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honky cracker: I Wanna Live with a Coffee Shop Girl
Wake up. Open eyes. Seven-thirty. Can't move. Up 'til 3:30. Red Sox... lost. 12th inning. Five-hour game. Manager should be dragged out behind the garage and shot. Don't wanna wake up.
Force self awake. Shower. Debate shaving off Kevin Millar mustache. Decide to keep Kevin Millar mustache. Mustaches creep me out. I creep me out. This fits.
Finally I make it out the door and stop for coffee. Ah sweet Mary, Mother of God. Sweet, sweet coffee. Aahhhh... Hey, wait! There's a new girl behind the counter. Chin length hair. Parted down the middle. Big sweater. Old jeans. A semi-awake smile.
Good god I think I'm in love.
I've always had this thing for coffee shop girls. I guess it goes back to the mid-nineties - or, as I like to call them, the glory years. Grunge era. Right around that fifteen/sixteen age. Starting to break out on my own. Attending magnet school in Hartford. Kids from all over the state who aren't from my hometown. Can't go to bars. Hang out in coffee houses. This was in the mid-90's, when the grunge era ushered in a whole new coffee subculture to disenfranchised teenagers everywhere. There was a place you could go, away from home, away from school, and pick up a guitar if you felt like it. Wanna read somethin'? Go right ahead. Wanna hide from the world in a corner and bury your head in a book? Got that, too. And all the girls that went there just seemed cooler than school. They're not on the phone. They're not at football games. They're not getting date-raped by the quarterback. No. They're off on their own, doing they're own thing. Usually alone, or in a very small group of one or two others. Dressed in sweaters and old jeans with plum-dyed hair, pale faces, and dark lipstick.
buildings, boxes, paper foxes
logs and leaves look like your mother's smile
go ahead and try to beguile
how many minutes lay in awhile
i wish i could admire you
but remain hid
come to your rescue when you need it
just like boo radley did
inches, hoaxes, deadly toxins
this is only a hurricane
go ahead and try to explain
why people still stand out in the rain
i wish i was a shut in keep it all under lid
leave you presents in a tree trunk
just like boo radley did
letters, old flames, tiny board games
i wish you would call me home
go ahead and try to dethrone
the man who refuses to hit the road
i wish i could have seen you
when you were a little kid
hold your hand on your front porch
just like boo radley did
--The Motel Candlewasters
God I loved the 90's.
I dunno. I've always had a different taste in girls. At least my friends tell me so. I like the girl who doesn't talk to anyone in the halls, but chats up the mice that scurry by. I like the girl who draws on her sneakers. I like the girl who hides in her hair and crawls out with her eyes. I like the girl who writes amazing papers in English class, but never reads them out loud. I like the girl who smells like she's burning something. I like the girl who can't sing worth a damn but does it anyways without ever realizing that anyone's listening.
Well I'm listening. And I like what I hear.
I seem to be crushing a lot lately, which is uncharacteristic - at least it is now. I remember not too long ago, I had to have a crush somewhere or else why the hell was I doing anything? I wasn't alive without it. But now, now I don't need that. It's kind of sad, really. I miss it. But hey. Now bars replace the coffeehouse. And you can't meet mousy little grunge kids when you're out drinkin'. Not conducive at all.
Just the other night, my friend and I were celebrating The Last Night of Smoking in Massachusetts. We were hitting the bars and only two things were on my mind. Drinking and smoking. Just because that was the end. No more. It's like a funeral in that way. Do it 'cuz you can't no more.
About six beers into the evening, I found out that some others would be joining us - others who don't drink like we do and don't even smoke at all. One of those people, well, I'd been kinda mini-crushin' on for like a week or so. No big whoop. I seem to be crushin' on everyone lately. But, you know, she got there, and was bein' all friendly and the like... but I was six beers ahead, and I couldn't get that outta my head. Couldn't keep a conversation up to save my life, or at least to do so without sounding like a stammering idiot.
It dawned on me, a few beers later and after she had left, that I'm gonna have to make a choice between two things I love quite a lot: Alcohol and Women. I can't go out drinking heavily on a Tuesday and expect to have a chance in hell of finding a girl who might like me. Drunken Tuesdays just aren't sexy. At least not to most people. And I love my bar-night weekdays. I can hole up in the corner and write for a while. Have a nice chat with a good friend. I love my bar-night weekdays. But not many people do. And if I'm gonna ever stop this adamantly-lonerish all-is-one-and-one-is-all lifestyle (a lifestyle I do rather like, by the way) then a) I'm gonna have to stop being so anti-social and b) stop drinking so damn much.
Shit, I remember when I first moved here... Twenty-two years old... I'd stay out 'til 2 AM, drinking and dancing my ass off... going home with whatever girl I happened to be dancing with that night... Man, I don't know how I did it. It was beautiful, though. There I was, living like I had nothing to live for. Just go out. Fun. Celebrate the day, 'cuz there might not be anymore. At that point, I didn't care if I lived or died, really. I just wanted to go. And I could. I dunno. There's something really comfortable and charming about that whole Charles Bukowski/Tom Waits whiskey-bottle-til-the-sun-takes-you-home, devil-may-care kind of life. And I fell in love with it.
I just can't do it anymore. Things are changing. I'm getting older, and I want to live.
I wanna live with a coffee shop girl.
