Category: boheme

(Another post resurrected from the certain death of my draft box. This is one from Boheme, started several months ago — around the beginning of August ’07.)

*****************

Something strange is going on. Two similar events this week from two different people have really resonated with me.

First ….

Earlier this week, a customer gave me a belated birthday present: a CD of images of New York City. Years ago, this woman, a native New Yorker, found herself transplanted here, in southern California, where everyone is “friendly” and “mellow” and entrenched in the pursuit of cluelessness. She’s single, runs her own business — a kind of southern California ideal — and she couldn’t be more miserable here. I don’t have any friends in this town, she’ll say while she sips her coffee, her New York accent punching the air. You’re the only one who gets me, Tracey. It just seems like you get me. Then she will gaze at me for a long time from behind her huge bug glasses.

She’s an older woman, my friend Angela, with straight hair hanging in stiff sheets to her shoulders, dyed — no, coated — a blazing siren red. Her brows form a wide black V, furrowed into a valley of constant frustration. She’s short and stocky and intense and disliked by her employees. She’s a broad, you know? She talks straight, frank. I can see how some people don’t like it but I love it. You get what you get with her. There’s no pretense. She’s not a poser. She talks and you see who she is, not some carefully crafted image she wants you to see. But here in mellow, shallow southern California, she’s perceived as a bit much. Too much. Too blunt. So she hates it here and longs for New York. Her heart is there and her people are there. I almost cried when she handed me the CD of New York saying in a , “Well, I guess you can see where my heart is, huh?” So it was more than a mere present, really; it was a gift. I mean, I’m not from New York. Once as a teenager, I sat in La Guardia with the rest of my family during a 5-hour layover. That’s the extent of my experience of New York. Even then, though, loitering in those seats silently watching the people, I noticed the heartbeat in the air and how it pounded out a rhythm so different from mine. But Angela’s heartbeat says New York and with that small CD, she gave a glimpse into that heart and what’s most important to her: This is where I’m from. This is where I belong. This is where my whole heart is and I want to share it with you.

I was so touched, so blown away that she allowed me into this aching place, into her private longing. Because we all have private longings about all kinds of things, but I think it takes a trembling leap of faith to share them with someone else. Much safer to keep them hidden away and keep your secret light under a bushel. If you expose it to the air or give it room to breathe, it might burn bright enough for someone to see. And maybe they’ll laugh. Or maybe they’ll call you on it, and say What are you going to do about that now that it’s not a secret? Suddenly, you’re not the solitary flamekeeper anymore. You don’t get to hoard it and call it self-protection. Someone else sees it, someone else holds it with you, even, and there’s a nudge to do something about your secret light. A nudge to reunite you with your heart.

I sat there with Angela, fingering the CD in my lap for a moment. Finally. I looked her in the eye and said, “So tell me about New York.” I paused a second. “And tell me when you’re going back.”

Then, today …..

A man who works next door at the 99-cent store wandered in this afternoon. We’re friendly with each other; say hello and casually chat about this and that from time to time. He usually gets a small coffee, but today, he didn’t order a coffee. No, today, he just marched up to me, no wave, no greeting, hands full of postcards — postcards of Rio de Janeiro — shoved them into my hands and started talking. I listened, as best I could. His accent is thick, he’s frequently hard to understand, but I felt like I was just supposed to listen. There was no context established. We weren’t continuing a previous conversation. There was no introductory chit-chat. He simply walked in, handed me these postcards — beautiful postcards — and started talking. No, not talking, even. Dreaming. Remembering. Telling me what it’s like to be there. Imagining himself there. As he talked, my eyes kept wandering back and forth from the cards to his face and his eyes. This was no casual travelogue or random sharing of a possible vacation destination. No, this was something beyond that, because his normally deadpan expression completely changed. He looked like a little boy telling me about his private hideout in the woods. His brown face was ablaze with something that looked like hope and fervor. His eyes glistened with this new light, a light I’d never seen before — again, that secret light, it seemed, of things that only he could see. Where I saw gorgeous images of a glittering city that I could only appreciate abstractly, he saw complete emotional context. Personal beauty. Streets he knew. Places he loved. His whole heart, maybe his whole life. It was a distant, exotic place to me, but to him, it was home.

