The Inner Workings Of Coffee Drinkers

The Inner Workings of Coffee Drinkers {edited}

Come sit down with me, darling, while your drink's still warm. Don't roll your eyes and whine to me when you grimace at the taste of cold, bitter coffee against your tongue, because I told you. The longer you dawdle, the more people pass by. We're missing our chance! Look at that woman by the lamp post; I could've told you about her last failed relationship or how she loves Mozart. That little boy with the yellow balloon; you could've told me how that's his third – and last – one, because his mother is tired of him letting the string go and watching it rise into the heavens like it's not just a piece of colorful plastic filled with hot air.

There, that's better. Watch the people with me, I know how it relaxes you. Don't point; I've told you numerous times that it's rude. The art of people watching is one of discretion and imagination. Use your mind and your eyes only.

That man in grey outside the window. Him. Uptight businessman. Failing company, failing marriage. Permanent stick up his ass; look at the lines on his face.

Why do you shake your head at me like that?

[It's always about lives in shambles with your stories], you inform me.

Fine, then, it's your turn. Pick someone and get on with it.

You deliberate, your eyes training hard outside, and you nod in that direction.

[You see those two boys over there?] you say. [They love each other so much. No, not just best friends, though they are. They're in love with one another.]

You've always been a bit fanciful in your stories. 

[You don't see it?] you insist. [Take another look. Don't you see the way his eyes linger a little too long on the other's face when he talks, a little too full of ardor, a little too intense? The way their hands are intertwined isn't platonic, the way their knuckles are blanched from squeezing tightly, like they are afraid someone will pull them apart. Come closer to me, there's a better view from this angle, and let me tell you a story about them.]

[1.

They would have met in a café like this one, perhaps in the early evening. One of the boys would have spotted the other at the bar and struck up a conversation in which they talked about cars and books and girls, and how neither of them liked them all too much. Too public the place would've been, so the first boy took the other's hand – though not obviously – and led him outside, into the alleyway where they were clouded with shadow by the silent bricks that loomed over them like a mother bird in her nest. The first boy grabbed the other by his shirt collar, pulled him close, and showed him exactly how much he didn't like girls, while the walls whispered their secret into the unforgiving night.

[2.

All it took was the wrong place, wrong time, and their world collapsed in on itself. Furious screaming, violent sobbing, shrieks of, "Abomination! Disgrace! Devil!"  

Stones were never thrown, but their skin absorbed their loathing like brittle earth, thirsty for water during a drought. They may as well have been boulders. Words of love from the holy book would have bled with hate as they were pelted inexhaustibly at the two, sinking their teeth into the boys' blackened, mottled hearts. Still they survived, and their skin became thicker, but their love grew to be a hard kind of love, a seasoned veteran to the hatred.

[3.

That day came inevitably, where twenty minutes behind a dumpster, bruised ribs, and a blackened eye changed everything. Reckless boys out for a good time thought it would be funny to teach one of their local faggots what they thought of him.

His partner would have seethed with rage at his wrecked state, gently cupping his face, his arms, his shoulders. Anywhere he could touch, just to make sure that he was still there.

"Are they right?"

"About?"

"Are we as bad as they say?"

Fingers would've tightened around his wrists, almost insistently.

"You know my answer."

"God wouldn't do this to us unless we were sinning – "

"They could never make us a tragic thing." A pause. Then a whisper. "Stick with me, and when the time comes, we'll leave together."

Hesitation. Then, imperceptibly, a nod.

[4.

They took the beatings in stride from then on, always silent, always impenetrable to the public eye. But in the night they nursed their pain and tended to their wounds by firelight; over time they learned to rely on each other like they could no one else. The boys grew to be men, starting a future together far away from this place. But during their bleakest moments, they reached for each other's hands, reassured by another warm presence, and they pressed onwards towards salvation.

[5.

Neither of them could tell you exactly when their old life ended and when a new one began. It might have been the moment when one of them was finally able to call himself employed. They celebrated that night, sharing a milkshake at a McDonald's on the street corner. It could have also been the moment their apartment lease was finalized, or when their new circle of friends told them that they already knew, and they loved them nonetheless.

It was times like these that they thought, just maybe, they'd be alright.

That's rubbish, I tell you. The profundity of love you hold for strangers always surprises me. How did you reach a conclusion like that?

[Small gestures, stolen glances,] you say sincerely. [But it's nothing like our story.]

And how true that is. Think of all the times when it felt like nothing mattered, when we wondered how those razors would look lodged in our throats, when the whole world was crushing us like bugs beneath the heel of its shoe. Think of those times and everything we've endured and I wonder, without you there, if I would've come out alive at all.

How lucky I am to have you.