Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver: Night of the Vampire
Episode 7 in a series of true rideshare stories
He asks if I'm here for Christian. I tell him no. I'm here for Isaac. He starts screaming for Isaac, at every random person on the street, to let them know their ride is here. After a few minutes with no luck, he says, “There's no Isaac. If I give you $40, will you take me to Meridian?” I tell him sure, if he's got the cash, let's go.
“Whoa! Dude! You look like Morbius!” he says when he gets in.
I tell him I don’t know who that is and he explains to me that it’s a "badass vampire dude" from Marvel comics. I tell him I'm flattered to look like a badass vampire.
For his own part, this guy looks more like an extra out of a bar scene in a movie where a well-to-do businessman grudgingly returns to his jerkwater hometown and ends up learning valuable lessons about the struggles of the working class.
“Life is good!” he screams, hanging his head out the window, his long hair blowing in the night air. He sings along loudly with “It's the End of the World As We Know It”. It's hard to guess his exact mixture of "drunk", "crazy", and "eccentric" but he's certainly covering ground in all three circles.
He asks me, "Have you ever seen a guy on the street and you're just like, 'That guy fucks'?"
I say I haven't.
He says, "That's the vibe I get from you. You're a guy who fucks!"
I shrug, taking it as a compliment, though I bet if he knew of the infrequency with which I fuck, he'd be as sorely disappointed in that information as I am.
"Do you like silver?" he asks me at one point.
"Silver what?"
"Just silver. I like silver things. Just to hold them."
I tell him I don't really have an opinion on silver.
He hijacks my phone and plays some country song with a chorus about how "sun shines on a dreamer". As the chorus plays he tells me, "That's us, man! That's me and you!"
I get him to his house and he says $40 wasn't enough for that trip, but he can't find any more cash in his wallet. He tells me to come inside.
As you may have guessed, I have a rule about customers inviting me into their houses. That rule is this: Fuck it, let's go. I collect stories and ya gotta die somehow.
We go into his garage, which is set up as a lounge. Instead of looking around for money, he zeroes in on a dish that's being used as a catch-all for various junk, which he promptly clears out. He tries to pick it up and finds it's stuck to the table. He grabs it with both hands and manages to rip it free with what looks to be a lot of effort. He holds it out and says, "This is for you."
"Uh... Thanks," I say, taking it awkwardly.
He tells me it's 80% silver and that it's worth hundreds of dollars. In his next sentence he tells me it's 60% silver. It looks like it might have some silver in it. I have no idea. I'm not sure he does either. I take it anyway.
As I drive home, running through the story in my head, I suddenly feel like Chazz Palminteri in the final moments of The Usual Suspects, musing over small details that slowly click together into something larger that I didn't see when it was right in front of me.
He told me I look like Morbius (a badass vampire dude).
He told me I look like a guy who fucks (most vampires can’t fuck).
He asked if I like silver (most vampires hate it).
He said "Sun Shines on a Dreamer" was about him and me (most vampires hate sunshine).
He invited me into his house (the only way a vampire can enter).
He pried a silver dish off a table in his garage to give to me as a tip.
I have to wonder: What would this modern-day Van Helsing have done if, when he handed me that dish, I’d recoiled with burned hands and hissed like a wounded animal?
Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver is a series that tells true stories of my 10,000+ trips as a rideshare driver. I will post them every Monday.