Do you think you’ll go back someday, Sebastian?

Oh, yes. Soon. I must go back. I must go back.

And, oh, the wistfulness and determination in his voice! That twinge of sadness that he had wandered so far afield, was so separated from his heart! His days are now spent standing sentinel at the door of the 99-cent store, chainsmoking his brown cigarettes, but his heart nurtures a tender flame for a faraway place he calls home.

After a moment, he left as abruptly as he’d come, stuffing his postcards in his shirt pocket as he went. Duty called, I guess. Back to the 99-cent store. I don’t know if he knew and I doubt he’d planned it, but he’d left a piece of his secret light with me. My heart ached for his heart to be made whole again.
_____________________________________

It’s months past these episodes now and still, they’ve stuck with me. There’s a reason why I rescued this post from the no-man’s land of my drafts: Perhaps we’re all living apart from our heart in some way. Perhaps we’re all hiding a secret light, a meager flickering flame, that we’re afraid to

She came rushing in on the second to last day of Boheme. This tiny little lady with Peter Pan hair, raspberry lips, and a bandana tied in a jaunty knot around her neck. I’d seen her around before, once or twice. She’d talk a lot; never buy a lot.

“Oooh! You’ve rearranged in here — gimme a small coffee, hon — really, wow! Oooh! It’s so much more feng shui!”

She smiled a raspberry smile. Very feng shui.

“Oh,” I looked around, “yeah.”

“Yeaaah. Nice.” Then she got down to business. “Okay. So now what you need to do for prosperity energy is hang a big –”

A small giggle escaped me. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t so much what she was saying as it was the timing. I was closing tomorrow.

“No — I’m being totally serious here.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just that we’re closing tomorrow.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I mean, tomorrow is our last day here.”

“No.”

“Yeah, it’s true. Just not really working out here.”

“Oh, no. Well, you know … I know things. I see things. And you know what I see? You’re going to be very successful. I just see it.”

She stared at me, eyes bright with conviction. It was an uncomfortable stare. For me, not her, obviously.

“Oh. Okay. Uh, well, good.”

“Yes.”

I didn’t know what to say to her.

“Well, thank you.”

“Yes. Oh, you’re welcome.”

She took her small coffee and practically floated to the back patio, overjoyed with her searing psychic moment. I — the sure-to-be-successful one — watched her for a second, sighed, and started another brew of coffee.

The last few weeks have been especially stressful. We’ve seen the rise of my Inner Shaniqua. And now there’s the emergence of MB’s Lurking Hobo.

Out of the blue, as we’re driving in the car tonight … his face is set, his eyes forward, determined, as he mutters:

HE: I’m totally gonna take a d*mp in the ice machine.
ME: You are NOT gonna take a d*mp in the ice machine. Who has access to the ice machine? Everyone would know you took the d*mp in the ice machine.
HE: (without missing a beat) I’m gonna pee on the floor in the bathroom.
ME: (trying to soothe) Okay …. okay.

Sometimes you just gotta understand what your man needs, you know?

You know you’re really done with your coffeehouse and its people when you go out to lunch (last week before your general malaisia struck) and the waiter, who was really the best, most hoppin’ waiter you’ve had in a long long time, brings you an extra unrequested basket of fresh zucchini bread and you ooh and ahh and make a fuss and you take it home in a neat little box and then — you SELL IT AT YOUR COFFEEHOUSE THE NEXT DAY FOR A BUCK FIFTY A SLICE.

Later you realize …. but not until after you sell the last slice, strangely …. that you have now become Thenardier.

You know ……. (sing it with me, y’all)

Food beyond compare
Food beyond belief
Mix it in a mincer
And pretend it’s beef
Kidney of a horse
Liver of a cat
Filling up the sausages
With this and that

Bread you got for free
Bread now in plain view
Stuff it in a basket
And pretend it’s new
Did you make this, ma’am?
Why, who wants to know?
Here you need another one
Now OFF YOU GO!

