You Don’t Pick the Ride

I have a five-star rating on every rideshare app, and I want you to understand that I earned it the way I earn everything. Through cowardice, survival guilt, and tips I could not afford.

Because that little rating screen isn’t a review system. It’s a personality test.

And every time it asks me to evaluate a human being who just did something unhinged with my life in their hands, I fold like a beach chair and give five stars, because confrontation frightens me more than death.

Submitted for the record, in order of what it cost me.

The Kevin Administration.

I got into an Uber and immediately knew I’d made a terrible decision. Not because the car was dirty. Not because the driver looked sketchy.

Because the two women in the front seat had four phones, two iPads, and a full-grown boxer in the back seat, and somehow I was the weird one.

Four map apps running simultaneously. Google Maps arguing with Waze. Waze gaslighting Apple Maps. And someone, SOMEONE, had pulled up MapQuest, like we were printing directions for a Dave and Buster’s date in 2003.

Meanwhile one of the iPads was playing a full movie at IMAX volume. I don’t remember what it was, but I’m eighty percent sure it involved explosions, a Hemsworth, and a helicopter that was also somehow a submarine.

I should’ve left. Normal people would’ve left.

Instead I quietly buckled in next to ninety pounds of warm dog.

“Oh, don’t mind Kevin,” one of them said. “He usually sits up front, but he’s feeling antisocial.”

Kevin blinked slowly, like: I’m not antisocial, Linda. I just hate you.

So now I’m boxed in by Kevin and a Bluetooth meltdown. Kevin is panting like a furnace. The women are arguing over whether to take Vine or cut over on 8th.

Debbie, the passenger, tries to give Kevin a Cheeto. Brenda, the driver, smacks her hand away.

“He’s on a raw diet, Debbie.”

“Oh please, Brenda. He licked his own butthole this morning.”

Kevin eats the Cheeto.

Eventually we arrive. All four GPS apps ding at once like a sad a cappella group. Brenda nods in smug silence. Debbie says, “See?” Kevin burps into my lap.

I tipped forty percent out of pure survival guilt.

Cost to me: forty percent, and a shirt.

The quick ones, so you understand this is a lifestyle and not a phase.

The goose. Different city, different car, and in the back seat, where I was expected to also be, a laundry basket containing a full Canada goose. “That’s Gander,” she said. “Don’t feed him.” Ma’am, I’m not going to LOOK at him. I rode pressed against the far door while Gander shifted his weight and made a sound like a rusty gate that hated me personally. Five stars. “Clean car.”

The church forensics unit. A sweet driver in her sixties, on speakerphone the entire ride with a woman named Charlene, conducting a criminal investigation into who, at their church, was sleeping with whom. Names. Dates. Photo evidence at a red light. And then she muted Charlene, found me in the mirror, and said: “What do you think? Does that sound like something a DEACON would do?” I deliberated. I asked a follow-up question. I hold opinions about Deacon Ronnie to this day. Best ride of my life. Five stars.

The bong ambassador. Shared ride. A man got in holding, with two hands, with genuine tenderness, a four-foot glass bong. Not in a bag. Presented. He buckled his own seatbelt, and then he buckled the middle seatbelt around the bong. He safety-belted his glass son. When he got out he nodded at me and said, “Have a blessed day.” You too, man. You too.

Cost to me: nothing. These are the good ones. I would ride with all three again.

The Tactical Incident.

This is the one I owe you from the rose chapter. The ride that made the bar look calm.

Seven Jack Daniels deep, petals possibly still in my molars, here is what pulled up.

A man in what looked like a stock Dodge Charger that had been emotionally groomed by a nightclub. Neon underglow, pulsing blue, flashing with the music like the car was breathing in bass drops.

The driver is in his fifties, in full tactical gear. Bass Pro Shop meets suburban vigilante. Vest. Cargo pants. Ankle knife. Earpiece.

“You Brandon?”

“Yeah.”

“Copy that.”

He taps his earpiece three times and pulls off like we’re fleeing a sting operation.

Then a college kid crosses the street with a pizza box and gently taps the front hood as he passes. Nothing aggressive. A little hey, don’t hit me, I’m holding precious carbs tap.

The driver freezes. His grip tightens on the wheel. And then, very calmly, like a man narrating his own descent, he says:

“Who’s fuckin’?”

I have never heard anyone ask that before a fight. It sounded less like a threat and more like he was taking attendance at an orgy.

He throws the car in park, jumps out, and starts PACING, like he’s preparing for a duel or maybe a breakup. The pizza kid is long gone, blissfully unaware he just triggered a five-star-rated militia fantasy.

And I’m locked in the back seat, texting my son: “If I die, delete my YouTube history.”

