I recently had to go to San Jose for work. Not a fan.
I mean, I’m usually a pretty competent traveler and don’t get too flustered, but San Jose, just took it all out of me.
Omg… Where to start…
So I get into the city about 8:30 PM and immediately have to be bussed 400 miles to the car rental place. I honestly wouldn’t have minded the trans-Siberian greyhound trip, but TO GET to the bus, you have to cross lanes of high-speed traffic without a cross walk and walk through the taxi and Uber traffic flow; you have to literally get into the street and walk around Ubers to get to the bus.
So I get to the car rental place and the lady is like “We have a special on Mustang convertibles.”
“No.”
“Okay, regular Mustang.”
“No. Just a regular Honda – or whatever you give boring people.”
I get a Taurus (obvs…. I bet 98% of all rental cars are Tauri) and then have to take the sky elevator to the fifth floor.
Now, my own car is a relic of the early 2000s, so it has no Bluetooth, you have to use a key, and it actually has a CD player in it.
Getting into this Taurus was essentially like getting into one of Elon Musk’s new rockets. First of all, the car is fired up and ready to go – BUT I COULDN’T FIND THE EFFING KEYS. I mean keyless is great, but in this situation Chuck, the rental car guy, can just hurl the keys into the darkness of the Taurus and then I have to dig through every part of the car to find them.
Spoiler alert, rather than being in the console, they were shoved up against the windshield, basically in the defroster vent – SO THAT WAS FUN.
Once I found them, I hit the start button and the car freaks out and is like “YOU MUST HIT THE BRAKE TO START.”
So the car is yelling at me, and I’m trying to find the radio, which in my own car is tantamount to hitting seek on the glowing screen, but in this car it involves navigating through roughly 400 touch panels asking my birthday, height, weight, retirement 401K account number, and whether I would like to buy a Snuggie.
Eventually I give up on the radio and just decide to drive.
Well, turns out newer cars actually have good brakes, so I roll up to the first stop sign and almost launch myself through the windshield because you literally just have to tap them to stop the car.
By now I’m sweating, worrying that I had initiated a self-destruct sequence in the car, my GPS isn’t working, so I have no idea which way to turn out of the garage – BUT – at least I knew, I was ready to go.
Wrong.
Prior to exiting this parking garage, you have to go through San Jose’s version of Checkpoint Charlie, where this woman lumbers out, asks for 300 documents and then shuffles around the car inspecting every inch of it.
“There big dent in your car.”
Evidently, they went to East Germany to get this woman.
“Oh,” I said. Was this an accusation? I literally just drove 50m from my parking spot to the gestapo gate.
“I write down for you. It big.”
“Thanks…”
So, I drive out of the checkpoint and then spiral down 5 floors of this ramp. It’s like the architect loved Micro Machines just a bit too much. At this point my GPS is still not working, so I’m praying it comes to life before this spinning death ramp ends in some sort of moat or dragon pen.
When I get out of the tube, my GPS comes to life, I put in the address, and then proceed to cut off 45 people, weave through 40 lanes of traffic and go (not even joking 1.1 miles) to the hotel.
Now, at this point, I need to stop and point out that all that aside, the really phenomenal thing about being a clueless rental car person in San Jose is that San Jose traffic is such that NO ONE knows how to navigate it.
Everywhere I went was a Mariokart-level shit show. Other cars swerving between lanes, braking in the middle of a dead-end street. Coming up to a four-way stop and taking a (more than full) 5-second stop. On my way back to the hotel, I drove by two of the hotel entrances and was almost t-boned by a hotel shuttle AT BOTH.
Tonight coming back from dinner, I encountered a man driving the wrong way toward me at a four-lane traffic light. Yes. He somehow got off course and just decided that driving into not, one lane of oncoming traffic, but four, was the right choice.
And really, I can’t blame any of these people having been here for 3 days. My navigation is like “follow this around the bend then.. LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, SWERVE OVER FIVE LANES AND U-TURN INTO A LEFT, LEFT, RIGHT.
The left turn arrows are on some sort of bizarre random schedule as well. In Chicago, you’ll have the left arrow, followed by the green light. Here it’s like the transportation department is rolling dice to see when the left arrow will light up. At one light, it stayed red through two-full cycles of all lights, then a train came by. This caused it to miss the green light, but it didn’t matter, because it just suddenly turned green. I turned left and… for some reason… the on-ramp to the highway blooms from one lane to two for about 10 meters, which means that everyone Daytona 500s into the passing lane for those 10m, flies around you, then slams on the brakes as you enter the stopped traffic on the highway.
The positive to all this, is that it is really hard to have road rage when you’re driving in the upside down. Why would I get mad at that man who slammed on his brakes in the middle of a five-lane highway for no reason, when my GPS told me to cut across those same five lanes of traffic to make a U-turn a half-mile later?
You can’t get mad!
After all this bitching, it’s probably best to focus on the good things about San Jose.
1. The weather is nice. Like, it’s super nice! The sun shines; you can eat outside. It’s nice!
2. There are no fire-breathing dinosaurs or robots attacking the city.
3. For real, California knows how to make PHENOMENAL muffins. They have the crumbly things on the top and they are so soft. It’s amazing.