You know …… uhm, like that.

I think the day-to-day drain of Boheme may very possibly be causing the erosion of my entire personality. Like the tectonic plates of my character are shifting and crashing and forming a whole new continent of me. A very inhospitable one. Or a penal colony, like Australia.

Allow me to demonstrate.

Since we opened, the sidewalk seats and tables have been popular flop spots for various and sundry unsavories. There’s no railing out there to set the tables apart from the general flow of foot traffic. (Well, there was one, illegally, for about 2 weeks. Thank you, Baby Button Eyes. Another story.) This means that any Hobo Joe, exhausted from all his napping and drinking and hallucinating, has been able to squat his moldy bum on my chairs and plop his shopping bag of hand-me-downs on my tables.

In the beginning, I was a bit intimidated. I mean, they were large. They were insane and mumbly. They were catastrophically grubby. And they’d park there, in my chairs, buying nothing from me, of course, because they were already sipping loudly on their well-worn bottles of VitaminWater filled with suspicious amber liquid. If I let them, they’d lounge there all day. I soon discovered I was in danger of owning a hobo coffeehouse. A coffeehouse that screamed, “Tired of sleeping in Cardboard Canyon? Sleep here instead!”

I decided I didn’t want that.

So I began to clean house.

“Can I get you a coffee?” I’d say. Uhm, hint hint.

Sometimes they’d scrounge enough mud-caked coins from their pockets to buy a small coffee and go back to the business of sitting. But at least they’d paid for the squat.

Other times, they’d say, “Uhh, no.”

And I’d reply, “I’m sorry. These seats are for customers only” while staring steadily at them until they left.

As time went on, this became my routine. Subtly offer them coffee, apologize firmly about the seating, stare til they left. It worked okay.

Most of the time.

About a month ago, a man flopped himself down in one of the sidewalk chairs. He didn’t look blatantly homeless, but he wasn’t entirely clean either. He wore a dress shirt and khaki pants that looked like they’d been worn for a few days. Wrinkly. Damp. There was just an overall lack of freshness, I guess. A plastic grocery bag sat in his lap. A cell phone was stuck to his ear. One hand dug in the bag. The other held the phone. I wasn’t sure what was going on, really, I just knew he’d been sitting there for a while now.

So I approached and did my routine. The offer. The apology. The steady stare.

He just stared back at me. I stood my ground.

Finally, belligerently, “What? Do you think I’m homeless or something?”

I paused to think. Honestly, I still wasn’t sure.

“No,” I said, “I think you’re sitting in my chair and you need to buy something or go.”

He didn’t budge. A few more words into his cell phone.

I was done with him. “Hit the bricks, dude. NNNOW!”

His eyes rolled up and over to the side as he threw me a slanty dirty look. He got up, very slowly — for effect, I could tell — threw me another look, and shuffled off down the sidewalk.

At that moment, the plates shifted inside me. I felt it. It made me reckless.

A week after that, while on my cell phone with My Beloved, I started my routine with two mangy looking dudes in wifebeater t-shirts whose arms were blue-green from tattoos. They were exchanging money. What was going on? Was this a drug deal? Who cared, dammit! They weren’t buying any coffee! They weren’t gonna sit in my chairs!

After they refused the subtle offer, I announced loudly, “Well, then you need to leave.”

“We’re just hanging out,” one said.

“What’s going on?” MB said inside the cell phone.

“Not at my tables, you’re not. Hit the bricks.”

Hit the bricks was all the rage with me.

“Tray …. what the hell is going on?” MB’s voice rising. “Do I need to come over there?”

I didn’t answer him. The plates were crashing and I was proclaiming all over the place.

“I AM ON THE PHONE WITH THE COPS AND YOU NEED TO LEAVE NNNOWWWW!”

“F*cking A, lady.”

“Honey, honey … stop … what … I’m coming there right now!”

