Ramblings of a Literate Barfly

Morning at Cafe Ennui.

As I write these words, a snowy-haired black man wearing a kippa hobbles past my table, ragged tassels of a prayer shawl dangling beneath the bottom of his coal-gray sweatshirt. Knees locked, he plods painfully towards the service counter, hips lurching forward and back as he shifts his weight from side to side. The barrista, a teenage Mexican with a bald head and neat goatee, stares at him blankly. The old man reaches the counter, steadies himself with one hand. He plunges the other into his right front pocket, hauls out a fistful of change, and dumps it out next to the cash register. Eyes narrowed, he jabs at his loot with a gnarled index finger, plucking one coin after another out of the main pile and sliding it across the counter towards the barrista. He stops when he has counted out exactly one dollar and eighty-eight cents.

"One small coffee, please, " the old black Jew says.

I decided to start visiting coffee shops exactly one week after I decided to stop visiting taverns. I decided to stop visiting taverns because I had, by the age of twenty-eight, become a red-faced, bleary-eyed, heavy-gutted, chain-smoking, beer-swilling, shot-slamming, front-lawn napping, broad-daylight back-alley pissing, obnoxious loudmouth drunk. Which was a shame, because I really liked taverns.

My love of taverns was not synonymous with my lust for alcohol. Think about it: no one goes to a bar for the booze. Had it been all about the ethanol, I could have gotten loaded just as easily sitting around in my apartment. Plus, I could have done it cheaper. And in my underwear.

But instead, I sat around in taverns. And I sat around in taverns for the only reason anyone does: to be around other people. Other drunk people, sure, but so what? The important thing was I was a social drunk, a sociable drunk. A sociable drunk could be many things. I was, by turns, a happy drunk or a sad drunk, a loud drunk or a quiet drunk, a clever drunk or a stupid drunk, a witty drunk or a rambling drunk, a smiling drunk or a scowling drunk, a patient drunk or a fed-up drunk, a friendly drunk or even (but only rarely) a mean drunk. But so long as I was willing to pull my clothes on and trudge down to the nearest tavern, so long as I remained a sociable drunk, I would never be a lonely drunk. And lonely drunks were the only drunks who scared me.

For a moment, the barrista just stares at the scattering of coins the old man has pushed towards him. Then he uses his own index finger to count them again, plucking one at a time from the counter into his waiting palm. He is almost through counting whem he stops and frowns.

"Hey," the barrista says. "This one's Canadian."

The old man doesn't seem to hear him. He just stands with his eyes closed, fingers drumming the counter. His head bobs up and down slightly, as if to music.

"Sir," the barrista says, louder this time. "Did you hear me? I said this coin is no good."
The old man's eyes pop open. "What?"

The barrista holds the offending coin up between two fingers. "This coin is from Canada. It's no good. You gotta give me another quarter."

The old man grunts. He scans his main pile of change for a long time. Sweat is begins to glaze his forehead. "You said a quarter, right?"

"Yeah, a quarter. Twenty-five cents."

The old man stares, stares. He fishes a rumpled white handkercheif from his back pocket and wipes his mouth. The barrista doesn't speak or move. Finally, the old man pushes another coin in the barrista's direction.

"Okay," the kid says. He takes the quarter, turns around, fills a paper cup to the brim with hot coffee.

By the time he turns back around the old man has pocketed the remainder his change.

"Thank you." the old man says.

The kid nods.

The old Jew settles himself at the nearest table, carefully setting the steaming cup down in front of him. For nearly a minute, he just sits there, stone still and mute, eyes squeezed shut as if aginst some inner pain. But then his body begins to rock back and forth, gently. His lips begin to move, and the old man begins to pray.

In his 1993 novel Trainspotting, Irvine Walsh's protagonist, Marc Renton, lays out exactly what the general public fails to grasp about addiction: "People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it."

The "it" Renton is referring to is heroin, but the same holds true for booze. And make no mistake: the pleasure of it as every bit as real as the misery.

It has been raining all day. I squat in the alley outside Durland's tavern, back pressed against the damp brick wall. I am wild drunk and trying to light a cigarette. Trying and failing. A Marlboro Red dangles between my lips. Left hand cupped above it to shield it from the pattering rain. Right hand flick-flick-flicks away at a cheap lighter that spits sparks but brings forth no flame.

I don't see Tonya walking towards me. Don't hear her footfalls splashing through tiny puddles that glisten, like uncut jewels, beneath the sickly glare of the overhead streetlamp. The only sign of her presence, in that split second before she touches me, is a subtle tingling along my neck as atoms brush past, shifting away from the space she suddenly fills. That, and a breath of lavender perfume.

Then her cool palm against my cheek, fingernails tracing a line in the tender flesh below my jaw. She guides me to my feet, slips her hands beneath my shirt, digs into my shoulders with her nails.

She is drunk as I am. Eyes bloody red, her lips slightly parted, lower jaw slack. She kisses me. Our lips press together and my tongue slips past hers and she rakes my back, painfully. I plunge my hands into her hair, rain-drenched, slick and black as ravens' wings...

Is anything in life so exciting as a really great kiss? Had someone asked me before that day, I would have made a list. Now, I can only think of one thing: a really great kiss you weren't expecting.

And you just don't that many really great kisses in coffee shops.