Leaving the Party Early & Alone #4: You Just Can't Win
I went on my first date in months this weekend but I'm not going to write about that. I'm going to write about what happened AFTER the date.
It was a freezing night in Boston and my date and I had met in an area geographically close but logistically a pain in the ass to get to from my apartment. Because I received my tax refund earlier this week, I made the baller decision to take a Lyft both TO and FROM the date. The ride to the bar was fine--the driver was pleasant and courteous, asking me if the temperature was okay and making conversation about his other passengers and how much he enjoys driving for Lyft.
I only recently started using Lyft because I deleted my Uber app following the post-inauguration backlash against the company. Honestly, my decision wasn't 100% political--Uber had changed its app so many times that it was getting frustratingly difficult to use, and I didn't see any reason to remain loyal to a company that always seemed a little shady to me. I'm glad now that I made the change, after reading the allegations of sexual harassment at the company.
Which makes my ride home with Lyft after my date this weekend all the more disturbing.
After some confusion and miscommunication with my driver, Clarence (normally I'd change his name to protect his identity but nope--this is your warning--if you get a Lyft [or Uber, since most drivers use both services] driver named Clarence who drives a silver Honda, cancel that ride!), I finally located him and got into the car. He apologized for the confusion, saying he was having trouble because his phone had just died. He was looking at a map on a tablet, which he had plugged into his car's charger. He began to pull away from the curb and asked if I knew where to go. Confused, I asked him if the map on his tablet wasn't working. No, he explained, that was dead too.
Now, I probably would have been able to direct him pretty easily if I had been prepared to give him directions. But I wasn't prepared. I was cold and tired and flustered and just wanted to go home. I don't drive very frequently around the city, and when I do, I always use GPS. Beyond that, there's nothing that makes me more frustrated than a person who drives for a living asking their passenger, who is paying them, for directions. (Well, I guess there is something, but we'll get to that). But I wanted to get home, so I put my address into my own phone's GPS.
As is often the case with Google maps, it didn't work right away. In the meantime, Clarence was driving in the wrong direction and I was getting panicked and annoyed. When I was finally able to get the GPS working, we drove in silence for a few minutes, letting the GPS voice guide us back in a circle to the same place where we'd started.
Clarence then asked me if I was annoyed at having to use my phone to navigate. I explained to him that yes, I was, because I didn't understand why, as a Lyft driver, he was driving with both a dead cell phone and a dead tablet, and no sense of how to get around the city. Instead of saying he was sorry, he said "these things happen," and I replied, "Well it's never happened to me." He then began to berate me, telling me that I was a selfish and rude person, and that all he wanted to do was "help me get home safely." He went on a tirade about how much he loves driving and how he takes pride in getting his passengers to where they need to go and he asked for my help and he didn't understand why it was so difficult for me to give it to him.
I tried to remain calm but I was shaking from anger and fear, all the while completely cognizant that I was in the backseat of an angry man's car, hurtling down the Jamaicaway, and there was nowhere for me to go. I explained calmly that it wasn't my intent to be rude. I called him "sir." I told him that driving made me stressed and anxious. He told me he was going to give me the ride for free--not because he was at fault, but because he didn't want me to ruin his customer service record with a 1-star review. He made some comment about it was like "we'd been dating for thirty years" and I was nagging him about his phone. I said that was fine, but I'd never said anything about a 1-star review, and I was sorry I'd given him the impression that I was rude and "made him feel small" because his phone wasn't charged.
Because I didn't want to, couldn't, keep arguing with this stranger, I apologized, and then everything shifted and he was turning around in his seat to look at me, laughing, telling me I was "so funny" and then saying, "oh, so is this how we meet?" I asked him where he was from, tried to get him talking about normal things. When we pulled in front of my house, he clicked on the overhead light and got out a piece of paper and pen. "Hey, I want to make it up to you. I'm going to give you this ride for free, but I'm going to take you out to dinner too. What's your number?"
My mind raced through a thousand responses. I wanted so badly to look at him, yell "fuck off," and slam the door behind me. I wanted to tell him all the reasons why his behavior was inappropriate and offensive. But we were in front of my house and I was afraid he would follow me. He'd certainly presented himself as unhinged enough not to trust. So I just shook my head and tried, "No, Clarence, it's really ok. No thanks."
Obviously, this tactic didn't work. He kept insisting, telling me he needed to "make it up to me" and "take me out." So I smiled and did a little laugh and gave him my phone number--with the digits reversed. Then I told him to drive safely, got out of the car, and walked calmly to my front door, feeling relief when I heard him peal out of the parking lot. Neither of my roommates was home, and I was too keyed up to sleep, panicked with every strange noise from outside.
He didn't charge me for the ride, and I'm pretty sure it was so that I couldn't give him a bad rating or complain. I still plan on filing a formal complaint, but as much as I hate to admit it--I also feel guilty for complaining. I know, rationally, that what happened was in no way okay--not only did he fail to do his job well but he berated me, argued with me, and then had the gall to follow that up with asking me for my phone number, in front of my home. But...I also think, in his mind, what he did was no worse than catcalling a woman on the street (also awful) or asking a woman out at a bar. It probably didn't enter into his head how scary it is for a woman, traveling alone, to be in a stranger's car, at his mercy, and have him know where she lives, especially when that man has both yelled at her and asked her out.
I've been thinking a lot about gender and micro-aggressions and feminism and this whole experience just encapsulated, for me, what it's like to be a woman in 2017. We are supposed to feel flattered when men ask for our phone number, when they tell us we're beautiful, when they "joke" with us, when they openly stare us up and down. But it's not flattering--it's scary and confusing and makes you want to disappear. It makes you question if your skirt is too short, if you're being too nice, if you should smile less, but not too much less, because then those same men will call you a bitch, and you don't want that, do you?
The third episode of the sixth season of GIRLS, "American Bitch," which aired a couple of weeks ago, captured the nuances of sexual harassment so well--you should watch it, even if you don't regularly watch the show because it's a stand-alone. If you can't watch, Emily Nussbaum's review (as usual) hits the nail on the head (but contains spoilers, so if you plan on watching, watch first, then read).
Which is all to say--existing in the world as a woman is confusing enough without adding dating into the mix. Then it gets REAL confusing. I'm really tired.
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