The Rideshare Chronicles: A Cis Het Man’s Crash Course in Queerness

When I first picked up Neal*, I thought I’d have little in common with the suited up cis white man who worked for a tech company.

An hour later, we were eating In-N-Out and talking about everything from our country’s quick fix emotional management approach to finding a balance between impactful work and a job that pays the bills.

“It’s so much a part of our culture—trying to make things go away before understanding them,” Neal had said. “Or without ever understanding them.”

Despite it being 1 in the morning (or maybe because the Friday night after-bar crowd tends to be a hungry one), Neal and I arrive to a long line of cars queued up behind the drive-thru.

“I tried In-N-Out for the first time a few months ago,” he reflects as we wait to order, “And it was phenomenal. My girlfriend and I recently moved from the East Coast, and we don’t have it over there. So it was a first time for both of us. Even my girlfriend who’s a total health nut—she runs cross-country and all that—makes exceptions for this place.”

When we reach the intercom, Neals rolls down the window. He orders a double cheeseburger and a Coke for himself, and fries and a milkshake for me. 

Sibling reflections

As they prepare our food, conversation turns to his siblings. They live in the Bay Area as well (while his parents remain on the East Coast). Tomorrow, Neal will be seeing his younger brother, who recently came out as gay.

“I think he knew back in college,” he reflects. “But he was in a frat and didn’t feel like he could be open about it.”

He expresses regret at having possibly pushed the “guy bonding stuff” too hard.  

“I remember I’d take him to bars to have ‘guy’s night’ super often. Because in my mind, that’s just what brothers did. That was how they connected. I’d encourage him to pick up on girls and all that, when we were there.”

He pauses, looking out the window onto the shiny yellow arrow on the In-N-Out sign in front of us.

“Sometimes I wonder if my trying too hard to have a brother-brother relationship with him—instead of just being there for him as a sibling—is part of the reason we’re more distant now.“

He opens his black leather wallet, thumbing through the bills, before closing it. Then he taps it against his thigh continuously as he processes these thoughts out loud.

“We’re making strides though,” he continues. “The other day, my sister sent a selfie. It was of the two of them at a concert with this guy he was on a date with. So that was cool—that they tried to include me. Maybe I’ll be invited next time,” Neal laughs.

“That could be you in the next selfie,” I gently and jokingly encourage, while also trying to be casual about it (so as not to get his hopes up).

“Life goals,” he replies, pumping a hopeful fist in the air.

Gay Talk Continues

Once we have our food, I fumble trying to one-handedly open the ketchup packet (while my other hand clutches the steering wheel). This results in ketchup squirting onto the adjacent passenger seat, which I make a mental note to clean as soon as I get home.

An unexpectedly sharp turn onto the freeway also sends Neal’s food flying from the seat to the ground. Luckily, he’s able to salvage it pretty quickly.

“Burger’s still edible,” he announces with jubilant satisfaction upon retrieving it.

For the next 10 minutes, a chorus of crunching and slurping fills the air. Straws squeak. Paper food bags crinkle. The thump thump thump of my car passing over the bumps and slats in the freeway becomes more audible.

When the symphony of feasting ceases, conversation resumes.

“So when did you know you were gay?” Neal asks me.

“Honestly, as young as 12,” I reply.

“Twelve’s young,” he comments.

“It is. But I wasn’t ready to admit it back then. Like, at all. Not even to myself. So I’d just write about it in my diaries, but like in code.”

“What does gay code look like?”

“Like, when I liked a girl I’d talk about how awesome she was, and how much I wished we were best friends. But I wouldn’t blatantly call it a crush.”

“Were your parents religious or something?” he asks.

“Oh, not at all. They’ve always been super accepting. I just already felt like I was different from the people around me. And I thought acknowledging something like this would just intensify that feeling for me even more.”

I pause. “How did your parents take your brother’s coming out?”

Before Neal responds, I watch as his last fry—one of those perfect ones that’s just the right balance between crispy and soft—disappears into his mouth. He seems to have saved the best for last.

“Let’s see—my dad said something along the lines of, ‘I’ve got 30 years left on this planet, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna spend it giving two shits about what gender my son sleeps with.’ My mom though, it was harder for her. Her reaction was more like, ‘This isn’t the life I imagined for you.’”

Neal looks out the window like he’s lost in thought. He bites at his straw, the way some people chew on cigars.

The LGBTQ conversation continues as we draw closer to his end point. Downtown San Francisco’s high-rises come into view while Neal speculates on what dating must have been like for gay people before the advent of social media.

Final musings

“Like what did they do?? How did they meet??” he wonders aloud with wide-open eyes.

He seems genuinely curious and intrigued, like these are questions he’s never thought to ask before (and I don’t fault him for this—Why would he have?).

Before getting out he quickly scans his seat and the floors for any remaining fries, explaining that he doesn’t want me to remember him as “that passenger.”

I reassure him that worse things have been done inside my car, and that a vagrant fry or two wouldn’t consign him to infamy.

Many rides remind me why driving for Lyft, despite its downsides and unglamorous aspects, can be such a unique, and at times even enriching experience.

It gives you the chance to talk to people you never would have otherwise. It exposes you to perspectives that fall outside of your daily orbit. It provides the opportunity to regularly overturn initial assumptions (which in my case had been “White tech bros and I probably don’t have much to talk about and will only ever be able to toss surface-level banalities back and forth”).

As I drive home across the Bay Bridge eating lukewarm fries, I think about how tonight’s ride in particular reminds me of this.

As it turns out, I don’t remember Neal as the sloppy passenger, nor as the guy who left soggy fries on the floor. Our rides does, however, register as both the longest I’d given up until that point, and by far one of the most engaging.

*Names changed for confidentiality