Sweetness from Duane and Gretchen

Sweetness from Duane and Gretchen

Last Day!

Last Day!

the constant

The cafe. Counting the years seems astounding. It has become the plateau that my life has stretched from. Lovers, Jobs, friends, my stories; essentially my whole current life has evolved from my stint at the cafe.

When I started working there, I was twenty. It was memorial day weekend. I didn't think I would get the job because when I applied, I realized with horror that green painted nails might be scary. Vinny told me they were hiring. His friend worked across the street. She liked me from first glance, my boss, and I was the first person she hired.

That place has run the gamut from home to jail and evoked every emotion of the human condition: anger, frustration, love, awe, sadness and joy; all in varying nuances.

I have changed a lot since I started working there. Of course, much of that change was just that I grew up. Part of the growing up happened when I left the first time to begin working at Starbucks (which is a brief yet horrific chapter in my life) and realized that the things I hated so much were so insignificant compared to the "real world" of working where I was written up (on a permanent record kinda thing) for being three (that's right 1-2-3, just three!) minutes late to work, where the chain of command dictated I tuck in my shirt, and the strange odd world of in your face co-workers became a frightening prospect.

Coming back to the cafe was like going back to my grade school when I was a high school freshman. Everything was slathered in the dewy glow of nostalgia and it all seemed shrunken somehow, like I had become a giant and everything was smaller suddenly.

Part of coming back was temporary (what was supposed to be a month ended up being nearly a year and a half) but the truth is, when I began working there again, it was because everything else around me was crumbling and I think I sensed that and sought out that familiar place. I was graduating college--a huge accomplishment that took up a lot of my energy--and at the same time my relationship reached a boiling point and my home life ceased to exist, it was the one thing I could depend on, the one place I could go and feel at home. Think of it this way, I've lived in ten apartments since I began working there and only two of them really felt like home (you know, you can walk around naked and not feel weird).

Next Wednesday morning will be my final shift at the coffee shop. Part of me wonders if I came back just to have that last day I didn't get when I left for Starbucks because Kim just got upset and let me go when I gave her my last two weeks.

One thing that the cafe has taught me is that you can't be too extreme in this world, because the second you rail against something, a real person shows up to counter your beliefs. I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly, along with the crazy and it was a good ride.

What quitting cures:

What quitting cures:

"what?!"

in a drunken rage I broke my cell phone. not enough to deem a new one necessary, but enough to render my communications via text message useless. I don't know why I did this. I also broke a small mirror in my purse. instead of seven years bad luck, I had seven days bad luck and went through the week like a coma refugee.

[today is the end of day seven.]

I haven't wanted to write in a while, long since before the week of bad luck. I don't know why. I tried to figure a reason, but even that would not come.

Sometimes I hate my life. Everything is a series of dominoes so complicated and precarious that even one breath can alter and affect the next. it becomes so frustrating to try and retrace my steps, discover the origin of this mistake and that issue, and to what end? for justification of what? the withdrawal of my love.

as it always was. but now, not always, just a habit now.

to approach myself from what makes me happy, feel good, and fuck the rest, it's really different. to see my life through the words of an eight year old (who knows more than you'd imagine) is startling. and yet, why is it that I am constantly surprised by just how very amazing I am?

She smiled and in her grin was a significance I did not understand. I said hello. I met her bemused smile, with its reaching cloying mirth and asked what she would like. She said in the most joyful way, that she would like one of my delicious cappuccinos. Then I knew her. A week ago I made her a cappuccino, and she presented me with the order that I love best of all, one that makes the most sense to me, one that shows that she is someone who really understands coffee.

She ordered a small cappuccino with three shots of espresso. that the cup is twelve ounces means she has created the perfect and correct ratio of coffee to milk to foam. No one else could ever appreciate such a thing except for me and I relish in the opportunity to make this drink. When I present it to her, I say, "Making cappuccinos is my specialty." She seems unimpressed by my boastfulness, but today she says that I was right, that later that night she had gone to starbucks and they had made her a terrible cappuccino which she requested the same way and she even told her husband that the little shop down the street has a better cappuccino made by this woman. and I was that woman.

my new job is great. not only do I get to hang out with a sarcastic kid who loves video games and cartoons and the disney channel and eating all the things I like to eat and doing all the things I like to do (so far we have seen a movie, gone to a ballgame, searched the zoo for dippin dots and gone to millennium park), I don't work as much at the coffeeshop and that is good.

I just completed my taxes about two weeks ago. I am playing an endless round of catch-up and the carousel only stops periodically, at which point I would much rather find my breath and stop the spins than clean my bathroom. I am always constantly regaining ground: reading the book, fixing the old problems which clears the way for new ones, doing laundry, finding time to shower and tweeze my eyebrows, go to therapy, dye my hair, paint my toes, shave my legs, wash the dishes, check the mail, read that pile of magazines, call those people, email my friends, it is always the same list I find each week/month, waiting for me, a continual agony of things I must do and lately there has been nothing to stop that turnstile; for a while there was school, then drinking, then him and then the love of my lifetime and now, nothing but the constant juggle of things I must do.