The dudes stood up. They were very tall and very tattoed and I was going to be killed.

“J*sus Chr*st!” They stared down at me. I stared at them and I know I looked insane. I don’t know how I know. Except that they walked away and I ran inside, shaking, MB yelling at me inside the cell phone.

And with each incident, somehow, the geography of who I was was changing, the crust was stretching. I felt strong. I felt insane. I kinda liked it.

Then today.

The deadly lunchtime lull. A nicely dressed businessman pulled up a chair outside while I watched him from my perch inside, sized him up. Head tilted to the side. Cell phone smushed against his shoulder. Talking. Legal pad folder open on the table. I waited and timed him. Gave him 10 minutes or so.

Then I approached with the routine. I was so tired of doing this.

“Can I get you a coffee or something?” He was still on the phone.

And he didn’t acknowledge me. Didn’t even look at me. Raised his free hand, dangled the fingers, and shooed me away. Dismissed me entirely.

And in the two seconds that followed, I felt it again. This time, the continents collided, exploded. The massive continent of the one me against the massive continent of … my inner Shaniqua. I have no idea where she came from. I only know she suddenly stormed front and center and she was big and black and mouthy. In an instant, I was a giant, kick-ass black woman. Oh, no. He di’int just do dat.

“Then you need to GO.” He kept talking on his phone. Didn’t look at me. Shooed me away. AGAIN.

Shaniqua roared out of me. She grabbed his opened folder, closed it, and walked away with it, plopping it forcefully on an outside table at the deli next door. As she walked past him back into B*home, she yelled:

“YOU NEED TO GO. I AM DONE WITH YOU.”

Once inside, I started shaking. I saw him hang up his phone. Here he comes. He was raging at me.

“THAT WAS SO RUDE! I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU DID THAT! ESPECIALLY SINCE WE DID AN EDITORIAL ON THIS PLACE ABOUT TWO MONTHS AGO! I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU!”

I had no idea who “we” was. And I knew “this place” meant the wine lounge, not little B*heme. Shaniqua wasn’t done.

“SPEAKING OF RUDE, SIR. YOU DON’T GET TO COME HERE AND COP A SQUAT IN ONE OF MY CHAIRS, ORDER NOTHING, AND THEN DISMISS ME AS IF I’M LESS THAN HUMAN! I’M NOT TAKING THAT KIND OF CRAP FROM ANYONE! AND YOUR “EDITORIAL”? IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ME. YOU NEED TO HIT THE ROAD NOW!”

My voice … where was it coming from? Shaniqua was loud, man. He stomped away, but I knew he couldn’t really do it. I knew he’d come right back. Here he comes again.

“YOU KNOW WHAT? I KNOW PEOPLE. YOU JUST PISSED OFF THE WRONG PERSON! IT’S NOT LIKE I’M HOMELESS OR SOMETHING –”

Shaniqua interrupted.

“IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU BEING HOMELESS. HOMELESS PEOPLE COME AND TRY TO SIT FOR FREE AND RIGHT NOW THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YOU AND THE HOMELESS PEOPLE IS THAT YOU’RE BETTER DRESSED. NO. THIS HAS TO DO WITH YOUR PRESUMPTION AND YOUR TOTAL COMPLETE RUDENESS AND YOU NEED TO GO!”

“WELL, YOU PISSED OFF THE WRONG PERSON! THE WRONG PERSON!”

Finally, he stomped off for good. I stood shaking for several minutes until Shaniqua subsided a bit. I grabbed my phone and called MB.

“Well … guess what I just did?” I said, quavery voiced.

And MB talked softly to me for a long time until the plates stopped rumbling and all was quiet inside.

The thing is ….

I may just be temperamentally unsuited to be a coffeehouse mistress. At least the kind I have to be at little B*heme. This is one of the things I’ve learned. Quite arduously and repeatedly, I might add, lo! these many months. And this is likely to be one of those rambling, sweet-Jesus-what-the-heck-is-she-talking-about posts. Sigh. I’m trying, peeps. I’m just worn down to a nub right now. Forgive me.