Eventually he gets back in like nothing happened.

“You saw it,” he says.

“I mean…”

“He initiated.”

“Yeah, man. Absolutely. Totally initiated.”

We drive the last six minutes in silence. Well, he drives in silence. I panic silently while the underglow pulses with each beat drop like it’s trying to soothe him.

At my place I thank him like he’s a surgeon who saved my leg. He gives me a thumbs up and whispers, “Stay frosty.”

Five stars. What was I going to do, give the armed man four?

Cost to me: I lied to an armed stranger’s face to agree that a child with a pizza had committed an act of war.

The Lima Situation.

Early flight out of Cincinnati. Five a.m. ride to the airport. I doze in the back, and somewhere in the doze I register that we’ve been on the highway a long time.

A LONG time.

I open my eyes to farmland, and a sign floats past:

LIMA 54.

Lima, Ohio, for those without a map handy, is two hours NORTH of Cincinnati. The airport is twenty minutes SOUTH.

Now. Here is where a functioning adult says something.

Do you know how long it took me to speak up?

Forty minutes.

I sat there for forty minutes, watching Ohio scroll by in the wrong direction, phone at four percent, mentally drafting my obituary, he died as he lived, agreeable, before I finally, softly, like a child asking to use the bathroom, said:

“I’m so sorry. Is this… the way to the airport?”

He looked at the GPS, then at me, and said the sentence that still visits me at night:

“Oh! You’re the AIRPORT guy!”

I never found out who he thought I was. Somewhere out there is a man who wanted Lima and got an airport, and I like to believe he also said nothing, and boarded a flight, and started a new life.

I missed my plane. He took eighty dollars off. I gave him five stars and wrote, with my thumbs, at a gate, on standby:

“Very relaxing ride.”

Because it was, honestly. Once you accept you’re going to Lima, it’s pretty out there.

Cost to me: one flight, one meeting, four hundred dollars, and forty minutes of documented evidence that I would rather leave the state than tap a stranger on the shoulder.

And then the one that got me banned.

It started normal, which should’ve been my first red flag. Big, confident woman, cargo shorts, buzzcut, gives me a friendly “hey handsome” as I get in.

We’re vibing. She’s funny. We talk about dogs, potholes, how Cincinnati’s road system feels like a prank played by a drunk cartographer.

Then she turns onto the side street BEFORE mine.

I say, “Oh hey, actually I’m up one more block, just around the corner.”

She pauses. Smiles. And says:

“Oh, I know.”

Brain: how would you know that unless.

Then she hits me with it:

“I’m about to give you the best blowjob you’ve ever had in your life.”

I froze. Excuse me? At what point in our seven minutes of pothole banter did I signal yes, please seduce me in this crossover vehicle?

I stammered something like, “Oh. Uh. Wow, I’m good. Thanks. Are you… serious?”

She doubled down. “No. I’m serious. You’re gonna see what it’s like.”

“I don’t want to see what it’s like. I want to see… my house.”

The mood flipped like a light switch. Full emotional U-turn. She dropped me off with a dramatic sigh and the immortal words:

“I thought we had something.”

We had NOTHING. We had seven minutes of small talk and a brief silence while we passed a Walgreens.

I went inside. Sat down. Started processing the madness.

And then: DING.

Your Uber account has been suspended for sexual harassment.

I did nothing. I was the one trying not to get sexually harvested in a compact SUV.

Luckily, Past Me doesn’t trust strangers and sometimes eats trail mix out of anxiety, and Past Me had set up dashcam audio. I sent the recording. Uber reviewed it. Listened. Apologized. Reinstated me.

And then they told me the part that reframed the entire evening:

She’d done this before.

I wasn’t even the original. I was the SEQUEL.

Here is why that one comes last.

Because for about forty-eight hours, a system I had never once complained to had a file open with my name on it, alleging something I had not done, and I had to produce evidence about myself to get it closed.

And do you know what I felt when the email came in?

Not outrage.

Relief that I had a recording.

I have thought about that a lot. A man once assaulted me on camera in a snowstorm and a lawyer offered to represent me for free in a hallway and I said nah, I’m all right, and eight years later a rideshare company accused me of harassment in an automated email and my first emotion was thank God I can prove it.

That’s the whole condition. I will not make a claim. I will only ever mount a defense.

Every one of those drivers got five stars from me, and most of them got a tip, and I understand now that my ratings history is not feedback.

It’s a diary.

A long, glowing record of a man who would rather fund chaos than have one uncomfortable conversation.

You don’t pick the ride. The ride picks you.

And apparently I look like the guy who can handle it.

I can’t.

But I do.

Because Kevin is watching.

And Kevin believes in me.