Coffeehouses: a Monologue
Some of the people just go there for the loud music that rambles through the stereo in that crazy urgency that mirrors the caffeine buzz like a twin soul, and some people just go to talk and meet with their friends, really, talk about nothing, share some coffee and cigarettes, and part ways. Coffee bartender sits behind the counter, behind the stereo, next to the conglomeration of coffeemakers, milk steamers, and empty just been cleaned super huge coffee mugs, reading a book or talking to her friends, as more and more people come to the counter for their favorite combination of coffee and syrups or steamed milk or espresso, or the new agers drink their chai, and think they're super cool, when in actuallity, they have just found a beverage that can get them out of drinking coffee, because they hate coffee, hate the smell, hate the taste, but they would feel like pussies ordering a cup of hot earl gray.
Confused twentysomething gothic chick hides in the bathroom with a sharpie writing her dreams on the wall of the stall like some neo-pagan wailing wall, wishing, hoping, that her life would extend outside of the barriers of the coffee bar.
Intent thirtysomething sits quietly at his table, sketching his plans for world domination and looking on at the gothic chick who he is sure would never bed him because he's too old and his friends show up and he tells them of his plans for world domination, and they laugh, its the same thing every week with him.
Group of wannabes, under 21, so they cant frequent the real bars yet, drink their latte's and talk about fucking someone, or fucking someone up, and they are gently asked to leave several times before they leave on their own to go cruising around the city looking for someone to fuck or someone to fuck up.
Pretty little china doll comes to meet the man she met last week, the man whose bed she woke up in the next morning, and it hits her that he is here hitting on another woman, and her innocence vaporizes like the steamed milk.
Some sorry excuse for a mother brings her sweet little angel in and the girl at the counter gives her crayons, and the little girl sits alone coloring while mom sits at the bar smoking a cigarette, thinking that her distance from her little girl while smoking really makes a difference when in actuallity, she has seated her daughter in a smoke filled room, its everywhere, it doesnt fucking matter where she blows her smoke because someones smoke is going to get into the sweet little angels lungs, and ten years from now when sweet little angel is running for the track team with an inhaler, mom doesnt know what went wrong.
Crack whore is sitting at the bar with a pin and a poison ring, spiking her Marlboro Ultra Light with Heroin in powdered form and the room starts spinning, but everyone who wasnt paying attention like I was thinks shes just giddy from all the caffeine in her triple espresso.
A group comes into the coffee bar after having just left the theatre, perhaps they were seeing Shakespeare, perhaps a Bertolt Brecht play, but they feel Oh So Cultured because they have just gone to the theatre and they're having their nightcap at an Oh So Trendy coffee bar, they're so high on the fact that they're in this Oh So Trendy coffee bar, that they miss out on the fact that its a shithole.
Maybe its a good place, a good place for recovering alcoholics and underagers, or overagers to enjoy a cup of joe and some good conversation without poisoning themselves, or without thinking they're poisoning themselves, after all, how many of these people have to have their coffee in the morning or their day is a nightmare, and besides, caffeine has been known to cause cancer in labrats, but then again so do cigarettes, I think as I exhale and take another hit.
I ash and finish my coffee, black, no frills, no steamed milk, no espresso, no chocolate syrup, no cinnamon, no cocoa powder; I look around and see the psychodrama before me and decide to order another cup. I wait, how long could it possibly take to pour a cup of coffee? But the coffee bartender is playing quarters with her boyfriend and is totally oblivious to my order for a good five minutes while I light another cigarette to pass the time between cups, and it hits me, Im just like them. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, but leave the house for a few minutes to have a cup of coffee, and though I exchange words with noone, save for the coffee bartender, I feel like I belong to something, and I listen to the loud music with a crazy urgency as it mirrors my caffeine buzz, and I walk into the restroom with my sharpie pen, and write something like this.
