I Don't Really Want to Be Here

Recently I found myself at an airport and in need of a ride to my hotel. The last time I’d been traveling, I’d looked into the taxi vs. ride share prices and found, in the area in which I was, taxis were cheaper. So this time, upon having started my day at three A.M., my brain sluggishly instructed my feet to propel me to the taxi line, and without doing any research, I got into a taxi.

The driver was a big guy who was, of course, face timing in the blinding sun. I got into the cab, told him where I needed to go, and he continued to talk. I assumed he was talking to what sounded like his daughter until he said something along the lines of, “You not going to talk to me?”

Realizing he could be talking to me, I tentatively asked if he were talking to me. With a classic fat man laugh he affirmed he was.

My brain tried to formulate some sentences in response. He asked me why I was traveling. What I was doing. Then said I must live a glamorous life, with no husband and no kids.

I corrected him and told him I had a husband. He doubled down on the no kids part. I confirmed I didn’t have kids. I was both shocked and not shocked when he asked, point blank, “Why not?”

I am used to women having this genre of conversation with me. Some are interested, some need to defend their own decisions, some are nice, some are vulnerable, and usually I find the conversations with women about why or why not someone chooses to, or can or cannot have kids, to be fine. I don’t always love them, but I rarely walk away pissed the person needed to talk about it. Because that’s often the root of the issue. She needs to talk about it because it is affecting her, and my journey is just another guidepost to how things can be.

Great. Fine. I need that at times too.

But this decidedly unhealthy man who may or may not have been face timing while grilling me about an obviously hot button topic, was actually unique. The total lack of awareness about what he was saying was brazen and unexpected. I gave him a very slippery non-answer about the concept of family and how it can be defined however one wants it. I might have thrown the word ohana around. I might have told him that I can find meaning however I want. I don’t really know because while it was somewhat interesting the guy was so out of touch he felt it was okay to question a total stranger about it, I was uninterested in actually engaging with him on it.

The conversation stalled because I know a thing or two about verbal judo. Finally he said, “You know what I think is against God?”

It was at this point, I realized, not only was this conversation somehow getting worse, but he was taking me the long way to the hotel and charging me $4.00/mile to do it.

He didn’t wait for me to respond.

“I read on the internet, and I guess it might not be true, but I read it, and I think it’s bad. I read that they are taking people’s heads and spines out of their bodies and putting them into different bodies.”

“I read that the first face transplant was successful,” I said. “And that the woman was giving a new lease on life after a debilitating injury.”

“But the spine? That’s against God.”

“You know, it’s good to be back here,” I said. “I used to just live over there.”

He didn’t immediately respond. We were nowhere near the most direct route to the hotel.

“You lived down here?”

“Just over there,” I said.

“So you know you’re way around…”

“I do.”

We let that marinate between us. And he stopped talking. When I got to my destination, and my charge was nearly $20 more than what it should have been, I wasn’t surprised. But I also didn’t say anything.

He knew I knew. The kind of man who finds it okay to verbally dig into an unknown woman’s uterus does not like to having his duplicity exposed. When he took my card, he refused to look at me, but I looked at him. Directly and without shame. He pulled his head down and towards his torso and I continued my laser stare at the side of his face.

And in that moment, it was enough.