Crocodile Racist

A few years ago, a man called Donal Ruane wrote a book called ''Tales From A Rearview Mirror'', a collection of short stories based around his experiences as a taxi-driver in Dublin. Let it be no reflection on Mr Ruane's efforts that I have not read this book, in fact his book is in the loftiest of company when I consider the books I have not read. It is not improbable that he or his kin will someday query their preferred search engine and land upon this text: feel free to take my ignorance as a back handed compliment.

The premise is that the spectrum of the city populace includes at its edges a class of spaceballs, fools, criminals, hookers, deviants, madmen, drunks, vomitters, defecators and fornicators - some of whom have cause to avail of a taxi service. Perhaps it was a creeping fear of seeing myself featured as subject matter in his book that kept me from robbing it from Easons.

Reporting on the antics of the misfits and misbehaved doubtless has the potential to make for an interesting read. Yet the seed of thought that began its germination within me was one of how the response to that book might read. "Tales From The Back Seat - Crazy Fuckers of the Dublin Taxi-Driving Scene".

As most people won't bother reading that book I have decided to spare myself the trouble of writing it. Nevertheless some exposition is required for the point which I will eventually make for you to disagree with.

The country was changing. For the first time since Henry VIII and his goons instigated their plantations, people were coming from abroad in large numbers to set up their lives in Ireland. We were, for once, stakeholders in a land of opportunity rather than emigration. Multiculturalism was on our doorstep, but of course there were pockets of doubt and scepticism at the new people and their new ways.


I was going to Dalymount Park, and I was behind schedule. A taxi was thumbed and boarded on the Malahide Road. The destination given, I clicked the safety belt home and began to text my estimated time of arrival to those whose company I was to share enduring a cold evening of offsides and throw-ins.

The driver may appear to readers as lazily drawn, but it is without exaggeration that I assure you he would have instincted the joyous feeling of early lunch in any casting director settling down for a day's auditioning of 1980's National Front caricatures. Shaved head - check, muscularly squat - check, darts player bling - check, swallow tattoo - but of course.

His big intimidating swollen bulb of a head looked at me through his rear view mirror. "Yeh going to a match?"

"Yeah", I answered, "Bohs and Pats". Mentioning the League of Ireland generally slays conversation with the chilling efficiency of a Sarajevo sniper, and I didn't particularly want to talk. A direct hit. He turned up the radio.

I'd make myself a warm favourite against most in a game of Beat-The-Intro. This was Crocodile Rock by Elton John, a cringeworthy orgy of nostalgia for 50's American diners, cars, jukeboxes, girls in cardigans that let you get to third base; maybe boys in cardigans for Elton.
   
I expected the driver to give this tune short shrift and perhaps load a screamcore version of "Deutschland Uber Alles" into his cd player. But no, he seemed pretty tickled by Elton's reminiscences of when rock was young. He didn't quite catch all the words, but he knew the tune and mumbled out some of the more clearly flagged rhyming couplets.

Feeling the groove, he then took a second shot at conversation, though it was clear his mode was to be more broadcast than dialogue. The topic a recent fare:

"I was going down Dorset Street and I saw these two jungle bunnies flagging me down. Big fellas. I pulled in for them and then they started this fucking unga-bunga jungle talking in the back. They're fucking everywhere."

I'm caught stone cold by this. Yes, I should have said, "I find your views distasteful Sir. Please pull over, I mean to disembark and do not wish to further give you my custom." My stance was unheroically that of a goldfish under aerial  bombardment: eyes open, mouth closed, hoping it ends real soon.

His salvos of bile pause to reload just as the Crocodile Rock is building to its chorus. He's at a fork in his thoughts, though sadly not near enough Dalymount for my liking. He screws his face in a contortion so his largered cheeks near consume his eyes. I'm waiting for an onslaught of maniac aggression to be unleashed. What is unleashed is the most misguided karaooke squeal of Elton singalong imaginable. 

Laaaaaa, la la la la laaaaaaaa.....

His shoulders rise around his ears like a diva bleeding her ersatz little heart out,

La la la la laaaaaaaa.....

he shakes his pasty cathedral dome skull from side to side, pleading a mercy from the overwhelming emotion Sir Elton has stirred in him,

La la la la laaaaaaaa.....


his right thumb slaps a snare drum on the steering wheel, his left the beats in between - it makes the inky swallows on his hands flutter in the cab like Elton and Suzie from the song jiving on the diner floor while their milk shakes are made.

The chorus ends. The maniac steps off the concert stage and back on to the soap box.

"I wasn't comfortable with them talking their jungle language and I could see them keeping looking at me. Don't get me wrong I'm ready if anyone wants to the act bollox, I keep this under the seat..."

While driving he reached under the seat keeping one hand on the wheel and one eye on the road. He produced a thick lump of wood on a chain and lifted it up to show me before looking over his shoulder to read my reaction. Seemingly he didn't trust the mirror any more, he wanted to look straight at me with utter disregard for his moving vehicle or those in its path. For all the inability to dance and supposed penile modesty, never in my life was I happier to have my soul cased in a white skin.

He turned his attention back to the road.

"Still it was getting to me, I got a bad feeling off them, so I saw this copper up near the traffic lights and I pulled over. I says to the garda that I was uncomfortable with the two fellas in the back - that they were up to something. The garda took them out of the car and that was that. Dodgy bastards aren't they?"

This again followed by the piercing falsetto Elton chorus in all its deranged glory. Who would have thought that such a hardened bigot could harbour a soft spot for the canon of a bisexual pianist?

Phibsboro. Like a remorseful client at the red light district, I paid my way and sheepishly got out of there.

The match itself a 2-2 draw. The obligatory abuse of opposition players resonates rawly around the sparsely attended grounds of the League of Ireland. A derby between Dublin teams, where players, managers and clubs ride the league carousel with the loyalty of a viagral mongrel is a perfect breeding ground for insular animosity.

On the days that I have risen from my armchair, and even on days when a microphone too near the stands records a profanity forever, I have heard players and managers (don't even need to start on match officials) insulted - sometimes with the aid of melody - on the basis of the following. The list is not comprehensive, merely a taster:

Drug taking
Drug dealing
Paedophilia
Infidelity
Being a Rapist
Having AIDS
Celebrations of a wife's accommodating manner
Theft
Receding hair
Excessive hair
Looking like an alien
Size of nose
Homosexuality


The more outrageous the abuse, the louder the approval from those near the source. On occasion - at different grounds, with different clubs - I have heard black footballers have some remark passed at their expense based on some thinly veiled references to the presumed background of their ancestors - not necessarily shouted for the player to hear, but for the edification of their fellow fans. Almost invariably this has been met with a self-policing response among the fans along the lines of ''leave the racist stuff out lads''. Never is it ''leave the paedo stuff out'', or ''leave the terminal disease stuff out''.

Others are probably different, but I would take far greater offence to most of the abuse in the above list than if someone made a barb at me based on my ethnicity. The kind of racism that I perceive to be behind the taunts of football fans is merely a malformed attempt at  humour to entertain their mates. It is hardly the work of a considered manifesto based on a fervent belief that our society should be ethnocentrically stratified. We are not talking about the taxi driving sociopath here - he is a sickening racist, others just make clumsy cracks based on race. Its very different.  

Yes, yes, you can't take these things lightly of course and the 'kick racism out of football' type campaigns are to be lauded, but I believe that both the extent and intent of racism in football is overplayed. I remain forever puzzled at how some people can question the parentage or sexual activities of a player, accuse them of the most serious criminality, wish a terminal disease upon them, and then take the moral high ground if someone should whisper a monkey noise. Funny old game.