God In A Coffee Shop

The walk to Kopi was so peaceful, so cleansing; the silence not even the wind dared to break. The yellowed leaves covering the sidewalk put me in a mood greatly contrasted by the stuffy, over-seated café. Apparently, Sunday’s are a big deal. I settle into a seat in the corner practically as the man who was there before me lays down his tip.
The atmosphere of the café has always soothed me but that day it seemed rushed. The staff – all people I’ve never seen before, the Sunday Staff, adding to the vertigo feeling that I’ve stumbled into the wrong cafe – all move in quick, stunted motions. They zip around the kitchen/counter, squeezing passed one another, bumping a shoulder, slapping a butt on accident with a flailing arm all in a hurry to bring coffee or food to their tables. I don’t like the Sunday Staff. They move too fast.
Then a familiar face hovers near my table. It’s that one guy. He’s always working. With his shlumpy frame, the frizzes of hair that hang over the grapefruit of a bald patch at the top of his head, dance in the movement of air caused by his shuffling walk back and forth from the counter to his tables. This man is the one constant of this coffee shop. Could his hiking boots with the roll of duct tape secured around the left toe be a symbol of the café? Probably not. And then I stop thinking and just listen.
Today, I notice the music. I mean, really notice it for the first time and I realize why the people are so loud. The music is loud. Or maybe the music is loud because the people are loud. Or maybe it’s so much louder today because there are more people. Either way, the people and the music have a linear relationship. They hold hands as they walk and adjust to the other’s pace.
For instance the last time I was here, I remember writing about a man bobbing to reggae music. The few people who were in the café felt that music and reacted to it. Everyone was speaking relatively soft, not competing with the music as they seemed to be today. Coincidently, there is no reggae music playing today. This music has lots of fast and deep percussion and what sounds like the hollow cry of a pan flute. The singer yells lively, his voice falling and rising rapidly, swift changes in octaves. Lively, in a word.
No one shows any signs of straining to have their voices heard. No one seems to realize that the music is so much louder. This leads me to believe I’ve been here far too many times. It also makes me wonder if any of these people notice the music or if they are simply talking, thinking they are speaking at a normal level. But if they were to step outside, they would be shouting. But here, in the boisterous café, shouting is acceptable on Sundays.
The café is an oasis. It is its own village with it’s own customs. Here, we work with the music to speak; we don’t try to overpower it. We work with it. It is the force relating every haphazardly placed piece of cloth for a flag, every piece of paper money taped to the coffee bar, every various lamp shade, every worn pillow on the floor for chairs, the travel books on France, Germany, and Belarus with all of these diverse people. The music fills the spaces between the paintings, the knick-knacks in the back, the tables, the people and connects them.
The man next to me informs his accomplice that Leonard Cohan is playing. I know Leonard Cohan. My therapist first told me about him. She used to listen to him a lot, but she was using him as an example of how to be careful with what music I listen to when I am depressed.
I had just returned from my 5-day stint at the behavioral health center. It would have been longer had I not pleaded to be released before Thanksgiving. This time two years ago, I was not wearing my shoes, I was not wearing my belt, I was not wearing earrings and I certainly was not allowed to wander around by myself. Hospital staff was monitoring me closely as they allowed me to cut pictures from magazines for a collage I was working on during creative therapy. I hide the picture of the woman holding a knife to the throat of another woman bound to a chair. Somehow, I didn’t think that would go over too well. They were already giving me scissors. Best not to push it.
At my next meeting with Liz, I had complained to her about the rule of no ipods, no cds, no music! How, if that is my only healthy way to cope, they were taking that away from me and forcing my depression to bare all the more fierce upon me. They weren’t helping me. But she quickly leveled my overreaction, explaining the silence was supposed to force me to examine my thoughts.
“And some music isn’t good to listen to when you are feeling down, I mean if you are listening to Leonard Cohan over and over again…” She observed the look on my face, “Do you know who Leonard Cohan is?” I’d heard of him, but didn’t know him. “He’s an artist from the 60s and 70s. He wrote some really depressing stuff. Listening to something like that when you are down might make it worse.” Leonard Cohan means Liz means my depression means my stay at the hospital and 5 days alone in my room immersed in silence.
And then an instrumental remix of jingle bells begins to play. Fuck. I hate Christmas songs. Even during Christmas, but especially way before Christmas. Good Lord! It’s not even Thanksgiving yet! I contemplate asking the guy to change it… I look around to see how others are reacting to this atrocity. About three tables have just gotten up to leave, but whether or not that is related to the music, I cannot be sure. I like to think it is. I would get up and join them to prove my point, but I am not nearly finished with homework, haven’t been here long enough to make the trip worthwhile, and still have some tomato artichoke soup left. Some lady starts to sings from deep in her chest over the piano. Her voice isn’t soulful deep, but its not high and airy either. It’s right in between and I imagine she isn’t singing about Christmas. Her voice is kind of like mine and it makes me wish I could bust into song right now. Not about Christmas.