I am reading Light in August by William Faulkner. The writing is dense and gritty, layered, subtle; it makes me ashamed to even desire to write. and yet, there is something familiar there, like a chilly goosebumpy feeling of recognition, and this is only the second book of his I've read, but I feel like my tangle of words will be best compared to his someday and there is something eerie and scary about that feeling.

I am waiting again, a series of successive climbs, plateaus, all abstract: the application is due in November, I will hear back in March (happy fucking birthday), I will prepare to leave by July, I will be in school again next September. That is all I know, the rest are just empty blanks that I have to fill in but I have neither the time nor gumption nor desire to do any of it, except that I want so desperately to escape this husk of a life that I will fill in those blanks as best I can.

I don't remember anymore which truths are lies and what I convinced myself was true. I don't know where I'm going. I have no faith in anything except the magic of children and their ability to stop time and enjoy what is right in front of their faces. When I am with them, they teach me that lesson/over and over again I am surprised at how easy it is to let go and just be.

In all of this, there is the love of my lifetime, like flame, and each time I try to resist on the grounds of logic and doubts, I succumb and I feel no shame, just confusion, just worry that I must've gotten it all wrong at some point, but I don't know how to get back to what feels right.

this weekend:

the apartment: dishes, floors, clothes and sheets, all of it shaken out, brushed off, washed. usually when this happens, it means that I have grown tired and disgusted of the mess I'm in. this time around it was a signal of rising out of the muck. also, a concession to the orderliness my mind prefers.

the mess of a man: I noticed a man in a cab yelling and it was him, the one who always wears a green shirt, the drunken mess I cannot greet. He was angry about some cab related offense; angry enough to spit at the partition. he spat again after slamming the door, his voice both lurid and frightening, and I found myself giddy and lightly running away.

anthony: the only college boy I liked when I was in college, who I discovered to my dismay and relief (as to why he never spoke to me) had a very awkward stuttering problem, stood on Michigan avenue with a clipboard trying to ask shoppers and tourists if they had a minute for something, but he did not ask me. His eyes flicked over my face and he moved on to the people behind me. I had a secret smile. I wondered if he chose the job as a way of getting over his stuttering, which I think is more of a social anxiety than an impediment.

my first sox game of the season: came with no warning, I had plans and then suddenly, I had the delicious opportunity to watch a game on a beautiful night. It was soured by the fact that my phone died and I couldn't invite more people to join us. It was a perfect experience except the Sox lost.

walter: and I have been spending a lot of time together and it makes me wonder if that same comraderie exists between the love of my lifetime and the girls he spends time with, if it is that same enjoyment without the necessity of sexual advances. I have never really had a close male friend before.

the city: wanted to meet and talk about the absence of our friendship, but I just couldn't.

currently reading: The Dubliners by James Joyce. If I had known that it was notated, I might not have bought it. Every other line has some corresponding footnote to decipher the meaning or relay the cultural (and usually dated) reference. The footnotes are all in the back of the book. Rather than flip back and forth, I just try to sort out the meaning through context and if I'm really confused, I'll check the reference. Also, I sometimes read the list of notations all at once at the end and find that I tend to deduce fairly well, with the exception of one or two things that I was off the mark about. I don't understand how someone can read a book and then check out something they don't understand, as in whip out a dictionary or a scholarly reference. I never see anyone stopping a movie to look up a word or check something on the internet. But maybe I just have a weird relationship to reading. Anyhow, I've been enjoying the brief short stories. They are dialogue heavy, which I like.

the love of my lifetime: I have longed for him all weekend to no avail. it is no wonder I cannot trust him. he is never there when I want him to be. I receive the morsels of his attentions while others get his whole wondrous being. he will arrive soon so we can do what we do best together: sleep.

siena: saturday marked the beginning of a fourteen day stretch of work. I can't imagine how frazzled I'll be in the end.

the smoking: is still not an issue, despite visits to bars, being just as stressed at work, dealing with awkwardnesses. on tuesday it'll be five weeks of non-smoking.

they say it's your birthday. happy birthday bach.

a timeline:

8:34 a.m. I awake, groggy. lots of drinking the night before at ranalli's. there was a drinking game with the show 24. slept about six and a half hours. the first things I think of make me groan.

9:17 a.m. running to catch the train that is crawling overheard on the tracks. I make the train, but am out of breath. I try to read Madame Bovary, but my head spins and I feel a wave of nausea so strong, I consider getting off the train and standing over a garbage bin for a while. But I am late, and have no time for possibly vomiting on cta property.

