Tag Archives: coffee shops

Non-fiction

The Wooden Bracelet

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close up photo of person wearing beads bracelets
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I lost my wooden bracelet at the coffee shop. I lost it because I’d taken it off and left it on the table. It always interfered with my right hand as I was writing. Why didn’t I put it on my left arm instead? I was too entrenched in deep thoughts to remember it was there.

I got home and realized I’d left it there in the morning. Oh shit. Well, someone with a good soul will see it on the table and turn it in. Surely, the kind folks at the shop will keep it in the lost-and-found. Every store has a lost-and-found, does it not?

So I walked back to the store in good faith, believing in the chance that someone had turned it in.

I’d bought it from a vendor working the street in downtown San Francisco just two months ago. This racist selling wooden bracelets, ten dollars a piece. My mother had bought it for me as a gift.

On the walk back, I placed a mobile order for my favorite iced espresso about fifteen minutes ahead of time. I always do that.

Hardly anyone was in there. A young woman on her laptop at a table and two baristas, also young women. The one who was heavy with the tattoos was making the drinks.

I was expecting my iced espresso to be waiting at the counter, but it wasn’t there.

As she was making the drink, I asked, “Excuse me, but has anyone turned in a wooden bracelet? I seemed to have left it here this morning.”

She didn’t roll her eyes at me, but the way she looked at me, I could tell she was rolling her eyes internally.

“Uh, why don’t you ask her?” She nodded at the other barista standing at the register.

So I went to her and asked her, “Excuse me, but has anyone turned in a wooden bracelet? I seemed to have left it here this morning.”

She didn’t roll her eyes at me, but the way she looked at me, I could tell she was rolling her eyes internally.

“Uh, let me check.”

She moseyed into the backroom, and maybe five seconds later came back out and shook her head. “Nah, didn’t find nothing. Sorry.”

There went that.

I waited near the one with the tattoos for my drink.

A minute went by.

Five minutes went by.

Still no drink.

All the while, one customer after the next was grabbing his or her drink from the counter.

What was happening that day?

I got the sense that I was being brushed off.

After ten minutes of standing there right in front of Tattoos, as she was making one drink after another, she never once asked if I was waiting for something. In fact, she never once looked at me.

You get to an age when you start becoming invisible. Not invincible (God, I wish) but invisible. I seriously started wondering if I was a ghost. Not a ghost in the literal sense, but like a social ghost. You acknowledge a parking sign’s existence but never once stop to ask how it’s doing today. Okay, so maybe not a social ghost but a parking sign. I’m a parking sign with nipples. And I just so happened to lose my wooden bracelet the same day. I also wondered if, one day, I would end up secluded in the mountains as a hairy Murine creature, muttering to himself, “My mama bought me that bracelet…My mama bought me that bracelet…My mama bought me that bracelet…” for the rest of my life. What horror.

And there I was, being treated like a parking sign.

At about the fifteen-minute mark, I had to say something. I was never one who blew up at workers. I always just wanted to spread peace and drink my espresso, maybe get help with my wooden bracelet.

But eventually I said to her, while clenching my teeth to muzzle my anger, “Excuse me, but where’s my iced espresso for Benjamin?”

She gave me a lost gaze as anyone would to a parking sign with a voice. She went over to the other barista, and I stood where I was, trying to cool down.

They checked their POS tablet for the mobile orders and saw the order. Tattoos started making it, while Miss Go-Fuck-Your-Bracelet gave me a card for a free drink. Yahoo. I was so pissed that I didn’t even thank her. She may have apologized, but I wouldn’t have heard her because I was listening to Your Old Droog in my earbuds.

Tattoos finally made my drink, and may have apologized as well, but I wouldn’t have heard her either. It’s best, in public, to wear your earbuds to block out the toxicity, like plugging your nose in New York City.

So I trudged home, an angry parking sign with nipples. Anger lasts for a long forty-five minutes before it simmers, and you play the scene over and over in your head the whole time. You try to look for ways in which you could’ve handled it differently.

An old friend once said, “You gotta ask for everything in this life.” It was after the Chinese restaurant hadn’t given him any forks or chopsticks. He had to stuff the lo mein noodles in his mouth using his fingers. Maybe a handful of times, you don’t need to ask for what you want; and those times are golden and sacred, some of the best times of your life. But other than that….

