The Joy of Uber Driving

by Yamini Redewill

  Finally, after a year, I surrendered to the LSD temptress. Patti and Dick abstained so they could monitor me and allow me to feel completely safe while I went on my trip. Nothing frightening happened; I was just completely immobilized as I watched a kaleidoscopic show of sparkling colors. My spiritual takeaway involved seeing myself in a flowing dress of rainbow colors, floating down a giant staircase. I had a clear realization that this represented my very essence as a multifaceted artist descending from heavenly realms and merging with earthly me.

  Coming off the trip, we went to Denny’s for a snack around 2 a.m. A couple in the next booth was in the midst of an argument. Their heads began growing like big red balloons. Their eyes bulged out and their tongues wagged through bared teeth while their necks grew long and skinny, balancing their huge balloon heads. At the same time, another cartoon couple walked past our booth, looking a lot like Frankenstein walking stiffly beside a gal with foot-long eyelashes. I stifled a mega-decibel laugh so as not to draw attention to my chemical high.

  PING! After a five-minute wait and no response to my call, a woman finally appeared. She walked slowly toward the car and barely acknowledged that she was Pauline, the one who’d called. As we drove to Petaluma, I noticed that she reeked of whiskey. She seemed very sweet but disoriented as she rambled on incoherently about nothing in particular. Her energy was extremely low as she slumped against the corner of the car.

  I tried to bring up subjects that she might be interested in, but nothing seemed to stick. From my rearview mirror, I spotted a perpetually worried look. She admitted that she had been drinking and was embarrassed. Finally, she told me about her big problem involving a guy she couldn’t get rid of who had been living in her house for years. She recounted the times she’d tried and how he’d twisted her efforts against her and had threatened to call the police on her.

  Her story made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end; I couldn’t resist. In a firm voice, I said, “Pauline, you need to take back your power. Did you know your drinking is robbing you of your power?”

  She sat quietly for about five minutes and, upon reflection, replied, “That is really good advice. Thank you. I will do that.” As she opened the door to leave, the color had returned to her cheeks. Her eyes were brighter and I caught a glimpse of a smile on her face. I reminded her that she had to stand up for herself and that she had every right to call the police and have him evicted. She thanked me again, and I couldn’t believe how quickly she had seemingly transformed. It was obvious she was ready to hear those words to finally change the trajectory of her life. Her spirit recognized the truth and came alive. Of course I have no idea if it actually did change her life. Perhaps it was a good start in that direction.

  As I drove away, I began to realize how important this Uber job is. I am like a social worker on wheels, and my passengers are also my teachers. There was no agenda or plan on my part to counsel this woman. The experience happened organically and spontaneously. The words issued forth unexpectedly, much like the time I yelled, “I can’t be anything to anyone until I love myself” to my grandmother. What I told this woman I was also saying to myself. It came from the very depths of my being. Somehow her story reminded me of Rasputin, when I also needed to learn to stand in my power. That is why I recite my intentional prayer every day before Uber driving. This practice effectively sets aside the ego, which allows Spirit to do the work through me to reveal the truth and to heal a situation.

  Among all the memories of my time with Patti and Dick, one of the most memorable involved the night Patti and I went to a club in Ventura. We were sitting at the piano bar listening to Bobby Troop when she suddenly disappeared. An hour later she returned and told me she’d met Jonathan Winters, the top standup comedian of that time. Patti had engaged him in a conversation in which she’d pretended they’d met before at a “make-believe” party. Then she talked Jonathan and the Bobby Troop trio into following us back to our house after the bar closed. They stayed until dawn, with Jonathan recounting the amazing stories of the time he’d had a mental breakdown and what he’d experienced while in custody.

  As the story goes, “In 1959, comedian Jonathan Winters reputedly climbed into the Balclutha’s rigging (in SF harbor) and refused to come down, shouting to the police gathered below: ‘Where am I from? I’m from outer space, man, outer space. I’m the man in the moon. I’m John Q. What’s it to you?’ Winters was eventually captured; as he was dragged off the boat, he yelled ‘this boat is a fake, it’s got an outboard motor on it.’”*

  *Digital Archive at Found SF.

