In Retrospect It’s been a little while since you’ve been to your usual coffee spot. It’s the coffee spot responsible for making all of your best works, so the very least you could do is go visit. The entire outside seating area is littered with smokers. You don’t smoke, but you do sit outside because being around cigarette smoke helps you write better; not because you need the smoke (you always cough when you inhale them), but usually because the smokers from which the smoke comes from are plainly the most interesting people you’ve ever seen. One gentleman out here has the longest and greasiest hair you’ve ever seen. Like, ever. You just want to ask him to wash his damn hair. The minute he turns his head, you fully intend to appear out of nowhere with a shampoo and conditioner and massage the hell out of his scalp. You think that there’s no reason to leave your house like that. He should know better. Your next favorite patron out here is the woman who knows everything. (Every real coffee shop has a patron that is under the impression that he or she knows EVERYTHING.) She goes on about politics, music, and then politics again to who the hell will ever listen. That person is never you. Because the moment she tries to speak to you, you pretend that you speak no English and if you’re having a real funk of a morning you’ll say, “Please don’t talk to me. I don’t like you.” What she doesn’t know is why nobody will sit with her, or why she arrived alone in the first place. The answer is by no means cryptic. Nobody likes her. Because what can you tell the woman who knows everything? You’d like to tell her that her bra has become completely undone and you can totally tell through her slightly sheer shirt, but you can’t find an appropriate time to chime in between her rant about right wing conservatives being disconnected from the general populous. But you stop on the subject of that woman because she’s not important. She wants you to write about her and you’re not giving her that satisfaction. What you are inspired by is a young man and a young woman sitting across one another, each behind their own little MacBooks. You know MacBook guy for some time now. (You’re using ‘know’ way too loosely. You mean to say that you occasionally get coffee and so does he and you happen to do so at the same time for what has been maybe two years.) He’s got good guy appeal. A safe haircut, gray shoes, cargo shorts. He’s just a good guy, which is weird, because you’re pretty sure this shop was intended for those of you that didn’t fit into normal society. But religiously he shows up— him and his MacBook. You keep trying to figure out what he does for a living but you can’t seem to figure it out. (Maybe he checks his email for a living, because that’s all you ever see him do.) The more important point is that today he’s sitting across a girl who is also using a MacBook. You think he managed to find someone while he was away at school. She’s boring, too. Stringy brown hair, styled in no way in particular. She occasionally bites at her nails and bobs her head at the indie rock that plays in the coffee shop. Sometimes they talk about the commercials that come on the radio, or a friend both of them know. They are so perfectly boring for one another. Together, they are so entirely fortunate to be able to be so bland. You think it’s beautiful to have someone you can get to be unapologetically boring with. You think it’s wonderful to find no need to fill the empty space between you with words. You remember how you once were on a road trip with a friend and you weren’t talking and he interrupted your train of thought with an interesting observation. “I love how it isn’t awkward when we aren’t talking.” And you think that maybe, togetherness is so like that. Sometimes you’re just excited to be with someone that you don’t have to go on forever about nothing, someone that you have the freedom to be as uninteresting as you really are. Because sometimes, you just want to find someone to be so boring with. And that would be enough.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 19:16:32 +0000