The second I’d entered that coffee shop and didn’t see my espresso waiting on the counter, I should’ve marched right up to Tattoos and demanded, “Where’s my espresso?”

She probably would’ve started making it right away.

That’s how the successful became successful. They didn’t stand around like a parking sign. Instead, like bank robbers, they walked into every room and demanded what they wanted.

I try to practice patience, believing what I want will eventually come. But in the case of the coffee shop, it proved false. Do I think I’ll change? Nah, not at this age. I’ll probably stay the same.

Non-fiction

Humdrum

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The sun is at the center of rising in front of the patio. I sit ahead of a man who keeps coughing. It’s yet another Monday with four more days to go. I haven’t eaten so much as yesterday. It was a lazy weekend full of TV and junk food, which is how weekends will be throughout the next season and the season after. I’ll have to adjust.

I paid my speeding ticket and have to take traffic school to avoid points on my record, so my insurance won’t blast me. It’s eighty-five degrees already, and it’s still dark. The heat will only get worse. When will it start getting cool? There was an excessive heat warning yesterday when I was watching football, with a warning of a thunderstorm and flash flood. So I wonder which one it is. It can’t be both. It wouldn’t have made sense.

Anyway, I miss the days of yore, when this coffee shop didn’t have strict rules, when there was plenty of seating. Times have changed for the worse.

The shithead manager works this morning. He served me eggs without sriracha.

So I asked him, “Excuse me. Can I get some sriracha?”

“You know you can order it through the mobile app.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Oh, I must not have seen it.”

Yeah. Suck it, douche bag.

Not only have they taken away the tables, but they’ve also taken away the black forks and replaced them with cheaper white forks. The one I was using cracked in half when I cut my eggs. This company is sliding downhill. Whoever the CEO is is fucking things up and making it another fast food enterprise instead of something greater. More sooner than later, they won’t allow me to hang out and use WiFI. It’ll just be another service industry business working through mobile ordering like a pizza delivery company, where I order something, pick it up, and take the food with me out of there. I used to be able to do anything within the walls of the law, but those days have been long gone for well over a decade.

It makes me frustrated enough to chew on a canker sore in my mouth. It happened last week when I bit down on my lip when I was chewing on a taco. Now it won’t heal and go away. It’s something of a problem. Otherwise, what can I say?

A blind man tries to cross the street with his cane at the intersection. He searches for something, perhaps the button for the crosswalk. He has found it, and now he crosses the street. I’ve wondered about crosswalk buttons and why they exist. Why must a pedestrian have to press one of those things when the crosswalk light should turn on automatically? Does the stoplight have to recognize someone crossing the street? That isn’t the way it should be. The blind man has found a bench to sit on, but he must’ve changed his mind because, again, he’s crossing the street.

I watched football and tennis for most of yesterday. There were surprising upsets and not-so-surprising victories. My parents nodded off in their chairs or on the couch while I watched TV from nine in the morning to nine at night. In the afternoon, I watched Yannik Sinner beat Taylor Fritz in three sets to win the US Open title. It wasn’t much of a match. Sinner showed exactly why he was the number-one ranked player in the world. And then I watched more football while I listened to the Steelers post-game show with my headphones. We ate pizza for lunch, and I ordered tacos and a burrito for dinner at around half past six.

Now today I must work. Bummer. I’m taking a week off at the end of September and can’t wait. One employee on my team has quit his job. He must’ve found another one at another company. Good for him. He got away clean. Or maybe he quit and doesn’t have a job. Either way I envy him. He announced his departure at the last team meeting:

“Friday is my last day, haha.”

And no one acknowledged him and said goodbye. I figure it would’ve been the same reaction to anyone else who announced their resignation from the company, which is how it goes these days. How many others will burn out and quit by October or November? September will run by quickly before I know it. The training wheels are off. And next month will come when I’ll hve to meet quota expectations and turnaround times and all the fun stuff of this job. How will I succeed?

It’s getting hotter out here, and I think I’ll go back inside before I start roasting like a rotisserie chicken rotating under a heat lamp.