  Jonathan recounted the whole story in his own words and added the fact that he was also “butt naked.” He said they put him in a strait-jacket and locked him up in jail. He was later transferred to a convalescent home, where many confrontations with fellow inmates and orderlies ensued. He entertained us with poignantly hilarious stories for hours.

  Finally, the day came when Patti and Dick decided to move to Vegas. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. I didn’t realize, until then, how dependent I had become on their friendship. They were the center of my world.

  Although we visited each other a few times in Vegas and at my new apartment in Hollywood, I became a Buddhist to fill the hole they left in my heart, so I was no longer available to them. My time and energy now revolved around my new Buddhist practice instead of around Patti and Dick.

  Basil also lived in Vegas, and I called him up once from Dick and Patti’s house, and Dick took it upon himself to listen in on my conversation from another room. This was very distracting, because I could hear his breathing and clicking tongue after some of my apparent faux pas. Dick was concerned that I was being a pushover and tried to coach me, but I was humiliated and angry and unreceptive to his suggestions. I probably should have listened.

  In retrospect, the person I was during my time with Patti and Dick is repugnant to me. I was the perfect lapdog girlfriend to Patti. I guess that comes with having zero self-worth. We kept in touch from time to time, and ten years later, she invited me to her new home in Ojai after her marriage and subsequent divorce from Dick. It was a real eye-opener when I found that another obsequious lapdog girlfriend had replaced me. It was like watching a movie of how I used to be with her. How often do we get a chance to see a reenactment of our life?

  During the editing process of this book, I hunted down my old friend Dick who is now eighty-seven and living in Florida. He filled in some blanks for me and confessed he had been a real jerk to Patti, who died seven years ago of emphysema. She actually died of a broken heart, because he had cheated on her during their marriage, and she had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized. According to Dick, after their divorce she associated with a group of lesbians and never had another boyfriend and never got married again. Dick told me that he, on the other hand, has led a charmed life with another woman, his second wife of twenty-four years. We ask ourselves, where’s the justice? This story may be all too common among women who “love too much.” Patti demonstrates the very real danger to our psyche when we abdicate our personal power so completely to another. Her attachment was like dead weight around his neck, and her expectations brought nothing but disappointment and ruin. I felt so sorry for this woman who I thought had such great potential. But isn’t it interesting that I was to Patti what she was to Dick?

  I WILL SURVIVE

  Goddammit!

  PING! A call from a woman named Elizabeth had me pull up to a tall young woman who stoically stood like a statue with a faraway look in her eyes and her long chestnut colored hair blowing across her face. She didn’t move for a full minute until I beeped my horn. She suddenly came alive and nodded apologetically upon entering my car. Brushing her hair aside, I noticed her mascara was smeared. She pulled out her compact and quickly dabbed her eyes with a Kleenex and proceeded to powder her nose. After applying fresh makeup, she sat back with a sigh, ready to take on the day. But her shoulders started to shake as she broke down in tear
s again. After a while, I asked if she’d like to talk about it. She looked up at me through my rearview mirror and took a moment to contemplate whether or not to trust a complete stranger with her story. (I wanted to tell her that what happens in an Uber, stays in an Uber.)

  Slowly she found the words: “He’s fucking married to a GUY!” That brought a torrent of uncontrollable sobs. In between sobs her squeaky voice attempted to tell the sordid details of their affair. “I knew he was married, but he swore he loved me and promised he would divorce her. But it turns out she was a he, and he had no intention of ending his marriage to HIM! I don’t get it. I just don’t get it!”

  I had nothing to say, so I let her cry her heart out for the rest of the blessedly short trip. When we got to her destination, I reached around and looked her squarely in the eyes and said, “You are a very beautiful woman who deserves to be loved by a great guy. He’ll probably come when you least expect it. Be open and ready for that. Don’t let your broken heart block your chances for loving again. OK?” She took a deep breath and thanked me as she opened the door. She hurried off and then turned for a brief moment to give me a grateful nod.

