Everyone piles in. The windows steam rapidly, so I open them. Which is fortunate, as someone farts. The car explodes with laughter and invective. And another fart, probably forced out by pressure upon the farter's abdomen. Now everyone is making jokes about the dinner eaten earlier, as well as those jokes, both homophobic and homoerotic, that any group of three or more straight males feels compelled to make whenever they're unusually close to one another.
Thus I hear about the sexual predilections of eight Irishmen in the space of 20 blocks. They chortle and tease while the one whose mouth happens to be situated directly above my ear, as he is draped across his fellows, asks me about driving a cab, how I like it, and so on. It's extraordinarily odd somehow, to be having this banal, quiet conversation in the midst of all that cheerful cacophony.
Finally we arrive, they get out, some of them requiring help as their legs have gone to sleep. As each of them wants to tip me for allowing such a ride, I do rather well.
