Metsa #Wattys2016

Second Encounter

Douchebag. I concluded again a half hour later when I was forced to listen to him ramble on and on about his superior football skills.

I sat uncomfortably in my seat at the coffee shop, whose once pure intrinsic nature now felt tainted by stupidity. I tried to drown out his annoying story of how he got his team to state by taking powerful sips of my coffee. The taste was bitter--hot--just how I enjoyed coffee in the morning. At night, I wanted something with a nice sugar high that would easily make me fall asleep after I crashed, but in the morning, I needed something bland that would scorch my tongue, keeping me awake.

I became solely interested in my drink, only occasionally responding to the self-absorbed jerk in front of me with a forced nod or unenthusiastic "mhm". He just went on and on; any edgewise of conversation I tried to throw in, ultimately got chucked in the refinery like year old iPhones. In the end, I became completely silent, only focusing on the bitterness of my coffee and thinking briefly about Metsa. I tried to force thoughts of her out my head, but it was impossible.

"So yeah, the dude ended up severely damaging like some of his tendons or something..." Throw some coffee down my throat. "ended up losing his scholarship. I felt you, know, baaaad at first. Like, it was my fault, but it's not like, I wanted that to happen. I only stepped on his arm for my team. And we won cause of me! So isn't that what's all that matters?"

"Oh, yeah totally. As long as you win, nothing else matters, not even common decency." I responded, sarcastically--mocking him--yet he simply nodded his head in agreement. He probably has said something like that along those lines too, only full-fledged serious. Yup, total douchebag.

I leapt into the comfort of my coffee--cup warming my hands--shielding eye contact.

"Anyway, I gotta piss. The new powder shakes stuff my coach got me on, makes me piss like some prego chick. But the stuff works great, already grown a lot of muscle mass." Good to know. He flexed, subtly, yet obviously wanting me to see. Then he walked off with an undeserving aura of superiority attached to his movements, hands pushing the bathroom doors open as if they were chapel doors in the climax of a romantic comedy. Yup, how much I regretted this morning already.

I leaned back into my seat, trying to replace my feeling of uneasiness with physical comfort. Unfortunately, a wooden chair is about as comfortable as...well, a wooden chair. Luckily, no splinters, but still uneasiness became my shadow, draped over me until it felt like all I was, was the feeling of uneasiness. Yes, I became a feeling. Not a person but a feeling. I recognized this state all too well. The state I had whenever I didn't want to be somewhere, whenever I didn't want to be with someone. Those times when you just want to be left all alone--isolated from the Outer World, spinning around inside your Inner World. Yes...your Inner World. In the Outer World, you are expected to behave and act a certain way and your role completely changes based on the situation, but your Inner World is composed of its own logic, its own identity, its own state of being.  No matter how much gravity the Outer World pushes onto our Inner World, it almost always rebounds to sit back onto its axis. Maybe not as perfectly as it did once before, but still it sits back on its axis.

Really, all I wanted to do was just leave--ditch the asshole--go home and take a nap before my 1:00 class. But while such an action wouldn't make me as bad as someone who purposefully steps on someone's arm to win some football game, it still wouldn't look all the best on my "Nice Guy Resume." So I sat patiently, waiting for him to return--hoping that the roof would open up and the mothership would come and take me away. How much in that moment of absurdity did I wish for that.

A minute later, he came out the bathroom. But, instead of going straight back to the table, he quickly took a left and walked out the door. Leaving me, of course, to pay the whole bill. Once again...douchebag.