Being vulnerable is a strength
“Where’s your favourite place for ice cream?” a taxi driver asks me.
“I don’t know,” I reply. “There’s a kiosk just by the fountains I like.”
“No, I don’t mean that,” he says. “I need a dessert place. My friend has had a hard day and so I promised him something delicious.”
He goes on to tell me that this friend, another driver, had a client who made racist comments to him on a journey. “It happened on the worst day for such a thing to happen to my friend. It was at the end of a long week,” he says.
I ask him about the dessert places he likes and he points one out to me near where I live. I must have walked past that place every day for the last few years, but a combination of not looking up, and being consumed by my own shit has meant I’ve never noticed it.
I miss the hugs, the pats on the back and the sound of laughter. It’s powerful, when all of you are laughing.
The cab driver says that he and a group of drivers, about twenty of them, have a dessert club. At the end of a long week, one of them picks a dessert place and they all go there on a Friday night to eat dessert, catch up, offer each other advice on whatever’s troubling them and to commiserate and laugh about difficult clients.
I love the thought that there’s a secret club for men to have soft chats with each other, over ice cream and cake.
I ask the man about his friend and he says, “he will be fine. It happens every day. I think it affected him because he has recently had someone close to him die.”
Before I know it, the taxi driver is regaling me with tale after tale of customers saying racist things to him. The deluge is so frenetic and relentless, I have to ask him to stop. He shrugs. “That’s just every day.”
“Can I come for dessert one day?” I ask.
He laughs. “Do you drive a car for a living?”
I laugh, get his permission to recount this part of the story and then ask him what he has got from the group.
“Sometimes you feel less alone. This is a lonely job. We spend so much time by ourselves. Even though we are talking with each other all the time…” he taps his inner-earphone. “We chat because we are the only ones awake at the time we are awake…” he sighs.
“I miss the hugs, the pats on the back and the sound of laughter. It’s powerful, when all of you are laughing. And you can’t breathe. And then…” he looks at me. “You understand. You must laugh with your friends like this.”
Actually, I don’t think I do. Which is why the thought of a bunch of men laughing about racist customers over ice cream cake at two in the morning, hugging and patting each other on the back, makes me well up in the way it does.
Maybe it’s being a parent, of a certain age, living in a city I didn’t grow up in, having one of those careers where your professional life and social life are intertwined and unboundaried, so you feel like you’ve seen people, but not in any real way other than a snatched drink after an event or a meet-up to discuss work, or a walk to catch up on the phone, where you breathlessly update each other on your lives. But I don’t feel like I see people enough.
I’ve had one of those busy years where everything I think about is work, and even having a soulful chat with a taxi driver after a long day of writing and teaching becomes work because I have designated it important enough to share with you all. I just feel lonely at the moment.
I love that this guy has a community and they’ve created a way of staying in touch, checking in, being present and also, just laughing.
I keep coming back to the topic of men, how there is so much in the media at the moment telling us what makes a real man, what attributes men should have, how men should behavemaxx. All that shit. None of it ever presents vulnerability as anything other than weakness. There is power and strength in being vulnerable in front of other people, and allowing them to commiserate, congratulate, support and love you. There is a bigger power in doing that in person at an early-hours dessert club.
“Maybe you need your own dessert club,” the taxi driver tells me as I get out of the car.
I thank him for his time, but he is ringing someone before I’ve even closed the door. Perhaps to check in. Perhaps to laugh. Perhaps to commiserate. Or perhaps to plot their next sugar fix. I don’t know. But I’m glad he has that. And I long for it myself.
I walk up to my house, open the door, take my shoes off and do my nightly routine.
I sneak into each of my children’s bedrooms and listen to their breathing for a few minutes, to steady my own, to ground me, to welcome me back into the house. And then, I head to bed, hoping the quiet will ease me into sleep.
Somewhere out there, as I lay my head on my pillow, a group of guys are shooting the shit over cake and ice cream. Knowing that, I smile.
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