Words on life (reposted)

There's only one cafe I sit at nowadays. There is another cafe that I will go to, though. Their coffee is okay, and supposedly they have the best barista in town. There was a newspaper article about this barista. I made friends with them at a folk punk concert, where they asked me if I was gay. I said yes. I complemented their cartoonishly large gauges. They told me that they work at the cafe up the street from me. It's a heavy metal themed cafe, which I had heard of in my youth, and went to once before, but when they rebranded and shut down a few locations I assumed they went under completely. Now, I am an adult who goes to punk shows and is friends with the best barista in town. So I started making an effort to go to this cafe more— but the legs of the tables are uneven, and they rock like a bully while I try to sip my lattes— supposedly the best lattes in town. Heavy metal, which I don't listen to, blares quietly from a surround sound system, and grainy  music videos bob their drowning heads in and out of a sea of static on a 20 year old TV. There's a row of pinball machines on the north-facing wall, which are always too sensual and enticing for me to resist; at least they would be if I carried quarters. So, anyway, I don't sit at that heavy metal cafe. It's too distracting for my fragile mind, which is naturally weaker than the flesh. Instead, I see this barista at various shows and vendor sales and dance parties, they call me "angel" and I ask them questions about the latest furry drama.

So, the cafe I do go to, it's actually down the street. It's a bit of a hike, probably about 3/4 a mile down the mountain. I refuse to take the bus there, though. My logic is, if I am going to a cafe to sit and drink an indulgent fluid (coffee), I should try to exercise first. I usually walk back home up the mountain, too. My logic is, if I was just drinking an indulgent fluid (coffee) I should probably punish myself afterwards. I make an exception if, after sitting at the cafe that I do sit at, I walk to the grocery store. While I have certainly walked a mile up mountain with 50 lbs of groceries on my back, the weather (or the frozen groceries) does not always permit it. So anyways, I usually walk to this cafe. I make it a ritual. I try to walk without music, and accustom my eyes to the piles of rotting leaves, the litter half buried in mud, the roadkill, the drunk drivers, and general urban decay. I love the sight of these things, of the earth returning to itself. I want to stick my arm into the mouth of the earth and let it take me; but then again, such a thought repulses me. When I get to the cafe I usually choose a table by the door. I don't love the burst of cold air every time someone comes in or out, but I like to sit by the window, of which there is only one big one at the front. Here, the baristas have started to get to know me. I see the flicker of recognition in their eyes, and many of them have started to learn the patterns in my orders— of which there is no grand pattern, but there is a general one. I want to talk to them, ask them what their lives are like. Do they want to come to the party I'm having this weekend? Do they like how I've cut my hair? Do they find my stutter annoying? Do they care about art like I do? What kinds of movies do they watch? But I don't talk to them. If I wanted to do that, the ship has sailed. So I order my drink(s) and sit near the door, the infinite string of headlights dying and regenerating in my periphery, according to the pattern of the traffic lights. 

I like this cafe more than most. It has exposed brick walls, which make me feel closer to the Earth, something I desperately need in this city. They remind me of the house I grew up in, where my father discovered a chimney hidden behind layers of drywall. He manically removed the layers during a deconstructive "renovation," leaving a forever ashy and stark line of brick asserting itself in our dining room. There's holes in the mortar where cold air blows like the breath of a ghost. I used to shine flashlights in these holes and look for secrets, but I never found anything. The chimney ran through my bedroom, too, but luckily my father left that section undisturbed. Nonetheless, birds used to fall down the chimney, and I could hear them clawing and cawing behind my wall, where they no doubt starved to death, a broken mess of panicked feathers forever trapped. I wonder if I tore through the wall, would there be enough feathers that I could make a pillow? Would I dream of birds?

The exposed brick in this cafe is appealing to me, warm, although literally colder. Uneven, dusty, and impossible to fully clean. There's real wood floors, and sections of the wall have an uneven, shabby-chic paneling, which I also like. Although, I will admit the variability of the bricks and wood triggers my paranoia. In the summer and fall, when bugs are more frequent, I find myself neurotically scanning the wall with my eyes, up and down, up and down. I can tell I'm acting bizarre and the other customers hate me. I finger the bottom of my chair, of the tables. I'm looking for something I don't want to find. I run my hands across my head and neck, in case something has landed on me. It's hard to know if this place is clean; and yet if it registered so, I would never come here. If it was clean I wouldn't be allowed through the doors, being a dirty thing myself. I would fear my hands would leave sweat marks on stainless steel doors, that my pens would smear the white countertops. I would fear the other customers and employees would call me out for being a polluting thing who doesn't belong here. I can feel my mind spinning in and out of thoughts like a carnival ride. I'm not sure how one scene connects to another. Well, luckily, the cafe I like to sit at isn't this kind of clean place; although the baristas always seem cleaner than I am, more beautiful, with smoother skin and frizzless hair that sits upon their heads like spools of silk, delicate. If I speak in their direction I might dismantle and unravel their carefully balanced facial symmetry. Best to not talk to them more than necessary, best to not make eye contact. By the time winter rolls around I completely forget I was ever paranoid about the insects that might be on the walls. They've all died now. Maybe this time they'll be dead forever.