I answered “OK to chat” for my Uber ride last night. That was a mistake.

The driver asked if I was going to a concert. When I said yes, she mentioned her last show was Metallica. I thought cool — we’re off to a good start and she might be normal so we started discussing concerts we’d seen.

But things took a turn.

Driver: Stated she was a Christian, and that one of the artists I mentioned had offended her religion so she stopped listening to them.

Me: I can understand that with your newfound faith. However, I’m not a Christian, but I decided to stop giving them money or attention anymore because of what I learned about how he treated women, and, to me that’s just indefensible. My mom was literally conned by a man religious man she met at her carhop job. He managed to get her to move away from her family while I was in my final year of high school, leaving my sister and I to fend for ourselves for months. Sure, she’d send some money, and I got an LL Bean backpack with my name on it sent to me to start that senior year. But he spent years milking her retirement accounts and inheritance all while he had sequestered her away in South Dakota, far away from her family’s influence. I see what Marilyn Manson did as no different. Just with a slight form of torture that gets drug out across an entire network of people, her children, her friends, and her former clients who have to step in to help her financially as she ages into her final years.

She then somehow got on to personal choices, Planned Parenthood, and my sexuality in a bizarre web of opinions. She eventually stated that if everyone chose to be gay, humanity would end.

Y’all, the mental gymnastics this woman was doing to convert me to being straight and Christian was worthy of an Olympic athlete.

Her logic like so many (pardon the pun) Uber-Christians I’ve encountered was incredibly narrow and broken in its thinking. Mentally, I wanted to jump out of the car. But logic said, it’s raining, traffic sucks, and you WILL get to see the band you’ve wanted to see for over 13 years. So I played her game all the while staying my ever-people-pleasing self and made it to the show.

I was going to see the band First Aid Kit. I discovered them not too long after my sister died from cancer in front of me. The song that hooked me was “Hard Believer” which put into lyrics what I had felt since I was a child.

“Well I see you’ve got your bible your delusion imagery
Well I don’t need your eternity or your meaning to feel free
I just live because I love to, and that’s enough you see
So don’t come preach about morality that’s just human sense to me

Love is tough, time is rough
Love is tough, time is rough on me
On me, on me
And it’s one life and it’s THIS life and it’s beautiful”

I just recommended she listen to the band for their lovely voices and messages. That was my equivalent of telling her “Bless your heart”.

Yes, I still tipped well because my mom was in the service industry for nearly 6 decades. She got 3 stars though.