What a weirdo! He is half an hour late in picking me up, starts driving in the wrong direction, and is he hitting on me? Nothing against homosexuals, in fact I hope I met the Fab Five someday (I need a makeover badly, free clothes wouldn’t hurt). But I have had enough adventure so far, or so I thought.

“YOU WERE BORN IN THE YEAR OF THE GOAT!” he exclaims, still staring at me and not looking at the road.

“Oh really, I did not know that”

I thought to myself. Ok, that makes sense. I am an Aires and aren’t we goats? I guess I am stubborn, or as I put it persistent.

“Do you want to look at some pictures” he asks me, still looking at me and not the road/cars ahead.

“Sure, why not?”

He expertly reaches over the front seat and brings out a leather satchel. I could tell he had done this many times before. He takes out some Walmart 75 cent folders and shows me a photo.

“See this? This is Mick Jagger. I took it in 1969”

Wow. I didn’t expect that. Maybe he was going to show me photographs of nude goats.

“That’s really nice” I say

“Oh yeahhhh, you like that?” he rasped, telling his old age.

Here we go!

He shows me several photographs in succession. Most of them Black and White and many of them guessing if I had not seen them before in LIFE magazine or in a museum. They were all dramatic portraits of people from all walks of life. People caught in time starting at me in a taxi.

“See this one, this is my father.”

I saw a black and white photograph of a jewish-looking man. He was inside a locksmith shop and the photograph was beautiful to look at.

“He died from a heart attack while trying to recover my camera. It was stolen and he chased after the criminal. On the way, he suffered a massive heart attack and died”

He quickly changed to the next picture, as if it were routine to him by now

“This is my mother, she died in my arms. In the same room, were I delivered my daughter”

Suddenly, he caught my complete attention. By now, I had told him where to take me. But suddenly it didn’t seem important. All I wanted to do was to get to know this man and to understand why we met now and what significance of it.

I forgot my destination and I forgot the dramatic events that had previously unfolded that day. I spent the next 3 hours driving North on the Turnpike to West Palm Beach, mesmerized with his stories and photographs. I shared some of mine with him and he was equally as interested.

He gave me his card and on the back it said Mangoman. I asked him why he called himself that.

“I am starving! I need to eat fruit. I am a fruit-eater, 80% of my diet was fruit.”

I noticed he ate 3 apples during the ride, while continually staring at me, and somehow navigating heavy traffic on I-95.

Yes, he was a starving artist. A tormented artist. But so were many other people I knew but none of them drove taxis. Then again, none of them were really pursuing their “careers” or developing their “talents”. Who was I to judge anyway?

Didn’t I chicken out myself a long time ago? Didn’t I sell out, like everyone else?

Maybe driving a taxi and talking about what you love to do or did wasn’t such a bad idea…

Coincidentally, I had my Chinese stamp in my rucksack. I took it out and noticed there was a Goat on top of it. I hadn’t noticed that before. I stamped the Mandarin equivalent for Joao on a small square piece of paper and wrote my email address and phone number for him. Maybe we would meet again and I could help him. At the time, I didn’t even know how.

I did recall meetng Alejandra von Hartz who had a art gallery in the Fashion District in Miami. Maybe she would be interested? But this guy was INTENSE. I could feel his desperation hitting me with his words. Sure, I was intense, too and agitated. But he was this tremendous life force, I could sense it. What a talent!

The ride cost me $191 that day but the friendship born was priceless.

Written by Joao Paulo Freire Paglione
Draft version/incomplete
Any comments appreciated