Upfront, and aware?

I would like to address two issues, which are totally irrelevant to each other, but which occurred on the same night, hence the grouping.

The first, and lesser relevant I guess, is the idea of the pre-paid taxi ride. While the concept isn’t foreign to me, having been ‘widely’ (in the loosest terms of the word) advertised within the taxi industry here in Australia, it’s the first time that I’ve actually had it enforced upon me. My taxi ride home, which is more often than not from Sircuit Bar to home, is normally around the $20 mark, and more often than not, I’ll round it up to $25, to give the driver a tip. However tonight, for the first time, I was asked to pay for my taxi ride upfront.  While not a major issue, the upfront fair did actually feel like an upfront and personal judgement on myself, as a person.

I can understand that there are people out there that are likely to fare-evade, and have seen the news items and current affairs articles where taxi drivers have been subject to de-frauding of their fares, at the very least, and their lives taken, at the most extreme, I find it a little insulting that this particular taxi driver decided to charge such fee upon me. Does this mean he made a judgement call on me, or was it a broader judgement call on the venue from which I hailed him from, or was it just a culmination of his experiences in the past, as a taxi driver? As a result, I kept a very close, if not blurry, eye on his speed and his meter. To his misfortune, he only got a $0.60 tip, where he would normally have got a minimum $4.00 tip. (I usually round my fares up to $25.)

On the other subject, and this is more a state of my mind, than that of the people I know: is my presence really missed or noticed? Some straight people (with a token gay), came to the bar that I usually frequent, and due to the position I was standing at, couldn’t but notice my presence as they entered. Naturally, I’d had a drink or two more than they had by the time of their arrival, but after greeting each other, I began to wonder if they even really cared that I was there or not. That then led me to thinking if ANYONE cared if I was there or not. They may note my absence, but I would like to think that on occasion, there are some that would actually care that I wasn’t there; that they would think, or say, “Where did Peter go?”, and not in just a casual, after-thought, kind of way, but with actual caring and feeling. I realise I’m never going to be that person that stands out in a crowd because he is the best looking, or the funniest, or performs that one particular party trick. But it would be nice to think I am missed because I’m me.