But I’m not kidding when I call it “little B*heme.” Just to go through some logistics here: My primary coffeehouse area is 276 square feet. I have 2 tables in this area that seat 2 people each. My front doors are always open — literally — so I’m a kind of indoor/outdoor coffeehouse. The sidewalk area has 3 tables, seating, oh, about 10-12 people. In the very back of the building is the private bamboo patio. That seats about 25-30. To get there, you have to walk through the wine lounge. People go back there, they like it there, but the main action, so to speak, is up front.

And this is bad.

Because somehow, over the last several months, I have managed to open a gaping Pandora’s box of conversation and I just cannot get. it. to. SHUT.

No. I’m a prisoner in my own space. There is literally nowhere to hide. I can’t leave the area unattended; I’m by myself most of the time. Just to use the bathroom only a few feet away, I must lock up the register, run — quick like a bunny, and pee faster than anyone in the world has ever peed. Even that boy in third grade who peed so fast and deadly during the class spelling bee that we spellers didn’t know until the floor got slick under the soles of our wallabees. Poor kid. He peed a puddle AND he couldn’t spell Caesar.

So — as I was saying somewhere back there, ahem — when solo customers come in and sit in this teensy area, I am naked, exposed, a captive audience to whatever it is they feel they simply MUST talk about. Right then and there. For hours on end. Ad infinitum. I’m not kidding. There are probably at least a dozen customers who come in regularly who make my heart sink like a stone when I see them because I know they will stay and stay and stay and staaaaay, like the worst zit you’ve ever begged God to be rid of. They will come in and set up camp and part of their camp is somehow me — conversation with me — because, apparently, in the beginning I seemed friendly and open and conversationally accommodating. None of which I actually AM. No. I am snarky and closed and conversationally intolerant. But, through the magic of improvisational theater, I have managed to create a credible character — coincidentally also named Tracey — who likes nothing more than people who drone on endlessly about nothing. Tell her what’s on your shopping list? She is agape. Lecture her about the films of Luis Bunuel? She will sit and take notes. Share about how you ripped a really good one and stunk up your house for hours and hours? Why, that’s Tracey’s most favorite thing to hear! Please tell her more, Mr. Fudgypants! Seriously, it is the single greatest acting job of my life and I have performed it 6 days a week, 9 hours a day, for 7 months now. Talk about yer Long Day’s Journey into Night. Except without the blessed haze of morphine addiction. And without a thundering ovation. And without a damn-ass boquet of smelly roses.

Look. It’s not that I hate these people, although I realize it sounds like I do. It’s just … they quite literally exhaust me. I go home at the end of the day and I’m not physically tired; I am emotionally worn down. Shredded. I’m not an extrovert. I can seem pretty gregarious, but to do so, I must really work at it. When I discovered theater as a kid, I was the shyest girl in school. One of those painfully shy, perpetually red-faced types. Acting brought me out of that shell but it didn’t take the shell away. I like my shell. I need my shell. I like to decide when I come out of it and when I go back inside and regroup. Recoup. But I don’t have that luxury at B*heme. It’s like every day I’m hosting a party where someone else has chosen the guest list. I’m always anxious about who’s gonna show up next. I’m always anxious about having to be “on.” I’m always anxious about how long certain people, who have serious misapprehensions about my charms, will stay. The anxiety makes me cranky. And, you know, when these customers show up, they’re not coming for conversation, even though I’ve called it that. To me conversation means give and take and, honestly, there ain’t none of that going on. Nope. They come to talk at me and to hear themselves talk. It is almost completely one-sided. A kind of monologue … written by a playwright of dubious distinction.

