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It’s Sunday afternoon and Jimmy is dancing a slow drunken shuffle in the general direction of my car. His hand-eye coordination is severely impaired. He also doesn’t wear a face mask.
I’m the Lyft driver sent here to pick him up at the Hillsboro Bar and Grill in Hillsboro, Oregon. And nobody gets into my car without a mask.
Jimmy surprises me by opening the front door and moving to take a seat next to me. It smells like one of those bars where drunks used to smoke many, many cigarettes. I don’t want it in my car. But I take my second job as a Lyft driver seriously. I give it a chance.
“You have to wear a mask,” I say. “And not in the front seat. You have to get behind and wear a mask. “I take yet another stand against these unmasked men (and women) who want me to lead them.
Jimmy tries to say something, the substance of which appears to be that he has a mask – somewhere. He puts his right hand in his right shirt pocket and takes out a pack of cigarettes. And then – I haven’t seen this before – he puts his backpack on his face, where a mask would end up. He is hammered and has seriously mistaken the item he now holds over his mouth for a face mask. He takes the handle on the rear door of my car, passenger side. “It’s not a mask,” I say. “It’s a pack of cigarettes. No mask, no racing. “
Jimmy looks confused and says something I can’t understand. He is indicating that he will get a mask at the bar. I don’t expect him to emerge with a pint glass pressed to his face. I cancel the ride and leave, after indicating in the app that the pilot refused to wear the mask.
I get $ 4.71 and cold comfort for wasting half an hour of my life.
Most of my passengers wear masks by default. Those that don’t fall into three categories. Mostly, they’re either drunk like skunks or they’re anti-masking. A third category of motorcyclists wear their children’s masks, which I only notice if I look in the rearview mirror and see their nostrils peering at me like a second pair of eyes. I ask them to cover their nose and mouth please, but he’s desperate: their masks are too small.
Drunkards are predictable. They are the Jimmies of the world. But the anti-masks make me shiver. They want to talk about pseudoscience, trying to convince me from the sidewalk that the pandemic is a hoax, and they’re as weird as the shit they’re talking about.
Take Zack.
I arrive to pick up Zack on a cold Sunday evening in Troutdale, Oregon. His request included a lengthy note about how I best get him to a very specific spot near the pool in his apartment complex or he would be late for work.
I find him wearing Speedo briefs and a T-shirt, and he smells of patchouli oil. He is not wearing a mask.
“You probably want me to wear a mask,” he says before he can speak. He tries to get into the car and I tell him he has to wear a mask. I make the mistake of referring to Covid. It’s ready for me. He’s taking an anti-mask vent in the freezing cold in a Speedo. He gives me a lecture on “left-wing media hoaxes” and then provides a series of mind-numbing statistics and what appears to be pseudo viral sequencing data. I learned not to respond to these bikers except to tell them: “No mask, no racing”.
Zack says he won’t wear a mask just to go in the car, and he’s getting really mad because I’ll make him late for work because I’ve been caught in the leftist media. Really, I hate the smell of patchouli oil and I’m about to leave.
But then he sticks his hand inside his Speedo and takes out a disposable mask. Now I have to listen to it for 10 long minutes from the back seat of my car. Hear his tirade of viruses as a hoax interspersed with requests to drive faster or he’ll be late for his shift at Amazon’s colossal facility. I can’t help but ask if Amazon requires masks. (I know they do.) “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Twenty-six workers tested positive there and all returned within three weeks. It’s no worse than the flu. “
I am grateful I got it out of my car. After that, nauseated by the smell and everything else, I spray disinfectant all over the back seat and drive fast with the windows open for 10 minutes before picking up another passenger.
I’m going to pick up Bridget at the Portland airport. He is a mechanical engineer who has returned to town after a conference. As I drive her home to Wilsonville, Oregon, she says my car smells clean. I can’t help but tell her about the guy who just 30 minutes ago, Speedo and all, was sitting where she’s sitting now. She laughs.
I tell her I need to check: people like Zack aren’t normal, right? Is the pandemic real? I’m not crazy, am I? Sometimes these bikers make me wonder if I’m crazy. Bridget validates my feelings, making sure that no, I’m not the crazy one. What I just witnessed was not normal. And Lyft and Uber drivers and teen grocery employees shouldn’t be put in a position to oversee the use of masks during a pandemic.
Over the next week, I talk about Zack with my passengers in the mask. There is a consensus that there should be a federal mandate to wear a mask every time you leave the house. I admit I ask important questions, but many of my passengers are “essential” workers who understand the mask thing and are all too aware that the pandemic is not a hoax. I suggest calling our elected representatives and telling them we want people to wear masks. To protect us.
A couple of nights later, I go to pick up Juan in a WinCo, not far from the bar where I left Jimmy. Juan included a note with his request for a ride. He wants me to know he’s blind, dressed in green, and please look for him.
It is easy to spot. Neon green rain jacket, a cane – and wear a mask and rubber gloves. He says two other drivers stopped and drove off, canceling it, instead of helping him carry his groceries home in the rain. Apologizes. I tell him he has nothing to regret. I put on my gloves and load his groceries in the trunk. I help him get into the car. It’s only three minutes to his house, but who would leave a blind man with a shopping cart full of groceries in the rain?
I ask Justin, a fellow Lyft pilot, about all of this. I take it to a bar. “Yeah,” he says, “The mask thing sucks.” He says he has to take home as many drunks as possible every night from Portland strip clubs to Vancouver, Washington, where he then picks up other drunks and takes them back to Portland. This is what he does every night, back and forth, until there are no more drunks to drive. It is contrary to the mandate of the mask. “I need the rides. I don’t have time to deal with it, “he says.
But I do. Put on your masks and wear them well. And get the ones that fit. I want to see your nostrils protrude towards me as much as I want to see Zack’s Speedo.
The author is a writer based in Portland, Oregon. Passenger names have been changed to protect their privacy
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