Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver: The Taylor Swift Conspiracy
Episode 11 in a series of true rideshare stories
I wait in front of her house until she comes running up the sidewalk from somewhere else, a middle-aged and disheveled woman who has that look about her, that one that’s tough to place, where something is unusual just behind the eyes, whether it stems from external substances or internal chemistry.
“Sorry, I had to go to my nanny’s house, because I sent my daughter over there and then I realized I sent her off without her coat. Can you believe it?”
“Well, at least she’s got it now,” I tell her as I begin to drive, taking her to a salon to get her nails done. She says she’s never tried this place but her regular place was closed and she desperately needs her nails done.
“My love life hasn’t been good lately,” she says, unprompted. “Especially since my last boyfriend ran off with Taylor Swift.”
I take it for a joke and I half-chuckle, but she appears dead serious.
“No, Travis Kelce,” she says. “He’s my ex-boyfriend.”
I nod hesitantly. I mean, the guy must have ex-girlfriends and there’s no reason one of them couldn’t end up in my car, but… something about the vibe of this woman—not just like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing, but like someone shoveled pieces from multiple puzzles into one box—it’s hard to believe her.
“Well how about that…” I say, trying to probe a bit deeper. “How’d you meet him?”
“We went to the same church. It was really sweet. Then he ran off with Taylor Swift and broke my heart.”
“Hmm. Well, hard to compete with Taylor Swift, I guess.”
“Oh, she’s awful. It’s just a publicity relationship. She’s actually married to Zac Efron and they have two kids, but she’s using Travis to help her career. It’s really unfair to Zac and the kids.”
There is a long pause. I nod. Yeah, something unusual going on in that head.
“I’m friends with Zac,” she says. “Because I wrote him fan mail back when he was in High School Musical and he wrote me back like, ‘You have no idea how much this helped me.’”
“Oh, that’s nice.”
I’m just along for the ride at this point, curious how deep this will go. I don’t mention that this woman was probably in her thirties when High School Musical came out and Zac Efron was a teenager, but it’s still not the least likely part of her story so far.
“He’s on my side,” she says, “but he has to stay with Taylor Swift for the kids, because he’s a good guy. She’s the worst. It’s all about her image. And she has sex for money.”
“Taylor Swift does?”
“Oh yeah, all the time.”
“For money?”
“Yep.”
“…Hm. I assumed she was doing all right financially. You know, from the music career.”
“Oh, no, she doesn’t write her own songs.”
“Ah, that makes sense,” I lie, as if whether she wrote her own songs would make the difference between ‘top tier pop star’ and ‘having sex for money’ for someone who can sell out 100,000 seat arenas and then release a concert into theaters and have it gross a quarter of a billion dollars.
“Yeah, she’s super phony,” she says.
“Wow. What was Travis thinking?” I ask, in my best gossipy schoolgirl voice.
“Well, it’s good for his career, too. He didn’t even play football when I was dating him.”
“At all?”
“Not that I know of. Maybe just for fun.”
“How long has he been playing football?”
“I have no idea.”
I can’t help laughing. For all the top secret gossip she is privy to, she has “no idea” about the one thing that could be ascertained from thirty seconds on Wikipedia. Not to mention, I have less sports knowledge than just about anyone, but even I am aware that you don’t just pick up a football and hit NFL level. You obsess over it for your entire youth.
“Well, at least Zac is a good guy,” I offer. “You gotta hold onto that friendship.”
“Yeah, I hang out with him a lot when they’re living here,” she says.
“In Boise?”
“Right.”
“Taylor Swift and Zac Efron live in Boise some of the time?”
“Yeah, most of the time. It’s where they raise the kids.”
“Really…?”
“Yeah, they don’t call themselves that though.” She tells me two names that she claims are their aliases.
“Wow, that’s nuts,” I say.
And it is. It is nuts.
“You’re just getting all the tea,” she says.
And now, so is the whole world! We’re gonna blow the lid off this scandal right now! Right here on Substack!
I drop her off at the salon and drive away, and it occurs to me that the fake names might be the names of real people in her life—the girl that her actual ex ran off with, and the guy who that girl is married to, or something along those lines. I start to see two pictures: one is of this woman’s personal life, with a boyfriend from her church who left her for someone else, a trauma amidst a life that’s going off the rails; and the other picture is an escapist fantasy based on popular culture, watching Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce on the news and revisiting comfort movies like High School Musical from when life was easier. And in her head, whether she believes it or whether it’s a lie for attention, the two pictures have melded into a single narrative—a glamorous scandal linking to a local conspiracy with her at the center.
Maybe.
Or maybe, like I said, she is two sets of puzzle pieces in the same box, and the creative in me wants to put them together anyway.
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.