  Deep in debt and feeling increasingly unworthy of love, I traded my Ford Mustang in for a cheaper Ford Pinto to take me to the next stage of my life—a theater in the round where I played a bit part and inadvertently fell in love with the star. I’ll call him Nameless the Clown, who, in real life, was a married man. He later became a “second banana” comedian on a famous TV show that lasted ten years and later starred in a classic comedy movie. He was very tall, with penetrating blue eyes. He had the look of someone who secretly knew a hilarious joke and could barely keep from laughing out loud at the thought of it. He could never keep a straight face. His face was like a billboard for his emotions. We often slipped away during a break in rehearsals and made out in some dark corner backstage. I adored him and almost forgot about Basil.

  Nameless gave me the impression that his marriage was of no consequence and that his plan was to divorce her. I believed him because we were so connected intellectually and emotionally; I couldn’t imagine anyone else having such a close relationship with him (my naiveté knew no bounds). Then I found out from a friend that he was in therapy for being a borderline homosexual. His friend strongly suggested I stay away from him. This revelation hurt and confused me. But later it made sense since our sexual relations consisted of me going down on him, and only once did we actually have normal sex. I didn’t mind because by now I was falling madly in love with him. Here is a perfect example of completely ignoring any red flags when it suits your agenda. Love is not blind; it’s the ego that tricks you into thinking you’re in love.

  He swore that he didn’t love his wife and was going to leave her, but lo and behold, she became “mysteriously” pregnant with his first child. I couldn’t believe it. As he held me in his arms and told me this, my anger came out in full force as I screamed for him to leave. I didn’t see or hear from him for three or four months after that, and when he finally called, he angrily accused me of giving him VD (venereal disease), which could have infected his newborn baby. I frantically went out to prove he was wrong. Three doctors assured me I didn’t have VD, but their report didn’t change a thing. His mind was made up, and the curtain came down hard on this clown. Just like my passenger, I knew what it felt like to fall hard with your eyes wide shut. So much for my deep, intellectual connection.

  Ever since my teenage years, I obsessed about guys who were popular and hard to get. Then the minute they became attracted to me, they became intolerable slobbering idiots in my mind, or I fell for them so hard they dumped me for being too needy. It’s obvious to me now; I had abdicated my personal power with Nameless and became unattractively needy.

  Basil was the only man who had ever broken through that barrier. But by now, Basil was also gone. So I inadvertently started dating married men, not knowing they were married at first, but continuing after finding out, because it assured me a certain level of safety. Even so, with Nameless, I was not safe. I hadn’t planned on falling “in love” with him. When he phoned and called me a whore for endangering his firstborn, I came frighteningly close to suicide. Luckily, I chickened out and chose to bear the pain as only a grim-faced movie heroine would.

  IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND

  You Probably Need a Psychiatrist

  PING! My Uber app signaled a pickup in Marin at an apartment complex. I felt mildly annoyed as I waited for what seemed like a long time for my new passenger to emerge. Finally, a golf cart drove up in which sat pretty, dark-haired Miranda, along with all her baggage (literally and figuratively).

  For the next forty-five minutes while driving her to San Francisco Airport, my social and therapeutic skills were put to the test. Feeling completely safe with me, a stranger, she wailed all the way to the airport. Apparently, her mother and her mother’s boyfriend had thrown her out. They told her they hated her and didn’t want anything more to do with her. Their confrontation concerned a large sum of money she felt they owed her. This was way out of my field of expertise, so I let her wail on and on and just nodded my head.

  During the course of her story, it became obvious that the boyfriend was protecting her mother’s financial interests. I planted the possibility in her mind that perhaps her mother really loved her and didn’t know how to express it in front of her partner. By the time we reached the airport, Miranda’s sobs had stopped. She looked more clear and confident and thanked me for indulging her.

