Everyone has a had a bad experience with Uber. My most recent bad experience consisted of a gay elementary school music teacher, a twenty year old drunk, and terrible conversation. The driver was in his forties and was a flaming homosexual, which prompted me to ask him if he’d ever been to pride before. He exclaimed ,“No, I would never, and you need to be careful!”. His tone suggested that he was genuinely scared for me. I wanted to ask what he had endured that made him so scared of pride; However, I refrained from asking him. I simply said that I would be careful and then continued scrolling awkwardly through my phone. It was while I was looking at my phone that I realized I had chosen Uberpool and we were on our way to pick up a fellow uber user. The girl that got in was a small white girl who was wearing basically nothing. Her cut off jean shorts that came to the top of her thighs, and the skin tight shirt that showed her belly, were clear signs that she too was on her way to pride. In contrast to her outfit, my awkward self had worn loose fitting jeans and a Goodwill golfers pullover. I had thought that the outfit was stylish, but when I got to Pride, I soon realized that I was nowhere close to showing enough skin. I looked at the girl and smiled and introduced myself. She looked at me with cold eyes and told me her name was Anna. After the introduction, she returned to her phone with no indication of further conversation. There is a set of unspoken rules that come with every uberpool ride: Never initiate conversation. Stare aimlessly at the same fifteen instagram pictures you’ve already looked at; If you’re feeling frisky, you can switch from Instagram to Twitter, but you always go back, just incase you miss an upload. Stick to your side of the car. And most importantly, get the phone charger first. I had already broken the first rule, and had no intention of breaking the others. I was reaching for the charger that the uber driver had draped over the center console when Anna snatched it up. My hand lingered in mid air as I looked at her. My face was a mix of astonishment, and defeat. Her face was full of satisfaction and glee; The face of a winner. I had already broken every rule, my phone was on ten percent, and I was bored, so I decided to try to incite conversation. This was when I learned that the driver was a music teacher at an elementary school.
It was also during this conversation that I learned that Anna went to GSU, was a poli sci major, and was an entitled b****. She talked about gentrification as if it were affecting her and the midtown apartment her mom payed for. I asked if she had a job and she said, “No, my dad said I should focus on school right now”. I asked if she was apart of LGBT community and she laughed and explained that this was just a reason for her to get drunk. She told us that she had just turned twenty. For her birthday a group of her friends had gone to South Carolina and gotten drunk and, as she put it, “did.. other stuff”. This binging led to a pact to stop drinking. After this she mentioned the pact three more times, trying her best to get either me or the uber driver to laugh at it. Neither of us did. The uber app told me that it only took fifteen minutes to get to pride, but I swear that uber ride lasted hours. When we finally arrived at Piedmont Park, I practically ran out of the uber. On my way in, I thought to myself, “Was the money I saved actually worth that?”