A bee keeps harassing me out here. Why do they do that? Am I some sort of bee magnet? Is it the way I smell? The way I dress? Why do I attract bees? I look like a weirdo running around the patio, swatting at this bee chasing me because I don’t want to get stung of course. I’ve never been stung by a bee, lucky for me, but my father has. He went jogging one morning and almost swallowed one. It stung him on the tongue. I’ve been afraid of bees ever since that happened. They’re one of many things I fear.

Non-fiction

Wow

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A man just walked by with the most offensive smell. It was like he stunk of bad breath. Bad breath covered his body and he released it like a skunk. The stench is still in here in this coffee shop, but he’s far gone. Wow. Should I move? The stench just hangs in the air like a cobweb. Except I can’t see it obviously. I wish there was a fan in here. He sits outside on the patio with a wheelbarrow that he brought. I watched him walk into the bathroom. He was in there for a considerable amount of time. I haven’t smelled something so bad in years, or else I would’ve remembered it and commented on it. I didn’t know a human could smell this bad. Someone just came over and hugged him. Am I the only one who could smell him? I can’t go near him or else I wouldn’t be able to breathe. Maybe it’s his clothes that reek and he’s just fine. I won’t be able to tell. Thank god the odor has been whisked away by the wind of the door opening and closing.

They’ve taken away the tables here and replaced them with a bench with five small tables, so now people who sit next to me are practically sitting on my lap. The man to my right might as well be looking at my screen. But let him look. What do I care?

It’s not even seven in the morning, and the coffee shop is full. What will it be like by eight when I’m still here? These people will be long gone. All I can do is hope. I’m not saying I want the whole place to myself, but this seating is ridiculous. I should move outside to the patio, but it’s offensively hot. I’m worried that my laptop will melt on the table. It happens when my phone is baking. It turns off and tells me to cool it down before it turns back on. What if that happens to my laptop?

Anyway, I need a haircut. Why are haircuts so inconvenient? I tend to postpone appointments until my hair becomes unmanageable. Then I finally break down and get one. I wish I could cut my own hair instead of paying fifty dollars for a simple job. I tell them the same thing every time I sit in that large chair where they can adjust the height: a three on the sides and back and a trim on top. Of course they never trim it. They always go too far on the top as if they need something to do while they’re cutting my hair, as if their job is incomplete. I walk home looking like a marine.

Well, I moved outside to the patio. I’d rather have my laptop fry than have someone sitting on my lap. There’s another coffee shop, but it’s a mile away. It takes twenty minutes to walk to, and it’s a challenging walk in the scorching heat. The sweat stings my eyes by the time I get there. And when I get back home, my clothes are soaked. I could drive there, but that would be lazy, or I could just stay home. Maybe I’ll start doing that.

The smelly man has left the patio, and his stench has gone with him. Now I smell nothing. I wish I could smell the trees and the flowers, but all is lost.

Non-fiction

Inertia

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I sit around and beg God to give me energy, but all I find is the will to go to sleep. But sleep is hard to find these days. I’ve always been a notorious insomniac. I awoke at two in the morning and couldn’t fall back asleep. Too much worry. I’m sure that most people live with the same affliction. Only the cruel sleep soundly. Their evil deeds keep the rest of us awake. What if I’m wrong?

People ask, “How do you sleep at night?” when someone does something dastardly, like he lives without a conscience. And I’m sure some people do. I’ve slept next to those who snore their little brains out, and I grow envy over their slumber. I want to plug their noses so they’ll awaken abruptly, and then I’ll say, “Join the club.”

Thoughts were whirling in a cave last night in my humid room. I remember sleepovers when I was just a boy. All the other kids would fall asleep, and I was the one boy up. What was wrong with me for being so nervous in the company of others when I was trying to sleep?

I rubbed the back of a white dog in the coffee shop. I feel half awake and adrenalized. The day has broken. The sun is out. Another relentless morning as I listen to people chatter behind me about something. I can’t tell. It’s so loud in here. They’re playing a country song above the people’s voices.

I go through writer’s block and feel inertia in my bones. What a splendid problem. My job has robbed me of my imagination. I can’t think of other things.

I’m staring at a fellow’s cowboy hat at the table ahead of me. It’s white and made of straw with a sticker on the back that says, I’m stuck on H2O. A water enthusiast. Good.

