Misguidance Counselors: Uber Rating
by Sam Beasley
Campers!
How is your gut health? No no. We know you all drink kombucha and are experimenting with Activia after reading our first issue. We mean, do you trust your gut? When you see something, do you know if you’ll say something? If your Uber driver gives you only one star because you asked for his aux chord to play “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” by Celine on repeat, do you know whether or not you’re a bad person?
In this issue, Sam explores how dating apps have eroded our instincts. Specifically how to navigate the anxiety-ridden task of finding a man, in a world of split-second judgements, when you’re only a smoll, little dilapidated shell of a human.
Like, share, and subscribe! And thanks for getting lost with us!
LYLAS,
Misguidance Counselors
I handed a friend of a friend a mask because the Uber I ordered was pulling up. He didn’t immediately take it because he “was fine.”
I pressed the issue. Gently, because things had ended that week with his live-in girlfriend. But he had taken my last edible earlier, then minutes later told me about the stockpile of his own he had with him. So, while I enjoyed him well enough, he was not fostering much trust.
Craning backward to politely check on him, his bare face confirmed my suspicion that he wouldn’t wear the required mask in my Uber. So, I scolded him. Snapping about my Uber rating’s recent drop to 4.8 and his flippant, selfish behavior while someone else’s rating was at risk.
He slouched in the shadows of the backseat where the driver would never see his bare face. Though armed with deliciously unimpeachable righteousness, I heard myself and wished a familiar wish that I could, just once, be cool about anything. He ignored me like most straight guys tend to do.
The following weekend I happened to see this straight guy again. All night he attentively made sure my wine glass never passed half empty.
It was May, early wedding season, and he was, coincidentally, a cater waiter at my roommate’s reception. He decided to pick up catering gigs to distract himself on weekends and his first shift was exactly the last place anyone would want to be right after a breakup.
One of my best friends began referring to him as Armie Hammer, conjuring Hammer’s Call Me by Your Name performance to my Timothee Chalomet (like I could ever be so skinny). The comparison stemmed from the straight guy sharing a somewhat similar impenetrable stare to Hammer, a known cannibal I’d still go home with. But I, sorry to say, was not going to go home with this man - a decent seeming straight guy who I had met on a bad night.
That best friend, often described as a true Georgia peach, always has flattering fantasies about my romantic life. I am historically inclined to indulge them.
To this day, we reference this one Labor Day weekend from our early years in NYC. We were not making enough money to have plans for Provincetown or Fire Island, and I picked up a cat-sitting gig in FiDi thinking I might as well earn some spending cash.
When the owners wished me a nice “staycation” as they handed off the keys to their apartment, I understood they had no intention of paying me. I ended up over-drafting at one of the two grocery stores in the area, both carrying exclusively $16 brie and San Pellegrino.
My Georgia Peach friend sat antsy as we stared at the three-legged cat while nibbling on cheese and drinking the Grey Goose I found in the back of the otherwise empty fridge. He tried unceasing tactics to convince me to go out and when I finally succumbed to his efforts when he assured me we could find guys to buy our drinks for us. So we headed to the new bear bar in Hell’s Kitchen.
A bald man, perhaps approaching 60, cleaned my glasses instead of buying me a drink. When he replaced them on my face, I was able to see seduction in his eyes and realized that Peach had disappeared.
I needed to go home. But unable to immediately find Peach and was inebriated, I decided best practice would be to dance by myself until he found me. I swayed with a floppy head and cricket arms on the crowded dance floor, hypnotized by the disco ball.
I had a vision. Peach leaned against the bar surrounded by hot, straight, Southern frat dudes adorning oxfords of pastels and the whole thing looked like Botticelli’s Venus. He tossed his head back in bliss as the bros awaited what he would say next.
I loved seeing Peach like this and I wanted to enter the mirage with him. With dead eyes and sharp elbows, I forced myself through the sweat-soaked backs like the insufferable 20-something I was.
I shouted “Hi!” over the music and the vision did not dissipate.
“There she is!” Peach announced me to the Oxford Boys. They made amicable grunts.
“Do you guys know where you are?” I asked.
Frequently bear bars, such as that one, are decorated similarly to gastropubs. I worried they misunderstood the exposed brick. The Oxfords communicated comfort with the location. Why wouldn’t we be? It was their friend’s bachelor party. I accepted that they were ending their night out while visiting the big city with a progressive goof.