I am chin-to-the table intent on scanning the list of coffees, trying to close off my ears to the awful music when a burst of laughter causes me to raise my eyes. Sitting two tables away, three women, who appear to be in their mid- 30s and all have matching, dark, mid-length cropped hair cuts are easily the loudest group in the café. I reach for my notebook, settle on a dirty chai - it’s what I had gotten the last time.
The woman sitting closest to me has her back turned so that all I can see is her dark hair and maroon turtleneck sweater. The woman sitting in the middle of the three has her hair pushed back with a pair of sunglasses – it is raining and cloudy outside. Is she afraid of getting rain in her eyes? Was it sunnier when they first arrived? They must have been here since yesterday morning and by the caliber of their conversation, I wouldn’t doubt it.
The woman farthest from me is also the woman I can see clearest. She can also see me clearly and I swear she catches me watching her several times. I must learn to be stealthier. Her mid-length crop is a little bit wilder than the other two women as it waves out from her face due to the rain. She holds her right hand as a sort of scepter, waving it at the other women, using it to emphasize her gossip. Her wide rings catch the café lights as she claps her hands together and pulls them apart in telling her story. When she nods, her entire upper body nods and when she talks, her shoulders come in toward her chest and out again. This woman is constantly in motion and after just a few minutes, she is the one I am most intent on. It could be because she is the one I can see clearest, but I think it’s something about how she holds herself; straight, upright.
They are all sipping coffee, the woman closest to me with no face is eating a burrito which would be quite the feat if she really did not have a face. The woman in the middle owns a white water bottle that says ECO-logical is thick green caps letters. She lets out a cackling of a laugh, and cackling could not describe it better, like the stereotypical Halloween witch cackle, that is how this woman laughs. And she leaned back in her chair, tossing her limp mid-length crop about, gasping for her breath up at the ceiling. Their chatter is loud, but it is not intrusive over the sounds of the open kitchen – the coffee grinder’s high scream, the brewer’s deep hum.
This is what coffee shops were back home, for friends to meet and chat in a comfortable setting. One of my favorites was Black Sheep. It was also known to be a common ‘hipster hang’ out but it was also located in the same building as the Laundromat all of the Ethiopians frequented because the Ethiopian restaurant was also in the same building. And the apartment complex they all lived in was located a block down the road. It was normal to walk in and see a couple of dumb ass kids in tight pants and moccasins playing Mancala on the couch while a group of five Ethiopian men in the far corner talk loudly in their native tongue, laughing and kicking back. Friends meeting to chat in a comfortable setting. You don’t have to be a bored teenager to take advantage of the coffee shop atmosphere.
And we would go to the patio out back to smoke or drink beer with our coffee if it became too warm inside. The patio has a layout to it other than the obvious three tables, a bench, a few chairs…. The small table set up in the far corner of the patio is used for pot. Even during the day, if you go there to sit, the air is still hanging on to the piney scent. You didn’t sit there at night unless you were smoking or you’d get your ass kicked out faster than you could sit it down.
Black Sheep had a few staples. The Ethiopians, of course. Those stoner kids who were there so often they could get free coffee. And the bike guy who worked there. He rode his bike to work even in the winter. He’d pull his bike up the back wood steps onto the patio, one pant leg rolled to keep it out of the spokes, the red light attached to the back of his helmet flashing on and off. He yelled at me and a friend one time for bring our Taco Bell in to eat. I felt bad, but then again, they didn’t have tacos. What was I supposed to do? Other than that, the dude is too burnt out to care about much else.
Without realizing, I have worked my way into the lonely place in my mind. It is a small hole, big enough only to accommodate my body, arms crossed over my chest. There, I am free to remember the friends I sat in coffee shops with back home, laughing and talking so loud the entire café stares us down till we finish our coffees and our cigarette cravings are gnawing louder than our chattering, we rise to leave. Being in this space makes me miss my friends more than usual.
To distract myself, I study a family at two smaller tables pushed together in front of the knick-knacks in the back of the café. The woman who I assume is the mother wears a knitted sweater, white, with a collar of pastel pink and pastel blue with pastel pink and blue flowers outlined in white. Her permed hair is faded strawberry blonde and I can’t tell if it is naturally that way or if she is due at the hair salon next week. She eats around her bagel like there is a beetle in the middle she is trying to avoid, spinning the bread in her hands like a cob of corn. I write down in my notebook, “she is delighted” because ‘delighted’ seems like a good word for her.