The dog wags its tail next to me and howls at his master on a lazy Friday. I have to work later and make phone calls all morning. I wish I only had to send emails because I can’t stand to talk to people over the phone. Don’t most people hate it? I can tell. Text and emails are much more simple, aren’t they?

But anyway, the August air is hot and humid. The heat won’t end until October. It’s impossible to bear another two months of this. But I’m made to complain about anything. That’s what I’m here for. I’m a complaint machine. I file my complaints here. I’m cantankerous by myself but show a smile to others passing by who wave at me, such as a guy from Marin County. He’s arguably homeless, but he wears a lot of different clothes and looks as if he showers. He wears a heavy backpack every day in the coffee shop. He goes to the same customer and chats him up. And the customer gives him money to buy more coffee. It’s like he’s his benefactor. What would he do without him? The man gives it to him like a human feeding bread to a pigeon. The pigeon comes back for more and wants more than yesterday. It only adds to the problem. I haven’t given him a dollar. I fear that he would start depending on me.

I sip my coffee and drink my water, thinking what a daunting day is ahead of me, so much to work to do and not enough time.

An old man had to pull his pants up because his underwear was showing.

“No one in the US wears hats,” a woman says behind me.

“I heard Joe Biden got criticized for wearing a hat.”

What kind of comment was that? Why would he be criticized?

“Simone took the gold.”

Yes, it was her second gold medal.

Now they’re talking about equestrian. I tried watching it last week. All it was was women on horseback, making their horses dance on the field. I thought she would make the horse jump hurdles, but the sport must’ve changed.

They’re playing Four Non Blondes here, that old song from the nineties. Now it’s another folk song, or what they usually play here.

Anyway, what am I gonna do this weekend but sit around and relax, play tennis, and write, look for new jobs? The job market is rough. I read that now is a good time to have a job but a bad time to look for one, which is awful news for me. I guess I’ll have to live with what I have for now.

Non-fiction

124 Degrees

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The Coachella valley reached a record high this week of 124 degrees. I sweated all over when I went for a walk, and it stung my eyes. I couldn’t see where I was going along the sidewalk on my way back home. Supposedly the heat will last for weeks. July is meant to be that way. How will I make it to September when it will cool down? At least that’s what I expect. My parents said it’s usually the case.

Another Sunday has me feeling bored. I don’t know what to do with time. Perhaps I’ll wash my clothes. It doesn’t matter what I do. I still must see the dentist in the afternoon tomorrow, but at least I’ll miss work, the last place I want to be. My boss joked about me preferring to get my teeth pulled over having to go back to work. I didn’t laugh with him. I took his words seriously. So yes, I would rather have a root canal than go to work any day this week, or any week it seems because my job is torture. Angry people on the phone are constantly complaining, cursing, too, as if the problem must be me, not them.

I miss vacation time. I won’t go on another one until September since I like to break it up into every three months to keep my sanity. Imagine if I didn’t take those days off. I would be a wreck come Thanksgiving. Who am I fooling? I’m already a wreck. Work has kicked and slapped me. It’s hard to focus on anything else. I carry work with me after my shift when I take my walks. Does that make me a workaholic? I guess so.

Anyway, the summer is too long these days. It used to be short when I was a kid who played in the backyard. Now I don’t even have a backyard, just a pool that I share with all the other tenants.

I’m at the coffee shop, and a guy keeps turning around and looking back at me from his table. He’s watching horseracing on his iPad. I know because I peeked at it. He’s getting on my nerves. Thank God he just left.

A lot of tourists have entered today. It’s 10:30 a.m. The busy crowd has left the store. Now it’s just us regulars and a family of tourists at a long table.

I stare out the window and see the different shops across the street: Sinfulicious Body Care, Balboa Candy, Crazy Shirts. I’ve been inside the candy store before but never bought anything.

It has been quiet in downtown Palm Springs because of the heat. No one wants to go outside except for me. I can handle the heat.

I’m going through a crisis with this writer’s block. We all go through it as writers. No one is immune to it. We run out of important things to say. Otherwise we’re just repeating stories or ideas. Richard Hugo said to write about our obsessions. I’m obsessed over several things. He also said to focus on the subject that isn’t the subject. For instance, if I was writing about knives, the real subject wouldn’t be the knives but something else. I don’t know what that something else is. I guess it comes to me naturally after I’ve been writing for a while. I don’t know a single writer right now.