Peach and the tallest of the Oxfords introduced me to a friend slumped against the bar. I slopped a disdainful look at Peach; I was being put on nanny duty.
The drooping Oxford perked up in what I attributed to SEC-trained manners. Coming to his full height, he pushed his sandy-blonde hair out of his tanned face. He looked as if he could star in an early Disney Channel Original Movie about an obscure sport, like inline skating or bowling. He was the messy friend but also the hottest friend. My eyes widened in terror, and I remember sticking my hand out for a formal handshake. I don’t know how to talk to hot people.
I wished he’d ignore me like other straight guys, but he was determined to maintain the obligatory conversation and with eye contact. When he spoke, drunker than I was, he had to practically lean against me. I kept trying to take sanctuary in Peach and Tall Oxford’s conversation, but I was trapped by my own Oxford’s southern hospitality.
My store of niceties was exhausted, so I gave into some Midwestern directness.
I yelled into Hot Oxford’s ear, “I think our friends have us babysitting each other.”
He smiled at this. A great smile. I became thankful that my glasses were clean. Unable to go home, I sipped the whiskey diet he bought me and took in the view.
Moments or an hour later, Peach and Tall Oxford let us know we were leaving. The full gaggle of Oxfords led the way out. I finally got to ask Peach why these bros were at a gay bar.
“It’s a gay bachelor party.”
“But they’re in oxfords!” As if I, being a homo, didn’t own oxfords.
Peach hailed a cab but didn’t get in it with me. I rolled down the window, panicked.
“Where are you going?” I could barely afford cab fare even if we split it.
Peach explained he was going to Gramercy with Tall Oxford, and I would share the cab home with Hot Oxford. I assured them I could keep partying, too. I wasn’t going to chaperone this drunk stranger back to his hotel.
Peach kept persuading me, “You’re going to the same place.”
Weary, I rolled up the window. Hot Oxford got in the car, and I stood my ground against the unnecessary touch of his manspreading legs. I resolutely informed the cab driver there would be two stops.
“FiDi… and where are you going?”
A little hurt, Hot Oxford said, “You don’t want to come over?”
I didn’t respond. He said I was cute. We made out until he stopped us to pay for the cab. It really was a gay bachelor party.
We plopped out onto one of those magical West Village half-streets that had seemingly not existed seconds before. A door, with red and white flaking paint, appeared in the brick between the buildings just for us to use.
He pushed it open. But this wasn’t a hotel. He was entering the door so drunken and bold.
“Do you know someone who lives here?” He looked back at me confused.
“I live here.”
It occurred to me that no one said the Oxfords were from out of town. Another of my erroneous assumptions.
He took my hand and led me through the vestibule into a large courtyard. I looked up at a fully grown tree with twinkle lights. I attempted thoughtful observations about the appearance of a large secret courtyard in the middle of the Village. Stuff like “Scottish musical” and “Dr. Who’s police box". He smiled again, made a few “uh-huhs”, and pulled me along to the stairs at the far end of the brick path.
Making out the entire way up the stairs, we undid buttons preemptively until we got to his apartment door.
We busted into the apartment. Immediately, we were on his bed. I heard him make a growl and smile against his mouth. Then his lips went limp. He was snoring.
I found my smudged-again glasses, clumsily dispatched seconds earlier, to confirm that he was asleep. He was somehow pretty while snoring like a trucker, which annoyed me slightly more than his falling asleep.
I sighed - leaning back on my arms next to him on the bed and taking in the apartment. It was a mustard color. It made me wonder if he could be convinced to paint.
While doing quick algebra to figure out how much money he must make to afford this sizable West Village studio with a loft space, I thought for less than a second, we’ll put the bed up there when I move in. I shot to my feet in private embarrassment. A whiskey thought, I assured myself.
I shuffled around in a circle trying to remember if there was protocol to leave this situation (God forbid I be gauche at 4:00 a.m.). Still, I was distracted by a large collection of books stacked aside his fireplace. A tower of travel guides and language books. Then I saw the long window ledge full of framed pictures of him around the world.
Tiptoeing the apartment’s perimeter, I discerned that he was from California, not the South. An Ivy League graduate bringing clean water to third-world countries. He was just perfect. Better than my assumptions. But was he my boyfriend?
