Driving Drunks.(The Talk of the Town)(Wingmen Driving Service)

At twenty-five minutes after ten on a recent Thursday night, a man came bounding off the SeaStreak ferry in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. It had been an hour since he boarded the boat, at Pier 11 on Wall Street, and, judging from his erratic stride, perhaps a few more since he stopped working and started tippling. The man raised a set of keys in the air and shouted, "Wingman!" Vince Falcetano, a junior at the University of Scranton, and a founder of the Wingmen Driving Service, stepped forward to offer his hand. "I'm just going to use the toilet," the man said. "I'll see you by my car. I'm in a two-seater tonight."

You can learn a lot about the social dynamics of a community from driving its drunks home in their own automobiles. Falcetano said that "cops just hate the SeaStreak guys," many of whom are bankers with sweet rides. (The man's was a Thunderbird convertible.) The Wingmen, in addition to Falcetano, include Norm Dannen (Fordham), Colin Keany (Brookdale Community College), and Zach McCue (Penn State), who all grew up on the same block in nearby Rumson. Only Dannen can drive stick, but they otherwise take turns playing chauffeur while the others follow in another car. The usual charge is twenty dollars, and the tips are often generous, even if Dannen was once made to perform a robot dance before collecting his.

The trailing car this time was a '91 Dodge Caravan--"Mom's car," Dannen said. While Falcetano endured a lecture from his customer about American hegemony ("The dollar fucking runs the world"), his friends recalled memorable clientele, such as the group of young mothers who requested a 3 A.M. pit stop at a greasy spoon and boasted of their various liaisons over cheese fries. Keany had recently driven a semi-comatose woman who asked, "Can I get out of the car?" (They were moving at the time.) His only directions had been to "make a left at the giant ...