9:57 a.m. I become one of those customers at Starbucks that I have always hated: I ask for a piece of marble loaf "that isn't exposed to the air."

10:05 a.m. I arrive at Diane's out of breath, laden with sbux and not really ready to work, but oh well, such is life.

11:59 a.m. I leave Diane's slightly annoyed, late for Siena. We have accomplished a lot, but there is a crick in my neck, a migraine is threatening to surface, and whenever I point out things that Diane's done wrong, she somehow finds a way to blame it on me. such is my lot in life.

12:05 p.m. Kim sighs when I arrive. she seems to finally be getting used to my being late, at least, you'd think so.

105-2:35 p.m. Walter arrives and we debrief about the previous evening's racous events. I make possibly the best sandwich on the planet and eat it into extinction with satisfying noises and praises.

3:34 p.m. A man seems to find the idea of pulling the change game on me a sure thing, but unfortunately for him, even though I am hungover, my ability to work on auto-pilot and my peripheral observational skills are still functioning at optimum capacity, so he leaves after a yelling match with no extra money and calls me a bitch.

3:40 p.m. I count the drawer and it is neither over nor under, which means that guy was a total asshole.

4:42 p.m. Rob comes in and distracts me from my work in the best way possible: stories told and shared brownie and doughnut. I sit in the front and put my feet up on a stool.

6:37 p.m. Kim calls to check in and I am still way behind on the closing tasks, as usual. She's opening tomorrow so everything has to be p-e-r-f-e-c-t.

7: 15 p.m. I am late for meeting Kim. of course. one of our customers has comped us tickets to his neo-classical concert. Even though it is cold, we go. Even though Kim is mad at me for a dozen things I've done wrong lately, we go. Even though the idea of spending two hours with someone whose business I just closed with the utmost anxiety via perfectionism that makes me want to wither and die, we go.

9:23 p.m. the concert was fantastic. Mr. Burns led the group in the bears fighting song as a suprise. the reception in the lobby is decent, we half hug and say our greetings. Kim eats a lot of desserts. I people watch. When I realize what time it is, I panic. I'm supposed to be at school, meeting my new friend dustin, and typing a journal entry for this site. instead I'm nibbling on mushroom and onion quesidillas made by fox & obel and watching my boss eat her third mini puff pastry with powdered sugar on top that floats in the air and lands on her five hundred dollar cashmere sweater, looking like lint or worse yet, dandruff.

9:48 p.m. I meet dustin in the depaul center. He is accompanied by a classmate whose presence irks me somewhat, but not enough to make me ignore him. he's not coming with us, which is good.

10:22 p.m. dustin and I stop off at dunkin' donuts at clark and division for a "pick-me-up" in the form of a donut called "glazed stick." I love words and descriptions of things. we are instant friends and we dissolve together.

11:04 p.m. we enter our destination: neo. dustin wants to get to know the place, and I seem to know about it, since it's down the street from siena.

11:05p.m. -1:36 a.m. after a couple drinks, dustin's ready for the dance floor. it takes one more and some encouragement from a weirdo named elvis for me to join him. I actually dance and don't care how I must look to people. but I cannot stop people watching. of course.

1:37 a.m. after elvis leaves our table and goes back out to the dance floor, we make a hasty exit, but not before writing him a note on a napkin, "it was nice to meet you. thanks for the stories. d + c." not sure if dustin finds this odd or cool, but he assesses this and then we depart.

1:46 a.m. dustin and I are walking to the train and he is letting me lavish him with words and laughing heartily at my wisdom and humor. it is fun to talk to him.

2:07 a.m. the dominick's is closed. the train beckons. we stand on the platform and talk about whether or not life is purely destiny or free will or some combination of the two. my brain, which is buzzed and still operating as high speed peripheral observatory realizes that the only other person standing two feet away from us on the platform was just dancing at neo with us. weird.

2:23 a.m. dustin has disembarked at belmont. after he leaves, the man who was also at neo comes over and begins to strike up an awkward conversation with me in which he introduces himself and then asks what sort of music gets played at neo on wednesday. I don't know the answer.

2:37 a.m. a man sitting on the train car stands to exit at granville. my telescope turns to view this movement and he nods at me and then gestures towards the doors of the train as if to say, join me. I smile and turn my head to the window. I am a little freaked. what the fuck?!

2:40 a.m. I get off the train and wave goodbye to edward, the fellow neo dancer. he waves back.

2:40:09 a.m. dustin texts me, "hit that shit."

2:40:14 a.m. I literally, actually: lol.

2:45 a.m. I enter my apartment to find it slightly rearranged: a carbon monoxide detector was installed in my apartment today. someone came into my apartment to plug a carbon monoxide detector into an outlet on the wall.

3:13 a.m. I want to collapse into sleep, but my promise to write lures me to my laptop. I begin typing this here entry.

4:01 a.m. I am turning off the light. good night.