Unfortunately, most of the time there’s no deterrent for this batch of talkers. I mean, I could be in deep shackle to a conversation, see another customer approaching, and think, Aha! Salvation is at hand! Their mere presence will break the conversational shackles! It will! It must! Nope. It doesn’t. The talker just continues to talk at me as if the new person isn’t there because — I don’t know — they’re OCD or something or I’ve become their listening ear, their shrink, their priest. I mean, what to do when your ears are sprinters and their mouths are marathoners? I don’t know. Slit your wrists or something? Seriously. I could slit my wrists in front of them — because of them — and they would not miss a beat blabbing on about how to make salmon cakes with crackers. Then they would blab through my tearjerking memorial service and haunt my grave, blabbing, blabbing, eternally from 6 feet above me. I am dead. You have killed me. Please please pleeeease shut up.

There are times when one of these people is hanging around, where I act aloof, uninterested, brusque even. Then I pull up a stool and try to hide behind my mammoth espresso machine. But it’s not long before I hear a voice, wheedling, “Traaaaaacey, aren’t you gonna come talk to me? Come onnnnn.” This happens more times than I can count, no matter how many signals I put out that “the doctor is OUT.” And I cannot do it anymore. I’m simply not suited to it. I’m exhausted. I feel trapped. I AM trapped. I’m not extroverted enough to make it work and B*heme isn’t busy enough to make such endless conversations impossible.

I’m tired of feeling that gray sinking doom when I see certain people lumbering up the sidewalk.

And I’m tired of feeling guilty about the gray sinking doom. You know?

So really …. well, that’s the thing.

~ To start, and to get off on just the right foot, be sure to have baby button eyes. Never cover them with sunglasses to keep freakage at a minimum.

~ Before your Local Coffee Mistress (LCM) moves in, call an electrician to add the 220 line she needs in her space. Work that she did agree to pay for.

~ But don’t give her a chance to find her own contractor.

~ Don’t give her an estimate.

~ Just have the work done without her knowledge.

~ When the job is done, present her with a random “bill” that you typed up on your computer informing her it cost $1500.

~ Refuse to provide a copy of the actual invoice from the actual — and, of course, legitimate — contractor you employed.

~ Hang c*otch “art” in a common room.

~ Don’t listen when business people and moms attending a “Mother’s Day event,” and little old ladies from The Salvation Army are flabbergasted and complain.

~ Insist that gaye pryde posters be hung on doorways in your LCM’s space, posters that your LCM’s gaye customers complained about.

~ Hang gaye beefcake posters in a common public hallway.

~ Say “but a portion of the proceeds goes to help a charity for gaye men with AIDS.”

(An aside from me. Okay. So let’s hang huge posters to tempt their lust. Then maybe they’ll go and get themselves sick. But at least as they’re sick and dying, we can feel good that they’ll need all this money we raised from selling these supersexy posters. Hey! How ’bout after this, we host a kegger here at the beer and wine lounge for Mother’s Against Drunk Driving! I just think it’s insulting — to gay people.)

~ Enter your LCM’s shop at any time during her business day — especially if customers are around — to discuss what you call important business issues and she calls harassment.

~ Show up with bills for completely made-up things.

~ Pester her for a photocopy of her driver’s license even after she’s
told you she had an identity theft FROM HER DRIVER’S LICENSE.

~ When asked the reason why it’s needed, tell 3 different stories on 3 separate occasions.

~ About a week later, enter her business space in illegal possession of a Notary Public’s Journal.

~ Hand the journal to your LCM, opened, and demand she write personal information in it — driver’s license, Social Security number. Stuff she said she wasn’t going to give you without verification of why it’s needed.

~ Leave it there for her to fill out.

~ Bitch at her when you find she hasn’t cooperated … again. Damn her!

(Note to Baby Button Eyes: You cannot walk around with those journals. You are not a notary. It is illegal. Oh, and even if you are a notary, you can’t notarize your own transaction. Or whatever the heck that even was.)

~ Tell her, in this same conversation, “This isn’t working for meeee. Maybe you need to look for another space.”

~ Back down seconds later when your LCM stares you down and says, “Okay. When do you want us out?”

(More to come on HTMYLCMI — Landlord Version …. oh, yessss …. and stay tuned for HTMYLCMI — Customer Version.)