I knew a few screenwriters when I lived in Hollywood. Some of them were moderately successful. One of them moved to Texas a long long time ago. I wonder whatever happened to Michael. He was a sweet man. I also met screenwriters who never wrote. They called themselves screenwriters I guess to adapt. Michael was working with several producers at the time I knew him. I was in my late twenties or early thirties. I can’t quite remember. He always sat outside of the coffee shop and stared off into space when he wasn’t waving at people. He would tip his fedora at the ladies. His mouth was crooked. Something awful had happened to him, but I never asked him what or why. We would smoke cigarettes together in the coffee shop patio back when that was allowed. Now I don’t think people can even sit and hang out at that coffee shop anymore. I never thought it would come to that, but it’s here. I hope Michael is doing okay for himself in Texas. He belongs in a better place. Anyway, I’m wishing for the best this Sunday, but I don’t have high hopes, and I’m wishing for the best this week. I hope it doesn’t kick my ass too much.

Non-fiction

How I Spent My Fourth of July

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I slept until the sun came out and felt as if my head was going to explode. The independence coincided with a feeling that my day was at its best. I needed such a holiday to sleep.

The coffee house was packed with customers and mostly regulars I see each time. I wrote for several hours, watching as she would feed banana pieces to her dog. When I was done, I walked back home and did the do before I went to write some more. It was a total like a day of work.

My mother texted me and asked if I could visit her and Dad to eat some steak and lobster at their house to celebrate. I drove there at a half past five o’clock, and they were watching Wimbledon as they were cooking steaks outside. The grill was hot in triple-digit heat. We ate when it was close to time for me to leave. The steak was flavorful, delicious, but the lobster wasn’t soft but hard. I’ll say I’ve never eaten lobster when it’s cooked that way. I dipped the tail in butter sauce, and it was huge. It would’ve been okay if it was tender, but it wasn’t quite the case. I don’t eat lobster every day, so it was disappointing. Anyway, we ate my favorite ice cream afterward as a dessert. The peanut butter chunks with chocolate tasted awesome at a time when heat was such a factor.

When I drove back home, I saw the fireworks explode at eight o’clock at night. It was a time I will remember as the years go on. Today is just a normal day in which I have to work. They should’ve given us another holiday. Oh well. Perhaps someday they will.

Non-fiction

Writer’s Block

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Somewhere, someone is laughing because I can’t think of a word to write outside of the fact that I’m writing about not knowing what to write. Does that make any sense? I thought not. But let’s go.

Writer’s block is real. Some people claim it isn’t. It’s fine if they can give it another name. How about constipation? Does that make it sound better? I didn’t come up with writer’s block, so I’m fine with whatever someone calls it. It’s real. I think the muse is real, too. Some writers deny it. They say hard work and determination are what produce words and paragraphs and pages and chapters and whole works. I say that’s part of it. A writer has to sit his ass in the chair and stay there until the work is done for sure, but there are outside influences that can determine the writer’s success.

I’m staring out the window, watching a barista take a break from work. It isn’t distracting in the least, but he intrigues me enough to stop and watch him. He’s sitting on a park bench on the sidewalk in front of a Sunglass Hut, reading from his smartphone and vaping next to a star of Harry Lee Coffman, M.D., on the Walk of Fame in Palm Springs. He’s drinking iced tea out of a plastic cup. He has walked back in. Now I go back to writing. My Adderall can only help so much.

When I was younger, I used to run into a man at the coffee shop whom I was convinced was the devil. He was short, skinny, had a bald head, and wore all black with black sunglasses in which I couldn’t see his eyes. His appearance didn’t make him the devil, although his pale complexion and skinhead jacket did make him look sinister. It was his behavior. I tried to get work done there, but he would walk up to my table and start talking. I forget whether I wore headphones in those days. I was only in my twenties when dude entered the frame of my life.

“There he is,” he would say.

When I looked up, I saw him approaching me with a grin, and I thought, “Oh shit. Here we go. He’ll waste my time for about twenty minutes. There goes my muse.”

