I sometimes imagine it as a single raindrop. If you pay close enough attention, I mean really focus hard, you can locate a single droplet several feet above your head and track its descent until it splatters onto the ground and disappears in a sfumato of colors and textures. It’s so brief, and there are so many other raindrops, that I would hardly consider it remarkable or even worth remarking on.
This is how I feel about brief encounters. The girl you pass by, walking her bernedoodle in the early morning hours, the sun still reticent. The cheerful bagger at the grocery store who seems to exhibit a strange pride in slowing you down. The Uber drivers, often enough trading time for these moments of connection as much as for money.
It was just shy of noon when I stepped into the dusty grey Tahoe. The driver was nondescript, a man in the most generic sense. Although how much can one really discern from the back of a head and the way it imposes itself on the neck and shoulders.
“Nice houses around here,” he remarked. It wasn’t so much an aesthetic observation as an in.
“Yep,” I said, “it’s a nice neighborhood.”
“You know it wasn’t always like this. I’ve been here since ‘96.” He turned his head back, making an appraisal, only secondary to his hope of being appraised. He looked to be in his forties, above average height, athletically-built, with an imperviousness to signs of middle-age strife. Was it because he had learned to cope or did he merely avoid?
“Huh,” I said giving him room to unravel.
“Well I, I was thinking about moving to this area, when I first moved out here, with my ex-wife.” He turned to face me again, flinty-eyed. “Isn’t that funny, my ex-wife?” he chuckled. “I’m just tryna make you laugh.”
I let out a laugh, for the plot.
“I didn’t like the way the houses looked,” he continued, “they were old.”
“So it was an aesthetic thing,” I said, following. “Where’d you end up living?”
“Oh up north, Desert Ridge area,” he said. “Of course, turns out it’s really nice here now. But at the time.”
He paused, and I was content to listen to the quiet hum of the air conditioning.
He broke in again, “I was with her for 24 years.”
I didn’t have much of a choice at this point. “How old are you?”
“61, if you can believe it.” And he sure as hell wanted me to believe it.
“Well you must keep yourself in good shape,” I responded.
“Yeah, best I ever felt,” he said. “You see, women, they just continue to go downhill. They get used up. Let me tell you something. Mind if I speak openly?”
I was caught between nagging curiosity and mild revulsion to what I would enable by saying yes, but I relented.
“I like women a lot, but I’m over all the bullshit,” he began. “All that, you know what I mean. I like to date younger, the physical stuff. That’s what I’m attracted to. But man, I just can’t deal with it anymore, you know?”
“I get it.” I didn’t get it. “But don’t you want to meet someone?” I asked.
“Yes, sure I do. But I’m happy to die alone. I don’t need anyone. And I hire a hooker now and then, does the job. Sex for me is a 4 now, used to be like an 8. Importance in my life.”
He didn’t need prodding at this point. “You know, Zach, I just. I have money and I, I do this to get out of the house. But here’s the thing. What I’ll do, and I know what’s gonna happen before I do it. The conversation will get to the point where she’ll ask what I do. And I say I’m an Uber driver. And you should see the expressions on their faces. They transform.”
“Right,” I said, acknowledging that I was still listening. “I know you said you could die alone, and your life is good, but don’t you think. Let’s say you found the perfect woman. Don’t you think that would be better, all else equal?”
“Yes, of course I do. I haven’t found her. But I know what I want and I’m not getting that. I need her to adore me. She needs to adore me.”
We were nearing my drop off point, but he wasn’t finished.
“It took my relationships to figure that out. My marriage. I cheated on my wife. She knew what she was getting into. I was a promoter, she knew the gig. I was constantly around girls. She knew. It was just sex though, nothing more. She asked me how I would feel if she fucked another guy, and I told her it wasn’t the same. It’s different with women.”
I stared out the window.
We were pulling up to my apartment. “Over near the circle, is that good?”
“Circle’s good,” I said as I reached for the door, amused and relieved.
Stepping out, I heard him call back, “Hey, Zach. Check this out.” He brought his fists above his shoulders and began moving his arms back and forth like a monkey, flexing. “Look at that, pretty good, right?”
There was nothing to see, but I didn’t say so. “Nice,” I responded, meeting his wild-eyed expression.
“I’m just tryna make you laugh,” he chortled.
I would take another Uber later that day, luckily with a different driver. The new driver took me through his life story, the amputation his son suffered from an electrical accident and the way he sends money to him in Guatemala, to support him and his two young daughters. It’s difficult to find work with one arm, but he’s trying. He also told me I should take more videos with the people I love, with my parents. Pictures are good, but it’s not the same. He was still lamenting the death of his mother.
As I stepped out of the second Uber, I thought about both these brief encounters. Like the single drops of rain, they had already vanished. Just as soon as they had come into my life, they had left.
To me, both of these people were drivers, taking me from one place to another. They told me about their lives, and I listened to them like you read a story. So so different did their lives unfold in all that time before. And to me, all of it amounted to the same. It didn’t much matter where they had been before they picked me up and dropped me off. And yet somehow, still, it was remarkable.