I froze with one foot on the ladder to his loft and thought, Time to go home…
“Hey. So sorry. You fell asleep.”
He struggled out his apologies through the depths of sleep, taking longer than comfortable to remember why I was in his home. He insisted that I should stay the night with promises of a fun morning. I futilely attempted to explain my obligations to the three-legged cat.
I had written my number on his hand. He fell back and said, “Good.”
We pecked and, only minutes after arriving, I made like Vanessa Carlton. Downtown.
I woke to Peach’s call. “Girl, we met the men of our dreams…” He sat petting the cat 20 minutes later. He, too, having had a lovely night with his Oxford advised, “We cannot fuck this up.”
I, maybe still a little drunk, did not disagree.
We shared a few weeks of texting back and forth, fruitless attempts at a date, and mild social media engagement. Without much else, things fizzled out duly and affably. My night with the hottest Oxford was nothing more than a quintessential, novelty New York encounter.
Peach met a different young man a few years later, during the spring and summer that all my close friends and roommates coincidentally met their significant others. All still together. As you know, I’d eventually attended some of their weddings. Even Tall Oxford reportedly was with someone we knew vaguely in that New York way you distantly know people.
I redownloaded dating apps in the fall.
Tinder profiles made my teeth itch. Like the inclusion of a type of food in a bio as if it were a personality trait. Not that mine was any less trite: 5’11”, 5.0 stars on Uber
A match sent a message.
“I thought my 4.9 Uber rating was impressive.”
Sitting on the sectional couch in my Harlem apartment, next to a configuration of my roommates and their boyfriends, I clicked out a response. Their presence is likely why I was wooed by flirting that included heavy Harry Potter references. But he said “lol” to my jokes, which is all it really took at that time.
“East side, dive bar, where you at?” he asked.
“What?”
“It’s a Taylor Swift song.”
So lame. It was, however, the only song of hers I liked. His favorite. This was, to my surprise, his way of asking me out. He even offered to come up to Harlem for me, but he lived in the West Village. Which I decided was the perfectly cute setting for our first date.
Not yet knowing his profession, I gave him the moniker Astronaut Guy (in homage to Liz Lemon’s Astronaut Mike Dexter) implementing the age-old technique for dampening preemptive attachment and volatile imaginations. On the train ride down from Harlem, I oscillated between deciding the seating chart for our wedding reception and which would be the most glamorous drink order when I was stood up.
As I emerged out of the 14th Street station, Astronaut Guy called me. My hand had a small adrenaline shake as I answered.
His voice surprised me; it was higher than mine. Which is notably high. He said the bar we had picked out was packed and loud. He’d prefer someplace better for having a conversation with me. Which I liked.
I told him I saw him down the block. He was skinnier than I anticipated and tan for October. After hugging his frame in greeting and feeling enormous, he told me he knew a place to go instead.
We descended into the winding streets of the West Village forest. Jogging diagonally across an intersection, we came to the entrance of somewhere I would have assumed was fictional: a chain wine bar in the West Village.
The bar was desolate inside. I looked outside at the still daylight, reassuring myself that the earliness of the fall evening was cause for the emptiness, instead of the bleakness of a sad bar the West Village rejected.
I prepared myself for a half-voiced date easily eavesdropped on by the bartender, agreeably saying, “This place is great!”
He implied he wouldn’t have chosen the bar but would suffer through it for me. I decided not to raise that he had chosen this dejected wine-McDonald’s. Thankful that Peach was on call to stage an escape.
Sidled up to the bar, he asked me about my day. I’d now have to make the fatal admission of my profession: Actor. At least revealing I bore the black mark of gay Manhattan singles would effectively end this date.
I told him I had three auditions that day. He was eager with questions. So, I indulged him with jokes about the fulfillment of singing “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” across a tiny room to other adults seated behind a folding table.
There were no first-date stalls and jolts to our conversation. I hoped our bartender noticed. I made him laugh loudly with stories about a bad college roommate. I even showed him her Instagram. She was a good artist, and he asked if she might be interested in doing the cover art for the book he just finished writing. I could see myself ending up with a novelist.
He was excited to take me skiing. I told him I’d gladly hang back in the lodge.
“Après, all day,” he joked. He was happy I’d be there to greet him when he came in from the slopes.