What fascinates me is how no one bothers someone who’s reading, and nine times out of ten, no one will bother someone who’s writing. Except this guy. Yep, the muse is real, and it’s delicate. He would elucidate to me random facts such as the difference between yellow mucus and clear mucus, as mucus was forming on his lips. And I would just stare at the mucus in morbid fascination.

He was a cokehead who would bump lines in the bathroom. I never had clear evidence, except he would come out sniffling after a long time while other people waited for their turns.

He also claimed that he was the ex-drummer for a famous 1980s hair band. I recognized the hair band but couldn’t think of one of their songs. For some reason, I believed him.

Anyway, he was the devil to my muse. My muse would crumble and die when he was near. He sent telepathic messages to me that I was doing something unimportant or at least not as important as what he wanted to say to me.

I never found out whatever happened to him. He’s probably at some other coffee shop in the universe, chatting it up with someone by himself who’s trying to focus on something, telling him about his days as the ex-drummer and how much coke he did. The man was a vampire. He was writer’s block personified. I never found out his name, but who needs a name to identify him when he served only one purpose, which was to kill someone else’s muse?

Non-fiction

In Goleta

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I arrived in Goleta last night at about six o’clock. The waves were crawling along the ocean as I drove by with the sun beating my face from the west on the 101. I’d driven four hours from the heat of Palm Springs to the cool of Santa Barbara County. The hotel room was waiting for me.

I checked in with a kid named Chuck, who was probably close to twenty-three. The lobby smelled like peanuts and beer. (It was next to a lounge where folks were laughing and chatting.) Chuck was a nice kid.

He said, “How’s’ your day going so far? It’s hot. At least it’s cool in here.”

It was seventy-two degrees in Goleta. I’d just driven from the hottest part of California, arguably.

“I live in Palm Springs,” I said.

His smile changed. “Oh. Okay. Are you parking here?”

What an odd question. Where was I supposed to park?

“Yes, I am.”

He handed me an air refresher in the shape of an old-fashioned Woody car that I could hang on my mirror. “This will allow you to park here,” he said.

I’d never been given one before, but I took it.

“Thanks, Chuck,” I said.

Chuck told me where to park. Like hotel staff people do, he showed me a map of the complex by drawing a curve to the right building. I thanked him and drove there.

I rolled my suitcase to the second level, which smelled like sanitizer. It was outdoors. My room was 270. It was above the pool.

I saw a few scantily clad women in bikinis at half past six. It was cool outside, and they were lying to get a suntan.

When I entered the room, I noticed the shade was transparent. Everyone could see me in there, but then I saw another shade that was made of bamboo. I rolled that one down so no one could see me.

I dropped everything off before I went to get my favorite pizza in town. Rusty’s Pizza Parlor brought me back to my youth when I used to eat the same pizza up north. I used to drive for them as a delivery boy in college. It’s some of the best pizza I’ve ever had. I ordered it with pepperoni, sausage, and mushroom, the standard pizza I always eat.

And then I took a shower. Whoever designed it needed their head checked. It didn’t have a shower door. When I went to turn it on, the water blasted out and doused my head before I could take my clothes off, so my shirt got wet. What a folly that shower was. At least the shampoo was peppermint, and the soap had the aroma of rum, of all scents.

Anyway, I went to bed at around 9:30 p.m., which is the standard time I go to bed, and I kept waking up in the middle of the night. I’m a bad sleeper.

I awoke to the smell of a dusty air conditioner before the sun rose and brushed my teeth in the shower. I wash myself at night and brush my teeth in the morning—that’s two showers a day. I also shave in the shower. It gets things done quicker and easier.

Then, I drove to my favorite coffee shop, the Old Town Coffee Shop, where the coffee beans lured me in with their distinct smell.

I ordered the iced Americano. The lady behind the counter told me to use a password on the receipt that was case-sensitive to use the internet. I waited about ten minutes for the one guy who was making the drinks.

The iced Americano didn’t taste like espresso. It tasted sour, and I didn’t like it. But I love this place not for its coffee but for its ambiance.

It’s huge, with a large back patio with orange canopies, a wooden fence surrounding it, and violets growing over it.

The white brick wall of the building next to it has a painting of two brown hands holding each other and swirls of green, dark blue, and light blue. It’s ugly, but most paintings these days are ugly anyway. I go to a museum and leave unimpressed. People just don’t have the time to make a good painting anymore.

