his mid-twenties. I liked him for his brutal ironic wit and his equally brute honesty, except for when I was on the receiving end. He did play the guitar rather well, and was an unabashed Dylan fan.
He was the rebel son of very conservative missionary parents and spent much of his childhood in Venezuela. He was fluent in Spanish but rarely spoke it. He aspired to being the coolest dude in the 'hood and the world's most righteous Christian. He was one of the most relentless critics I have ever known. No one and nothing was right so far as he was concerned. He was negative and seemed at times to hate almost everyone yet really cried out for friendship and understanding.
We lived together with the Bucolic One and the Amazing Mr. M for a while in the tiny two room house. It was, to say the least, a very intense living arrangement with at least some household drama. Even though I didn't seem able to do anything right or well enough for Taxi Driver (but no could, really) he often expressed great admiration for me, for my spirituality, my writing and my humour. I did seem to have a habit of making extemporaneous comments. One morning, just as I was waking up I heard the Taxi Driver and the Bucolic One talking about some car that must have run into a pole on our block. Just waking up I muttered: "I thought we were in a predominantly Italian neighbourhood." Well, they thought it was funny.
The Taxi Driver worked as...a taxi driver, usually at night. There was a friendship between him and the Bucolic One that I had no part in. Feeling increasingly shut out I was only happy to move out after being there for four months.
The Taxi Driver and I still maintained a rather remote friendship. The Bucolic One and I saw nothing of each other. Within two years I was living in a different neighbourhood again, but just a few blocks from a place where the Bucolic One and the Taxi Driver were sharing an apartment. From time to time I would run into one of them. I was always invited to drop in sometime. I never did. Their friendship was my exile. When I saw that neither of them seemed interested in initiating contact with me I concluded that I simply wasn't worth their while.
I felt particularly shut out by the Bucolic One. The Taxi Driver and I visited sporadically, perhaps twice a year, if that, but I was already wounded by a lot of his unfair and unwanted criticism of me and his expectations of perfection. My life moved on and his deteriorated as he succumbed to chronic alcoholism.
He phoned me a few times in the nineties, often while drunk, and usually to tell me to forget about painting (he hated my art) and write instead. I finally got sick of this and hung up on him. That was our last conversation but one, when I was still in my early stages of learning Spanish. We ran into each other on the Skytrain and chatted a bit in Spanish. He insisted that since I didn't learn it as a child I should never expect to speak it well. I am fluent now. If only he was still alive to hear me tell him off in the Language of Cervantes.
Just a few years later I was having a conversation with a woman who knew him. She told me that he had died a couple of years ago of a heart attack. It was like losing a close family member. His life was such a dark void, I hope only that he has finally found something of the light, peace, love and joy that he never seemed to know in this life. I hope that now he can finally know for himself what he seemed never prepared to hear from anyone: that God is love.
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