I met an old man in the restaurant where I work, who told me that my smile was the kind, that put the stars to shame on nights when they wouldn’t talk back. His face was so old and weathered, his nails were short and grimy, and he smelled of car oil and stale cigarettes. He looked like he was watching, although it was obvious that he wasn’t seeing. He drank his coffee, left a dollar on the table, and walked out the door.
He came back a week later and couldn’t even remember my name.
There’s an elderly couple who come in at 8:15 every Saturday morning, sit at a table fit for five people, and drink coffee; one with cream, one without. He pulls her chair out and they sit silent, say very few words and stare in opposite directions. Somehow, they both get up at the same time, wave goodbye, and as she steps down from the curb, her man is there with the car door already opened.
He told me once that routine would “kill ya,” yet he warned me that without it, the heart never finds a home.
There’s a tall gentleman with short, white hair, who comes into the coffee shop at least three times and orders a small americano, with a “dash” of half and half. He traveled the country with a “sh*tty, flop-of-a-dream band” where he had too much sex and tried too many drugs. He told me once that to be perma-fried felt as if half of your body were still in a dream.
A while back he bought an old hippie van, paid a “fair amount” for carpet, and fixed himself a getaway into the past. He told me he forgot how expensive gas is for a van, and how he isn’t sure if he’s going to be able to take off like he did in the good ol' days. He blamed this on his wife (number three), and because she still holds his heart, she has always found ways to make him stay.
He hasn’t talked to her in 10 years.
A hippie woman from Colorado whose hair still resembles the era in which she longs for the most comes in. She lives in Boulder now because, “It’s the only place left that still holds some soul.” She visits here only long enough to watch the artists finish one of their pieces. She walks Main Street every morning at 7 a.m. approximately. “Even in the snow?,” I asked her once. She replied by shaking her head, her clumpy hair barely moving, and told me that within silence one can find their closest friends. The snow, she said, was yet another weary travel companion; it would soon leave, be forgotten, and eventually return.
She passed by a few weeks later but didn’t stop in for her cup. It was early still. I’m sure she had a lot of silence to visit with.
I think about them sometimes, when I pour my first cup of coffee in the morning, pass a peace sign, or just look up at night. Not that I consider myself a companion, or a friend; I was simply their waitress and barista. But sometimes, I think that’s enough for people...being whatever it is that we are. It’s going to kill us if we keep thinking that people need us to be more.
Girls obsess over perfect skin, layer on makeup, buy name-brand clothes, and eat less to lose weight, specifically to be more. To become more than they are, appear to be something they’re not. All for the sake of finding someone or attracting something that will love us for everything we aren't. Boys play the “badass” card, drive fast through parking lots, talk to 15 girls at a time, hide away their emotions and groan over watching anything but bloody action movies. All to appear rough and tough and strong, for the purpose of being nothing but what they think people want.
Everyone’s convinced that people are going to run the opposite way if someone sees us cry. If somebody finds out how loud we snore at night or how uneven our face really is without the makeup or front bangs covering the blemishes, nobody is going to stick around. Everyone thinks emotions and fears and doubts and wants and needs are going to scare people away, and so we’re told to “toughen up,” shut up, and smile through all the bullsh*t. Because if we put on a fake face of happy, eventually we’re going to be happy. Happy girls are pretty girls, and pretty girls are confident, and confidence attracts stable men, and blah blah blah…
F*ck the thought of being put together and strong and “OK.” You never find yourself at times when you have it all. It’s only after you’re broken and lost and confused with makeup pouring down your face, hair a mess, and tears continuously flowing for unknown reasons that you find yourself. That realness. That raw state. That is YOU…the real you, not the one covering up or pretending, or putting on a show to be all that you aren’t. That is you in the most imperfect and vulnerable state. And my hell, I bet it’s beautiful.
The old man who sits at the bar with his coffee isn’t doing anything but being himself; dirty smell and worn fingernails are the least of his worries. The woman with the hippie heart and matted hair isn’t fixing herself up for anyone in the world. Both the old couple and the tall man don’t talk or do or say anything to impress me. Nor do they do much to impress each other.
They are doing nothing and being no one but themselves; even if they don’t exactly know who that is.
And I bet they’ve got more stories, found more love and have lived with more passion, desire and happiness than anyone who paints on a face and dances to anyone else’s music, but their own.