We became lightly tactile; the unnecessary touching beginning. I would spend Thanksgivings with his family he said. If he was planning for our future together, I thought it considerate to resume work on the guest list for our wedding in my head.
At Thanksgiving, he explained, I would meet his family’s psychic. (At this point, I bet if he told me where to hide the bodies, I’d grab the “His and His” shovels.) The psychic once told him seeing a red bird is a sign of someone who has passed trying to connect with the living.
“I’ve heard that, too!” I exclaimed. Sharing that I went with a friend to get a tattoo of a cardinal after her grandma died.
I think the bartender gave us the last call at hour five of our date. Our laugh that “the check was fine,” was an admission that we could have stayed longer. He asked if I wanted to split the bill. He asked if I wanted to walk him home.
I walked him to his apartment, next door to a lesbian bar, The Cubby Hole. I told him every time I went there, I left with a great story. He told me it was his Cheers. It could be our bar. It gave me butterflies. So did his smile. It was a great smile.
We got to his steps and said “Well, good night.”
He kissed me on his West Village stoop.
He quietly asked if I wanted to go upstairs. I realized I was holding his face in my hands, becoming too aware of them for graceful removal.
I told him I better not, knowing we would have many nights of going up to his apartment, going skiing, and going to see the psychic.
I looked back to wave at him before I rounded the corner of the Cubby Hole and my phone buzzed. It was a frantic email from one of the theaters I had auditioned for that day. They had been trying to contact me but repeatedly misspelled my email address. I pulled over on the sidewalk and, very tipsily, read that they wanted me to see me at 9:00 a.m. A very soon time to be functional.
My phone began to ring in my hand. Why was Peach was calling so late?
I accepted the sudden inundated by the rest of my life and answered. I hadn't needed him to fake a hospital visit, so he assumed no news must mean good news.
I told him it was the best first date ever. Just perfect. I glanced over at those picturesque, romanticized, fabled West Village buildings. A red and white peeling door appeared before me.
“It’s that door from that Labor Day…”
The ephemeral door and courtyard had become part of our NYC lore. Had I finally found my gay little Brigadoon again? Are all Brigadoons gay? Peach wanted a picture.
“It has been here all along between the Cubby Hole and Corner Bistro! I must have walked past it a thousand times.”
I found what I was looking for. It was a sign. I trotted over to 8th Ave and got a car home.
About a year later, I saw Astronaut Guy in a West Village coffee shop. I got nervous.
Following our date together, I booked the show at the theater that had emailed me. After a week of second-date planning and suffering through being called “Cutie Claw” (because I’m a “Ravenclaw”) I texted him the news and my subsequent sabbatical from the city. I anticipated a “congratulations” from him or an urgency to go on another date.
“You’re moving?”
“Just for a few months.”
No response. None to my follow-ups either. Just perfect.
I was embarrassed I hadn’t kept his interest and didn’t see reason in saying hi at the coffee shop. Plus, I had read his goddamn book when it came out thanks to an NYPL targeted ad. Of course, I had!
In it, he had written about that Taylor Swift song, “Après, all day,” and his psychic’s red birds. I wondered if had used our date was his idea of a test audience for his material. The book was good. I felt gross. I made my perineal wish that I could’ve been cool, just once, and not read it.
And when I remembered my now unimpressive 4.9 Uber rating, I knew I shouldn’t approach him.
I had taken to checking my slowly descending rating trying to remember which innocuous 15-minute car ride with me warranted only one star. I would think I’d have to scream, threaten, or vomit on the driver to earn such ratings. Which never happened, so it felt irrational. More irrational than planning a wedding with a perfect stranger. More suspect than squeezing out some divine meaning from a neglected door. A driver with whom I've exchanged less than a dozen words should not be able to decide if I am a 5-star person or not. A guy with whom I went on a 5-hour date is not entitled to treat me worse than a one-night stand or a straight guy I barely knew.
Still, when he left the coffee shop, I started picking on myself. Is this what I say to taking chances? So, what if he is a flake and a jerk? That has never stopped woman nor bottom!
I sent him a text. He didn’t remember me. I reminded him. He stopped responding. An anti-climactic end and I just hated that. But what did I expect? Believe people when they ghost you the first time.
Uber Rating by Sam Beasley, @sbeas