I Met a Rickshaw Driver

If that doesn't catch your attention, apparently you are the type of person who isn't shocked by anything. Because I really did meet and chat with a rickshaw driver. And trust me, I didn't set out to do it. It all started in Astoria. I was visiting my "estranged" Boyfriend (at least through Wednesday) and my friends were getting ready to go out. At first I wasn't going to. I was really upset and kind of wanted to curl up in bed and cry myself to sleep but by the time the train picked them up, they had brought me cookies and begged and begged. How do you resist being that desirable? So we ended up at McCoy's Irish Pub, in Mid-town West, where beer is only 3.75 and drinks are seriously 4 dolla. We were sitting at the bar (there were no tables in the narrow, crowded space) yelling over the din or ten tv sets and a jukebox along with the general noise of tons of people.

I, naturally, was yelling about the EB. It's funny that when you're with someone, and comfortable in your relationship you don't really feel a need to discuss it, instead just leaving it at a dreamy smile and "We're great." But in the midst of a fight, which my friends were not expecting from me and the EB, it was all I could talk about and I'm pretty sure I was driving them crazy. It reminded me of the Sex and the City episode where Carrie can't stop analyzing what went wrong with her and Big, and Miranda finally says, "Carrie, we want you to see a therapist." She replies, "I don't need a therapist- I have you guys!" That's the kind of friend I was this weekend, analyzing what I had said and why I said it and why on Earth he finally stormed out. One of my friends yelled,

"At least he's straight! No other guys in this city are!" She's still slightly bitter about her workcrush turning out to be gay. With that, the guy next to me leaned over and said, "Nice to meet you. I'm Sean.", thus making the point that not everyone in the city was gay. He turned out to be a rickshaw, therefore the next sentence that came from our slightly tipsy group was, "Wow, your legs must be really strong." His reply? "Legs of steel, all three of them." From then on he regaled us with hilarious pick up lines. He was hilarious, and seemed incredibly happy. Canadian, only in New York about a month but had been in the States around five years. The most fascinating part to me was that he had driven from Canada to Baltimore, sold his car, bought a bike and biked to Florida. In Fort Lauderdale he biked a rickshaw for a few months while waiting tables on and off. When he was tired of that he decided to bike to New York. It only took him fifteen days. I was in shock. He said that he had lost about seventy pounds doing this and being a rickshaw wasn't that bad. It paid okay and he got to meet lots of people who couldn't hail cabs or didn't care that they were riding behind a man down Fifth Avenue.

I was really impressed. Here we were, soft, in our early twenties, working office jobs with our college degrees and if we wanted to build muscle, heading to the gym. And we aren't all that happy. We work, we complain with our friends after work, we go to bed and do it all over again the next morning. But this guy had been doing exacctly what he wanted for the last five years and not looking back once. He joked and drank and everyone in the bar knew him (suggesting that yes, he was a regulaar inhabitant but still pressing home the point that he had everything in life he wanted at that moment). When you run into someone like that it changes the way you want to look at your life. On top of that, he had a photo album full of pictures of girls he had gotten to flash him in his rickshaw. It was kind of porn related, and I did wonder about why he carried it around with him but hey, if it makes you happy... P.S. He could name our bra sizes just by looking at us. Correctly.

It obviously did. A couple of drinks later, heading back up Ninth Ave towards Times Square, I realized I needed to look more closely at what I was doing that was making me happy versus what I was doing that was either having a neutral affect on my life or negative one. He was poor and thrilled to be in New York, well traveled and had met hundreds more people than I probably ever will, at least in the US. It reminded me of how I was in Europe, how willing I was to speak to people and dance with boys I will never see again and enjoy experiencing something completely new and different. The only downfall was that my boyfriend wasn't there, because the first thought I had on entering McCoy's is that it's his kind of place, that he would have enjoyed the ten tv screens and NFL betting system and cheap beer, friendly bar tenders.

Maybe, after we talk and sort some stuff out, I can head there, looking for the rickshaw driver, and some peace of mind. Because happiness is more about who you are, then where you are.