Feb. 25: Coffee shop subculture
So I was in this coffee shop
tonight because I wanted to find some people to give me note titles for
this blog and I didn't have much luck. I handed notes to people but no
one emailed me or came over to me to suggest a title. There was one girl
who worked there who gave me this title. She had blonde hair with black
streaks (or black hair with blonde streaks) and she is studying to be a
dental hygienist. I will not tell you where she is studying or what
city I was in.
I do not hang out in coffee houses. I think they are supposed to be trendy places where dudes in berets and goatees go to be unemployed and talk about Jean Paul Sartre. It is also supposed to be a place where impossibly pretty girls with long black hair and white cashmere sweaters read Jane Austen novels and not talk to me.
I think I arrived at the coffee house at 7:45 p.m. I decided I would handwrite some notes about Rotating Pineapple and hand them to the people there. As I wrote, one girl in a black sweater and eyeglasses got up to use the bathroom. She was still in the bathroom seven minutes later. Knowing that made me uncomfortable. I decided not to give her one of my notes.
There were four guys sitting in the corner of the coffee house. One of them was reading out loud from a book. He had a shaved head and a red beard and on the back of his jacket was a patch from the death metal band Slayer and underneath that was a tribute to Jeff Hanneman, the guy from Slayer who died. After seeing all this, I decided that the book he was reading from probably wasn't John MacArthur's Bible study guide.
At another table were two black guys who were dividing their time between a laptop computer and an academic paper. At another table were two girls in their late 20s who were talking about a book they had read. In the other corner was a guy who looked like an accountant. Behind the counter where three young women in green aprons. One of them was the one who gave me the title for this note.
I am going to check my email again to see if someone emailed me a title.
No. No one has yet. My inbox is still cleaner than a Barbie doll's bumhole.
-
I am an introvert who wants to be an extrovert. I am a writer whose motivation is that I want women to adore me. So when I go to a coffee shop to write, I am consciously aware of all the women in the vicinity. I then realize that none of these women adore me, none of them know me, barely any of them even know that I exist. I want to change this but I also want to write.
No one thinks anything when you walk into a coffee shop with a laptop. It's more unusual to go into a coffee shop without one. There was a time when you could take a notebook and a pen and just sit there and write and maybe someone would come up to you and ask what you're writing. I always do that when I see someone writing. Once someone told me they were writing a business proposal. Another time someone told me they were writing a poem for their girlfriend's mother. Once someone told me she was writing a novel. The novel was about a woman who fell in love with a man while vacationing in Mexico. She offered to email it to me but she never did.
-
I got my first girlfriend because I wrote a novel. It was the summer before my senior year in high school. A girl in my class was so impressed with my endeavour that she actually dated me for one month. It was awesome.
She actually worked in a coffee shop for a while too. Tim Horton's.
-
So being a writer in a coffee shop is not unusual. Coffee shops are full of writers. Some of them even make enough money from their writing to pay for coffee.
-
I bet the people who work in coffee shops hate cleaning the bathrooms. Oh the horror stories they could tell.
Memo to the girl with the blonde and black hair who gave me this title: Any horror stories you could tell?
-
In his book Writing in Restaurants, David Mamet says that when you write in a restaurant, you are both observed and unobserved.
Once I had this idea for a novel. The idea required homework - specifically, it involved me approaching complete strangers and asking them an unintrusive yet straightforward philosophical question. I had a blast. I spent a night in our nation's capital and I talked to about 30 people and got all sorts of crazy answers.
Here's the kicker: I spent no time in coffee shops.
-
One of the constant themes in my writing is that my protagonists draw their comfort from strangers rather than the people closest to them. Perhaps this speaks to my own unique situation. Maybe this is a form of prognostic wish fulfillment. Keep pushing people away and strangers will be the only people in your life.
-
The world is dotted with hundreds and thousands of coffee shops - all of 'em populated by strangers.
And that is what I call an adventure.
This writer needs a hug.
I do not hang out in coffee houses. I think they are supposed to be trendy places where dudes in berets and goatees go to be unemployed and talk about Jean Paul Sartre. It is also supposed to be a place where impossibly pretty girls with long black hair and white cashmere sweaters read Jane Austen novels and not talk to me.
I think I arrived at the coffee house at 7:45 p.m. I decided I would handwrite some notes about Rotating Pineapple and hand them to the people there. As I wrote, one girl in a black sweater and eyeglasses got up to use the bathroom. She was still in the bathroom seven minutes later. Knowing that made me uncomfortable. I decided not to give her one of my notes.
There were four guys sitting in the corner of the coffee house. One of them was reading out loud from a book. He had a shaved head and a red beard and on the back of his jacket was a patch from the death metal band Slayer and underneath that was a tribute to Jeff Hanneman, the guy from Slayer who died. After seeing all this, I decided that the book he was reading from probably wasn't John MacArthur's Bible study guide.
At another table were two black guys who were dividing their time between a laptop computer and an academic paper. At another table were two girls in their late 20s who were talking about a book they had read. In the other corner was a guy who looked like an accountant. Behind the counter where three young women in green aprons. One of them was the one who gave me the title for this note.
I am going to check my email again to see if someone emailed me a title.
No. No one has yet. My inbox is still cleaner than a Barbie doll's bumhole.
-
I am an introvert who wants to be an extrovert. I am a writer whose motivation is that I want women to adore me. So when I go to a coffee shop to write, I am consciously aware of all the women in the vicinity. I then realize that none of these women adore me, none of them know me, barely any of them even know that I exist. I want to change this but I also want to write.
No one thinks anything when you walk into a coffee shop with a laptop. It's more unusual to go into a coffee shop without one. There was a time when you could take a notebook and a pen and just sit there and write and maybe someone would come up to you and ask what you're writing. I always do that when I see someone writing. Once someone told me they were writing a business proposal. Another time someone told me they were writing a poem for their girlfriend's mother. Once someone told me she was writing a novel. The novel was about a woman who fell in love with a man while vacationing in Mexico. She offered to email it to me but she never did.
-
I got my first girlfriend because I wrote a novel. It was the summer before my senior year in high school. A girl in my class was so impressed with my endeavour that she actually dated me for one month. It was awesome.
She actually worked in a coffee shop for a while too. Tim Horton's.
-
So being a writer in a coffee shop is not unusual. Coffee shops are full of writers. Some of them even make enough money from their writing to pay for coffee.
-
I bet the people who work in coffee shops hate cleaning the bathrooms. Oh the horror stories they could tell.
Memo to the girl with the blonde and black hair who gave me this title: Any horror stories you could tell?
-
In his book Writing in Restaurants, David Mamet says that when you write in a restaurant, you are both observed and unobserved.
Once I had this idea for a novel. The idea required homework - specifically, it involved me approaching complete strangers and asking them an unintrusive yet straightforward philosophical question. I had a blast. I spent a night in our nation's capital and I talked to about 30 people and got all sorts of crazy answers.
Here's the kicker: I spent no time in coffee shops.
-
One of the constant themes in my writing is that my protagonists draw their comfort from strangers rather than the people closest to them. Perhaps this speaks to my own unique situation. Maybe this is a form of prognostic wish fulfillment. Keep pushing people away and strangers will be the only people in your life.
-
The world is dotted with hundreds and thousands of coffee shops - all of 'em populated by strangers.
And that is what I call an adventure.
This writer needs a hug.
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