But anyway, what am I going to do today? Eat. That’s what vacations are all about—nothing else. It doesn’t matter where I vacation—Switzerland.

“What did you do in Switzerland?”

“I ate.”

“That’s it?”

“Yep.”

“You didn’t go on any tours?”

“Nope.”

I’m not the average tourist. I spend my time eating. Eating and writing. What else is there to do in Switzerland, Morocco, or Brussels? What else is there to do domestically in New York, in Key West, in Seattle? To me, that’s what vacations are all about. I’ll spend my time this week just eating, looking forward to the next glutinous meal.

Non-fiction

Travel

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Next week is my birthday. My parents are meeting me in Avila Beach for a celebration. The drive to Avila from Palm Springs is over four hours, so I’m staying in Goleta for a night, where my favorite coffee shop is.

But anyway, I’ll have to gas up the tank entirely. It costs me fifty bucks, roughly, when I’m on empty. I figure I’ll run out of gas by the time I get to Avila Beach. So I’ll have to gas up again to drive back to Palm Springs. You do the math. That’s a hundred dollars to gas up to go there and back, which can cost as much as a plane ticket to some parts of the country.

I look at gas as something that should be free. That’s my mind for you. I guess some people value gas differently, but I would rather spend my hard-earned money on another commodity. Whatever the case, it’s gonna be a travel from here to there. I just hope there will be no traffic along the way. There have been wildfires near Gorman on the 5 freeway, which has altered the course for some people. That could be the direction that I’m going. If that’s so, I’ll just stop on the road more often.

I can take my time getting there, as I have all day to get to Goleta on Sunday. I’ll stay the night, hit the coffee shop in the morning, and work on my manuscript before I drive to see my parents in Avila on Monday. That sounds fair. I’m taking the whole week off from work. Thank God. To work is to suffer, and I love traveling anyway, especially to those parts where it’s cool by the ocean. I’ll eat my favorite pizza and my favorite Danish. It’s something to look forward to.

Fiction

Rage.

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I got up this morning, took my shower, brushed my teeth, put my clothes on, and dashed out of my mother’s house before she could say good morning at 5:30 am. She wanted to talk to me, but I slipped out to the garage, where my car was parked because I didn’t want to be annoyed.

I drove along Jefferson Street towards the coffee shop, and an angry red Prius cut me off. Come on, Brother. I drive a Toyota, too. We should be family. But this person must’ve been a morning drunk because he or she was swerving in my lane, and a red light was ahead, and they zoomed right through that intersection. Go on ahead, Brother. Break the law. I’m waiting right here for it to turn green. I crawled closer to the crosswalk, and it turned green when it was activated by my movement.

I made it to the coffee shop by six a.m., the only one in there besides the workers.

“How can I help you?” the barista asked.

They hadn’t lined the breakfast sandwiches on display, so I got a little worried.

“Where’s the breakfast sandwich with the English muffin?” I asked.

“Sorry, sir,” he said, “but we don’t put them out for display anymore.”

“Oh, so you do have them.”

“Yes, we do.”

“I’ll have one of those and a cold brew. Thank you very much.”

He warmed it up, I paid my bill with Apple Pay, which I always use in case the Romanian mafia had infiltrated the touchpad, and he handed me my breakfast.

I ate the egg sandwich with bacon and used only half of the muffin to stay an inch closer to my low-carb diet, even though I should’ve ditched the other half, too. But oh well. I love English muffins too much.

Now I sit outside in the wind. A pesky fly keeps landing on my forehead, and I keep swatting it away. It’s insistent on ruining my morning. I think that jerk in the Prius has possessed that fly. Either way, I’m very annoyed.

I have to take my car in for maintenance today at 9 a.m., and I know it’s gonna take all day for them to work on it because that’s what car dealerships do, especially with a car like mine, which is a mess inside, and the outside is full of dirt. A co-worker who had a cousin who worked as a car mechanic at a dealership once told me that they take their sweet ass time with dirty cars and work on the cleaner cars first. Makes sense. Who wants to work on a dirty car? It would be like a server not serving a table full of dirty people. They would rather serve the cleaner people.

But anyway, it’s a Saturday, so who am I to complain?