The daughter sits across from her, short dark hair, cut close to her skull. She wears a dark blue and red striped polo over a white long sleeve. Her shirt gives her away before the ball cap worn low over her eyes: lesbian. Of all the lesbians I’ve seen, they all own that same blue and red striped polo. It’s like their uniform. If they were to have a softball team, and you know they would, this would be their jersey. I cannot tell much about her as her back is to me and she never turns around except to ask the waitress about something on the menu. Her features are thin, boney, strong; she is very ‘face pretty.’
The father sits next to her, wearing basic 50 year old man attire: dark blue wind resistant jacket, made out of that material that swishes every time he moves his arms, or at least it would if I could hear it, and I know that sound all too well. It’s the sound of swishy sweatpants made of that same godforsaken material giving you away when you are trying to sneak up on your cousins in the dark during hide and seek. This man is a good man, a good father. He is all smiles as he bobs along to the reggae music blasting through the café. He laughs, a laugh I cannot hear from where I am sitting but imagine it as deep, but not too deep, and that of a man who cracks jokes during hard times, but can be serious when his kids get out of line, and that of a man who wrestled with his kids in the living room when they were younger and got yelled at by the woman with darker strawberry blond hair ‘not to tip the lamp over’. He reminds me of my uncle, this father. My uncle’s spankings are the only ones I remember to this day. His kids and I did a lot of stupid shit when we got together.
His son sits across from him and the first thing I write down is the siblings have the same haircut, only his is blonde. He has very feminine features and I check twice to make sure he is not a woman. He’s not. He is wearing a red and brown and white plaid button down with small plaid squares that I am instantly jealous of. The son has a very deadpan expression. Try as I might, he has no personality that I can write about. He is pretty. And I thought he was a girl. That is all.
I wonder if he is gay. Two gay children. Are there more children, I wonder? Is Mom and Dad visiting the gay children from back home in Wisconsin somewhere? They look like they could be from Wisconsin. Somewhere quaint like that. Back in Wisconsin, small town Wisconsin, the other siblings have laid down a big old house with a big old backyard to put a wood swing set for all the grandbabies they are going to be manufacturing. They don’t talk about their gay siblings. And when these siblings come back for holidays and things, the men shake Plaid Son’s hand a little too hard, backs a little too stiff, faces a little too tight, “Good ta see ya” they grumble into their chests. And the women wonder if they should ask Polo Daughter to set the table of to do the dishes or if she should be allowed to sit in the den and watch TV with the men. They are the children the rest of the family talks about in code, “He lives with his ‘man friend’” or “We won’t be invited to that wedding”.
At least they have each other. At least they have their parents because Mom and Dad seem awful excited to be there. Mom is extremely animated, throwing her hands about as the Colorless Woman had been doing. She puts her hands out, fingers together, palms facing her and turns her fingers in towards each other. She moves them up and down. I have no idea what she is doing. Then, she places her fingertips at the base of where a middle part would be in her hair and moves her hands down her perm, past where it stops around her ears, brushing her shoulders, mouthing “LOOOOOOONG”. At least I got that one. Someone has long hair. But not anyone at that table.
Dad is just as excited to be there as Mom. They are both giving their wrists some serious exercise. Dad throws his hands about his face, retelling some grand story. And then I realize he is only throwing one hand. His left hand is missing, his arm stopping at the wrist as if it refused to grow any farther while in the womb, though he probably lost it in the war or in some boating accident.
Other indicators that the parents are happy to be there: Mom leans in toward her family with her arms contently crossed on the table, a habit my own mother scolded me for whenever we were out in public. Father is leaning back, slumped comfortably in his chair. He briefly rests his handless arm on the back of his daughter’s chair, hesitates, then brings it down to his side. I question the hesitation. Does he not feel close to his daughter? Or maybe the position was uncomfortable for his arm. I have no way of telling since I could not see the face of the daughter.
Mom and Dad seem to be doing most of the talking, I’m catching words like “snappy” and “photogenic” and “years ago” from Dad as he strikes a finger on the table top to prove his disconnected point. I wonder if the son’s expression is permanently deadpan as I first believed it to be. I wonder if I were to turn the daughter around if her face would match like their haircuts. Maybe Mom and Dad are the only one’s so thrilled to be there. Maybe Plaid Son and Polo Daughter are thinking ‘get your asses back to Wisconsin and leave us be’ as Mom and Dad tell of their Wisconsin siblings with their Wisconsin families and their Wisconsin golden retriever. Is Chicago for outcasts like Ohio is for lovers? [Excuse the awful pun I couldn’t refuse].
Dessert time as Dad scoops a fork full of chocolate cake, nods of approval and I can just hear him saying “Oh, honey, you have to try this!” if his mouth wasn’t full of cake as he passes it across the table toward her. Mom shaves a small piece off, lays it in her mouth, her eyes visibly widen as she nods. She plunges her fork back down to attack the cake, shoveling bite two in before bite one can be swallowed.
