4.97 Star Girl
Devan Wilson-Harper
A few weeks ago I had a dream that I ordered an Uber.
It was supposed to pick me up in the parking lot of my apartment building. Shopping carts took up yellow-lined spaces instead of cars. A single CVS bag floated about. Up on the third floor, my window looked over all of it, plus the green hills beyond. I had a sweet deal on rent. My walls were bare. Now it was two minutes away and my skin wore only lotion. Gooseflesh all over. Tall bald men watched me through the room’s open doorway, eating cereal with the milk poured first. I was crying and they just blinked and crunched. Then I was putting tights on, toes ripping the seams. Bare belly spilling over the waistband. One minute. So I messaged I’m so sorry I’ll tip really well and gripped the top of the ziploc without crushing the goldfish. The driver replied with a clip of Adele delivering a stellar performance of “Memory” from Cats and an image of a rose losing petals to the wind, text to the left whispering: as it is.
And then I woke up with sweaty pits and a slobber-crusted chin.
My best friend and I joke that she’s a magnet for peculiar senior citizens, and I attract the most thrilling Uber rides. These two qualities prove true the more you get to know us, arbitrary as they may seem. I am a soft believer in certain bits of the rhetoric tossed around in online manifestation communities; what you believe to be true and what you think about most will materialize in reality in one way or another. This is what sometimes brings about “luck,” I think.
The concept of ride-hailing apps is often a subject of thought for me. The seed was planted years ago; I would beg my mom to carpool in elementary school just to feel the hum of a different model of Honda, to look out at blurs of trees through cooler-tinted windows. Cars function as such liminal vessels.
I usually don’t believe in trying to figure out why a dream occurs or why it sticks till morning. Sometimes it’s obvious, but if it isn’t, I let it be until I naturally fall into understanding or until the whole production simply dissolves. To be clear, I’m not interested in deciphering this dream… but I am not surprised that I had it. I know why my brain ultimately deemed it worthy of remembrance– largely because of the following moments, my Top 5 Favorite Uber Rides.
Dinorah
I met Dinorah in Florida the summer after my freshman year of college. When she turned to smile at me from the front seat, she looked like a living ad for moisturizer or some face-lifting wrap device. It was jarring. Her astonishing symmetry aside, she was palpably warm and curious. She asked how my day was, how old I was, what I was studying. That’s when we started talking about art. Dinorah also loved Carravaggio, and she shared that her own work was inspired by his. I flipped through the brochure she passed to me: a picture of her and friend/mentor/Pulitzer Prize recipient Jerry Saltz, pictures of hand-arranged pixelated images of Kate Moss and Lionel Richie (also a friend)... on the final page was an obviously AI-generated image of nude young women in a scene of dynamic movement. So there, in the middle of I-75, Dinorah revealed herself to me as a transhumanist. Her eyes locked with mine in the rearview mirror. “It’s the future,” she said, walking me through her logic, her achievements as the editor in chief of a transhumanism-focused magazine, her pride as the mother of a fellow transhumanist. We exchanged numbers, but we haven’t texted since she sent me a link to a two-hour lecture titled “How Art Became Ugly” over a year ago.
Danny
Danny picked me up a week ago on Halloween. He was young, maybe seven to ten years older than me. I was running late for a train in New Rochelle and he was up for the challenge. He ran a few reds, but was real sensible about it; turned corners smoothly, but with purpose. We flew past groups of children in wings and stripes and glitter. I’m always a bit short with men I meet, and Danny was no exception. When we started talking about what I was studying, though, he lit up at the mention of art history. I thought of Dinorah for a moment. Danny prodded me for my opinions on architecture, and soon we were in a rhythm. He urged me to look up Obama’s presidential library; said it looked “hostile.” He was right. I told him it looked like a compressed cardboard box and he lifted his hands off the wheel in one big wave, shouting, “yes! Yes, that’s it!” Then he said he missed Italy, because he has cousins there and because networks of trains and cobbled roads let him wander how he pleases. He told me about the stars and clubs and mountains. “It’s not like New York,” he muttered. “I love New York, but it’s nothing like it.” We sat in silence for the last five minutes of the ride.
Jon Claude
A few hours after I said bye to Danny, Jon Claude picked me up from the Meriden train station. He introduced himself as Jon. I wished him a happy Halloween, but that was a mistake. “Wanna know what I am?” I didn’t reply. “I’m ANTIFA!” I politely laughed, furrowed brows invisible in the dark, but he assured me that this was serious. His t-shirt, though hidden underneath a green flannel, was a product of his own craftiness, originally intended for wear only at the No Kings protests. I mostly got away with soft “ohhhhs” and “mmmms,” but eventually he wanted to hear something from me. “Are you a political warrior?” I asked for a definition of the term and concluded that no, no I was not, in part because I don’t really think of myself as a warrior. “That’s a problem,” he went. By the end of the ride, he’d told me about his children, complimented my speaking voice, demanded I “cut John Mulaney some slack” on account of what he’s been through, and thanked me for making these drives easier.
Roy
Roy’s car was small and exceptionally low to the ground. Roy never stepped out, but I think he was the same. My friend and I barely heard his voice, if at all, but we did have a perfect view of his phone from the backseat. It sat perched on the dash mount, plugged in for eternal life. The volume was set to mute for passengers’ presumed comfort, and the brightness setting was high for our viewing pleasure. For all of the trip’s twenty minutes, a cue of early Justin Bieber music videos graced Roy’s phone. Tracks include: Baby, One Less Lonely Girl, Never Say Never. We identified each one as it started to play. Roy hardly looked up at the road, but his driving was well-mannered and rule-bound. I still wonder if it was divinely-guided; perhaps by Jesus, perhaps by JB himself.
Cherrae
Cherrae rolled up in front of my house in a grey Nissan with dents on the sides. Gene was running straight for him, paws sprawling in each direction across the lawn like a flying squirrel. “One second,” I told him between barks, but it took me several minutes to wrangle Gene inside. Cherrae glared from the driver’s seat. Once I squeezed in behind him, I realized he was listening to a new age spiritual Christian podcast called Majestic Life by “God Daily News.” A possibly automated male voice recited an excerpt from Jeremiah 29; apparently I must nourish my vision with positive thoughts, according to God and neuroscientists, so I might receive abundance. I remember wondering if Gene was in need of religious structure. A dog’s routine can often be so aimlessly monotonous, at least from the human perspective. Gene is either in daycare or at home, and all he does there is bop from sofa to chair to bed, toss a stuffed rabbit in the air, and grunt. I asked Cherrae if he had any pets. He didn’t respond. I sunk into embarrassment in the back seat, peeling a long strip of skin off my thumb. When we got to my destination– a concert venue, I think– I gave a hearty goodbye and thank you. Since then, my Uber rating has sat at a humble 4.97.