Empty Glasses

Empty Glasses. Nonfiction Workshop, 2004ish.

There goes the moped army. They pass by the Fourth Coast Café windows in a blur, their silhouettes illuminated momentarily by the neon lights of the tattoo parlor. Staggered and swerving through the downtown streets, their tires leave wavy stripes in the snow. It’s 1:30am as they parade from coffee houses to bars to student ghetto house parties to who knows where. They raise hell in the heart of Kalamazoo.

We gathered here in the ghetto for a cup of coffee, or whatever cliché association people tie to ‘going out for a cup of coffee:’ catching up with old friends, gossiping, people watching, purchasing a beverage of some kind – sometimes coffee, sometimes not.

On any given occasion, I was accompanied by assorted hometown favorites. Sometimes by my classy east coast Wellesley girl or some other old high school friend; other times, by a group of guys in tight jeans and Chuck Taylors, the ones who were always half-heartedly aspiring to become rock stars. I’ve never come in here alone but I can’t really explain why.

I stood in line at the counter waiting to order the usual – a vanilla latte – with my arms crossed in front of me, trying desperately to warm myself in my own body heat. When I came here, I always left my jacket in the car where it would stay smoke-free. I’m not a smoker, but if I were, I probably would have had no problem getting a nicotine high in the time it takes to drink one cup of coffee. The smoke circulated and re-circulated on the downstairs floor of the café twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The upstairs was smoke-free, but a lot of my friends are smokers these days. I convinced myself that smoke flavoring in my latte wouldn’t kill me.

For me, a night out like this was as good as it gets. For some, though, it was probably like acquiring a taste for cheap beer after finding love with an expensive wine.

I watched people filter in and out through the front and side doors. Mohawks. Black eyeliner. Assorted colors of plastic-framed glasses. Shoes that look like the ones they give you at the bowling alley.

Cigarettes flames created a glow of haze around floating heads in the dimly-lit room. I felt a little bit like an army of one without a cigarette between my clammy fingers. But there was always an array of customers who gratified their fixations different ways. Compulsive Harry Potter readers, chess and checkers buffs, and euchre experts among others. There were always bodies here and there typing incessantly on their laptop computers, revealing only pairs of eyes and top halves of noses. They always looked content, though, as did most. High on life or high on weed – both seemed to satisfy the post-midnight crowd at Fourth Coast.

The cold bursts of air usually gave me about fifteen minutes to finish my latte. If I didn’t, I would be left with a crusted ring of foam around the inside of the glass. So I tipped the glass and suck back the cold, foamy bubbles at the bottom. By then, I had to pee. On my way I’d pass the fingerprinted glass door. Next to it there was usually a mess of dog-eared flyers pinned to the wall. Plays. Poetry readings. Music events. Park festivals. Open mic nights.

I opted for a strawberry crème soda-ish drink the second time around. The tall, skinny boy behind the counter always greeted me the same way: “Hey, how’s it goin’?” He had a lizard tattooed on his wrist and as a rule, wore something like a brown and orange argyle sweater or a worn, tight t-shirt. He turned around to pump the syrup into a tall glass, singing along with the music as he worked. While he added the soda, I stared out the window where the moped army had driven by earlier. The tattoo parlor’s neon sign was still on. I wondered if it was ever turned off. Street lights captured floating flakes of snow on their descent against the dark sky. Stale smoke, music, and perpetuating chatter filled the coffee house.

The workers behind the counter changed the CD from Social Distortion to Radiohead to Blondie. My friends and I talked and talked and talked about the life-things that concerned us as early twenty-somethings – hating George Bush, getting a ‘real’ job, finding significant others and being totally broke.

As I reflected, I traced my finger along the jagged grooves in the wooden table. I rubbed my hand lightly across the cigarette ashes that were stuck on the coffee and soda spills. I chewed on the end of my straw and sucked out the watered-down soda and melted ice at the bottom of the glass. Just then, as if to avert my eyes from their trance-like state, a snowball splattered up against the window next to me. It jolted me into shock and sent a chill down my spine.

We collected our glasses and walked them over to the tub for dirty dishes. For a couple of hours, we had a common place to talk about putting off growing up and straying from the paths our parents had planned out for us. In a moment, it would be gone. As I added my empty glasses to the pile, I wondered what life after weekends at Fourth Coast would be like.