  By age twenty-four, I was having affairs with one married man after another in Hollywood, some noteworthy, others happily forgotten. One such affair was with a sixty-five-year-old Russian prince, who gave me expensive dresses designed by his ex-wife to wear on a trip to New York. He wined and dined me in the top New York restaurants and took me to a fashion show hosted by his ex-wife. I was in the company of some well-known celebrities, political personalities, and other prominent people, which I calculated would bode well for my career. My payment involved sexual fealty in our hotel room every night. I tightly closed my eyes while being ravaged by this creepy old man. It turns out this creepy old man had ties with the Mafia.

  My life was a total illusion. It was a movie I created based on self-loathing. I wandered in and out of my life, jostled around by circumstances seemingly beyond my control. But I wore my mantle of victimhood like a proud foot soldier going in the opposite direction.

  I had another affair with a William Morris talent agent who was really nice and sincerely liked me and wanted me to succeed. He was not particularly attractive but well connected enough to be another presumed ticket to stardom. He took me to Las Vegas and introduced me to some of his clients, one being Harry James, a big band icon of the forties and fifties. I vaguely remember having consumed thirteen or fourteen Black Russians when Harry sat on the couch next to me to speak with his agent. During the ensuing conversation, my head swiveled back and forth between Harry on my left and the agent on my right. My brain swirled, and as fate would have it, I threw up all over Harry’s white dinner jacket. I was so drunk I wasn’t even embarrassed. I passed out on a chaise lounge by the pool after that.

  Fortunately, my agent friend was very forgiving and gave me a chance to prove my singing talent to an associate higher up in the agency, at a nightclub in Santa Monica later that month. But my opportunistic plan backfired as I, once again, downed more drinks than I could count before going onstage. I ended up slaughtering the song. I saw the disappointment in his eyes as I sang my last off-key note. I never saw him again.

  Another short-lived affair involved a TV news anchor who took me to meet the California state governor, Pat Brown (Jerry Brown’s father), at a party in his mansion in LA. Another involved a famous Broadway musical composer who took me to a party at Peggy Lee’s house, where she treated me to a private musical concert with my date accompanying her on the piano. Before this much-appreciated impromptu concert, I observed a gaggle of Hollywood’s elite mixed with a
few “has beens” and “wannabes” in the other room, one of which was a handsome young actor apparently with Peggy’s extremely obese daughter. His opportunistic agenda was painfully obvious to me. Perhaps this was a subtle message from the universe?

  One other memorable affair, which was ongoing for several months, involved the president of a major TV network in New York. He was a tall, distinguished man with gray hair and laughing eyes. Every time he came to LA, he would contact me, and we would go out to dinner, then straight to his hotel room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. His favorite sex act was to reverse roles; he would pretend to be a woman, and I would have to be the man ravaging him. One night, he handed me a reefer that was laced with something he called Acapulco Gold. The drug made me feel completely disconnected from reality. The best I can describe my experience is that it was like living in a memory that never happened. I flailed about and begged him to help me out of this surreal nightmare. He was very caring and held me until I came around. That was our last time together. He sent me a box full of vinyl record albums the following week as a thank you and farewell present.

  After all these colorful alliances, not one paid off regarding my original intention—to move my singing and acting career forward. I was like a sleepwalker going through the motions of opportunistic indiscretion in which I drowned out the small, still voice in my head with sex, drugs, and alcohol. Did it ever occur to me that I was nothing more than a cheap whore? No, never!

  Poor little drunkard: like a soggy ragdoll full of booze, not responsible for a single moment of her life. Her dress is torn and her button eyes are gone. What will become of her? Is she just a ghost in a wishing well?

  ISN’T SHE LOVELY

  A Gift for Another Mother

  Amid these episodes in Hollywood, I had gone back to school to finish up my education at UCLA for a BA in fine arts. While attending my last semester there, I got pregnant by a friend who was a student set designer in the theater department. He wasn’t married but confessed he was in love with someone else. At a loss as to what to do, I told my folks (they were both remarried). Dad demanded I bring him to his house for a talk. The poor guy nearly passed out when Dad forcefully told him that his only option was to marry me. I assured him that I thought otherwise.