I wrote down in my notebook ‘happy family shares a cake’. But thinking back, was it more so ‘happy Mom and Dad share a cake while Son and Daughter count the minutes?’ I guess I’ll forever be left to speculate.
Polo Woman is not the only lesbian in the café today and I remember that Kopi is supposedly marketed as a ‘hot lesbian hang out’ even though there are just as many gay men, stoners and if not more old couples than lesbians.
A very butch woman in her late 20’s enters the room to join some friends. She looks over at me when she first arrives. She wanders back to the knick-knacks behind me and catches my eye once more. She wears a black beanie over her curly fohawk, her jeans baggy, and men’s Nike sneakers. The ‘friends’ she has joined consist of a thin Asian woman in her early 20s, hair cut short under her gray hat with a bill. She wears skinny jeans low passed her hips and bright neon Nikes. Her chest is small under her gray v-neck tee. There is also an ethnic looking woman, somewhere in her 50s, hair short and permed like both my grandmothers, dark like my mom’s mom.
But I am studying the build and the dress of the Asian woman, in my head placing the hair and face of the butch woman onto that body and style and imagining Her. I have never had a real conversation with Her. I’ve only seen Her in passing and in my dreams. Because girl’s can have wet dreams too. They are just less messy. Girls can have wet dreams about other girls. They are just way more confusing for a small-town farm girl who doesn’t really know what being a lesbian is and who just recently discovered not all of her girl friends focus on the breasts and curves of hips of women in pornos. I’m supposed to look at the dick and the chiseled chest of the dude with the sick pedistache. Like hell I will. I like a thin chest anyway, like that Asian woman, like Her.
“Miracle Whip is a sign of revolution? Please! Everything is fake. Its fake revolution. Its fake independence. It’s all fake. It’s all bullshit.” The man next to me has been talking sternly and keeps looking over to see if I am listening in on his conversation. Either he is way paranoid or has finally exasperated himself, “We should get back to the car.” He says to the woman he is with.
I think equating Miracle Whip to freedom is about the most profound thing I have heard in some time. I start thinking of other abstract ideas that are like Miracle Whip; sympathy, trust, morals. They are mixed in a large factory in an enormous vat of thick goo, slowly adding high fructose corn syrup and salt till workers get a heart attack from just looking at that shit all day, then squeezed out into jars, packaged with pretty labels and SALE stickers. Fake.
I wonder who the Miracle Whip people are here. I wonder if I myself am a Miracle Whip person. Then I remember how supposedly awkward I am. Back home I wasn’t awkward and when I tell my friends from back home about my awkwardness, they tell me I’m crazy, and maybe a little weird, but not awkward. And it makes me miss my friends all the more, the friends that have gotten so used to my mannerisms and personality that they have labeled it WEIRD instead of AWKWARD, a far less hurtful sticker to slap me with.
This is the time to leave. Before the memories stinging my eyes become more than I can hold back. As I walk passed the front seating area, in front of the large store window so that customers who sit in the low tables can look out onto Clark street, a woman in her early 30’s steps in her high boots onto the platform. She glances around at the available seats and for some reason, chooses the small table. She struggles in her tight jeans to get to the pillows on the floor.
“Too tight!” She strains to two girls already seated at a table in the corner.
They laugh and agree, get back to their conversation and meals.
The woman adjusts her legs often; straight out in front of her, bent at the knees and tucked up to her side. She shifts her butt uncomfortably against the pillows. I know how she feels. Those pillows are so thing. With her purse in her lap she continues to find a compromise between her jeans and the hardwood.
A man walks through the door, waves at the woman. She smiles, “You wanna sit here or there?” She points from the small table to the main dining area.
“Bathroom first,” the man responds.
A pause, “So there?” A pause. “Ok.”
The woman kicks her legs under her, grabbing the dividing wall behind her for support, still clutching her purse in one hand.
Violet girl calls out, “He’s not making it any easier for you, is he?”
“No, but at least he’s not looking!” The woman laughs, putting a hand over her crack, pulling at her jeans. The girls nod in agreement. As do I silently in my corner. We all know the fear of showing your crack. Girl crack can be sexy, but only if you are half naked and not in a public setting.
“Smooth,” The woman announces as she finally rights herself, brushes her palms over her shirt, hitches her purse over her shoulder.
A waitress on the other side of the divider chuckles politely, empathizing her embarrassment. She must not be the only woman to struggle on these pillows.
I lean against the stubborn door, the sucking of air as the door pushes past the boards in the floor that have swollen swish my scarf in my face, pull my bangs back off my forehead. Smiling to myself, I’m glad I’m not the only one who sometimes feels too large for their skin.