4. The city is not flooded, or burning!
I think that’s it. As I write this, I know I have one, last 2 mile journey to the airport tomorrow. If I survive the drive and the 3-day bus trip to the terminal, I may consider visiting again.
Dumb
My best friend once goes, “Most people kind of assume you’re stupid so you fly under the radar.”
Which I think is true. Most people haven’t been socially conditioned to see a tall, blond man and think: intelligent! Even Thor is kind of like “Well, thank gawd you have that hammer because you’re not getting into MIT.”
This came to mind recently when I had a meeting at work and this guy just sort of manipulated my team into doing his job. I don’t mean like manipulate cleverly, I mean, he just sort of made us do his work. Which wasn’t a big deal, but he framed the situation as if we were saving him, but we all just know he didn’t want to do the task.
It triggered this memory, however, of my single days (or as often referred to Boystown’s Dark Ages), when I was free to amble the bars and beaches of Northside Chicago and try my hand at courtship.
There was one day I went to the beach with a group of friends I don’t really hang out with. They are all really attractive and wear speedos, which isn’t my (forgive the pun) speed, but I needed something to do and was desperate for a make out session.
We end up on the beach and I was trying to make small talk, which is the social equivalent of a root canal for me, personally. Within the first fifteen minutes my chance of make out dropped from a 40% chance to 3%, so I was basically killing time.
One of my friends was in the flush of first love with this guy. They were laying on top of each other and he was consistently referring to the man as “my man!” It was obnoxious.
“Look at my man! So handsome.”
“He slept til like noon today – that’s so like him!”
I don’t know what infects some people when they first start dating and they forget what it’s like to not be dating. They vomit all over you with how great everything is, but if you’ve even dated one person before, you have to ask yourself, “Is it really, though? Like, really?”
So this guy was running around the beach in a diaper throwing paper hearts and singing love songs and I was sitting on a towel telling this other guy about my job (uggghhhhh).
Lovesick prances by and is like “Hey, guys! Anyone want anything from the shop? My man and I are splitting some nachos. He loves nachos!”
The only thing I really wanted from the shop was a pox to render Lovesick mute for the rest of the afternoon, but the place’s focus was food, so I thought that was out of the question.
Lovesick gambols away and then his man turns to me.
“Have we met?”
The guy is like gorgeous. He has these piercing brown eyes, which he very much knows how to use, and he literally looks like he’s carved from marble.
Now, let me lay out what’s going through my mind at this moment:
1. The guy is definitely flirting with me. He pushed down his sunglasses so he could make eye contact and even licked his lips for chrissake.
2. His new paramour is prancing around singing his praises constantly and he has the nerve to just spin the moment he leaves and start playing his game.
3. Lovesick is way better looking than me. On an objective review of our appearance, I would lose every time. So, like what kind of dude has a hottie laying on top of him one minute and then has to immediately turn and take like whatever refuse is closest to try to get it in with. Like what world is that?
So per the introduction to this, I feel like he had no idea I had a near expert-level, social understanding of the situation.
“This dude’s blond, he’s probably thinking about clothes or getting his hair done.”
So I’m staring at him, very unflirtatiously and go, “No.”
He goes, “No, like, I think we met in LA. Have you been to LA?”
“Literally 4 years ago. The last time I was there was 2010.”
“Yeah, I bet it was then. Were you out at the bars that trip?”
THE BALLS ON THIS GUY. What people does he normally talk to who fall for this garbage? I get he’s super attractive, and most guys probably just hear “WAH WAH WAAAAAAAAH LET’S BANG WAHHHH” but give me a break.
This gets me all kinds of fired up because, I don’t care if you think I’m dumb, but don’t play your nursery school-level flirting games with me IN FRONT OF THE GUY YOU’RE DATING. It’s embarrassing for both of us.
So I go, “I wasn’t even out of the closet yet, I definitely wasn’t in a bar.”
“Well, I bet I saw you out and about.”
HE SAID THAT. LIKE HE REMEMBERED ONE MAN FROM 4 YEARS AGO HE PASSED ON THE STREET ONCE.
I just sort of stop talking to him and Lovesick prances over with the nachos.
BUT THAT’S NOT THE END.
Exactly one week later I went out with some friends and ended up at this bar. It was Sunday Funday, so everyone at the bar was a little tipsy.
The SAME guy walks up to me and before he opens his mouth I go, “Hey, Dave.”
He’s super confused by this. And he says, “How’d you know my name? I was just coming over to say hi to you.”
And I go, “We met last week on the beach. You were with Jack. You guys ate nachos, you were in a black speedo, we talked.”
He goes, “Oh no, I wouldn’t forget a face like yours.”
OH, REALLY, DAVE?! DOES THIS GAME WORK FOR YOU?
So I say, “You literally did. And we had this same conversation last weekend.”
Then I patted him on the back and walked away.
I think the saddest part of the whole situation was knowing that Dave probably cheats on all his man friends and can pick up a guy by telling him the most bogus stories on the planet.
“Hey, dude. Have you been to LA?”
“I was in Northern California for my fourteenth birthday.”
“Yeah, that must have been it.”
Gay men, we need to raise our standards. At least put up some kind of fight so Dave has to try harder than just being able to say you were in California in the last quarter-century.
But maybe don’t listen to me; I’m probably not even that smart.