Procaffeinations Nine Through Twelve
Back in ‘17, Procaffeinations was a weekly series of short fictions, fables and fabrications, all written in the time it took to finish that first coffee of the day. Here are four more that remain.
Nine: Narcissus
My skull is a broken egg shell two sizes too small for my brain. My eyes look like they belong to two different faces. One sunken, arid eyeball sat awkwardly alongside a swollen stranger. Adrenaline alarm bells: There’s a chatter in my teeth and a fire in my veins that tell me last night went south somehow. I raise a broken hand to a busted lip for confirmation. A wild night of violent delights, no doubt.
The coffee shop is a sluggish blurring of familiar faces and forgotten names. Steam from the espresso machine settles around the room, its motion locked in lazy inertia. Everything slows down. The coffee in front of me is a black hole cradled in a crooked array of skinned knuckles and scorched fingertips; a Guatemalan blend that runs so deep I get vertigo just staring into it. There’s a comfort in its warmth but there’s something stirring in its filtered depths. A shimmer at first, now taking shape. My right eye now completely sealed over, I bring the coffee to my face in hopes of a clearer view. We’re almost face-to-face before I recognise him.
His face is a Picasso painting of violence and mischief. Even through the swelling, I can see the carvings of age deep-set around his surly face. I wonder how they got there so fast; a face belaboured by time in almost no time at all. There’s a tremor in his hands and a limp in his step, but there’s something in his good eye that says he’s not done fighting yet. A sorry, stubborn bastard bound for annihilation and loving every second of it. I watch him as he brings his bloodied and broken fingers to the last vestiges of a chest pocket, draws out a flask, and fires one more volley of piss and vinegar down his aching throat. He wipes his cracked lips with a crusted forearm and shoots me a shit-eating grin that costs more blood still. He balls his fists and raises his arms.
Through shattered teeth and bitten tongue he asks me if I want a rematch.
Ten: On Theory
We know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author. – Roland Barthes
Where a work had the duty of creating immortality, it now attains the right to kill, to become the murderer of its author. – Michel Foucault
You look like you’ve seen a ghost, kid. Have a seat, I hope they weren’t too rough with you. I’ve ordered for you. An americano; a jet-black heart throbbing between two uncertain palms. Don’t be shy, it’s the best in town. My treat. You like what I’ve done with the place? I imagine you can’t see too well just yet. My apologies, the eyes take a little while to adjust. Let me help:
You’re in a coffee shop at the top of Bold Street. Its walls are adorned with labours of love and fruits of fevered dreams alike. The hissing of the espresso machine is a warm welcome-back to the daily grind for those lucky enough for gears. It sings an equally sweet promise of new beginnings to the low-down, the broke-down, the unimportant and the uninspired. The room swells with people you know and others you don’t. A constant march of wet feet on wooden floors. Better? You can fill in the gaps yourself, I’m sure. An old, blind librarian once taught me that all language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a shared past. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this space is as much yours as it is mine. Make yourself at home.
Leave? Why would you want to leave? Beyond the glass facade of the shop is one busy little Bold Street, a real tight spot. The daily dance made clumsy and hilarious by a three-day deluge. The rain has made a mirror of the ground below. The human traffic tries its best to walk in step with its own reflection but it’s making a real mess of it. You’re no prisoner, friend. But I do wish you’d stay a while. Finish your coffee at least. It really is the best in town. Besides, I’ve got something I want to get off my chest.
Pay no mind to the bust-up bruiser on the far side of the room, angry at the world and lost in the abyss of his filter coffee? He’s a friend of mine but this is not his story. He’s last week’s news. The muscle? You could call him that. Between you and me I think he has a drinking problem, but he sure is a stand-up guy in a bar brawl. Sure, he’s all fists and fury but there’s a lot to be said for the direct approach, don’t you think?
I know guys far worse than him, believe me. I knew this one guy, all spider webs and devil-spit. He was lightning-quick on the draw, too. I’m serious. He once told me that you should use writing like you would use a revolver, and that your stories should win by a knock-out, never on points. His tales were kinetic, schizophrenic little boxing rings. Hostile spaces. Secret Weapons.
I’ve got to hand it to him, too. He wasn’t far wrong. Writing isn’t a revolver, though, it’s more of a gunshot, you know? It is a violence inflicted upon a stubborn silence. It is a threat, a warning of things to come. It is a polite way of being told that you are looking down the barrel of a gun, that you are not as safe as you think you are. Most Importantly? It is a gentle reminder that there’s a fine line between the author and the assassin, and that if you’re going to kill something, you’d do well to kill it good. If not, it’s likely to get back up and eat you whole.
You understand what I’m saying here, right?
You can run along now, kid. Play nice. I’ve a few more people to talk to before the day is done. Don’t take it too personally, we all need a little nudge every now and again. Sure thing, I’ll see you next week. I was dead-on about the coffee though, right? Best in town.
Eleven: Hashtag
You haven’t slept in days. The Colombian blend in your hands is a searing hot, bittersweet promise of new life. Thirty seconds to red-hot reincarnation. You’re in a bar on the Lane where the drinks come strong and the talk comes cheap. There’s always plenty behind the bar for those seeking sanctuary from sober thoughts. But you’re not here for the usual whisky’d waywardness; you’re here for caffeine and a place to hide.
He’ll catch up with you sooner or later. You know this. The rain outside offers brief respite but it won’t hold out forever. He’s getting smarter. He’ll find you. Bow-legged. Rain shy. Long of ear and short on words. A most persistent and pedigreed pursuer.
They warned you: A dog is for life, not just for Instagram. It’s only cute until it’s chaos. Another classic case of the curated self run calamitous. And they were right, of course. But you’ll never admit it. Narratives of the self have a habit of derailing into the long grass of fantasy. False lives, well-lived. Little fictions, well-told. Those little pictures are the empty lies we tell ourselves then run along to sell to others. Catastrophe cropped, reality sacrificed to filtered fraud. Dreams for sale, just follow the hashtag. Link in bio.
As you kick-start your heart with the now cold Colombian, you wonder how many likes would make up for three sleepless nights and counting. You ask yourself how to hashtag his eternal howl. You shortlist the filters that might put a romantic spin on the fresh steaming turd that’s surely waiting in your living room.
Time’s up. Your dog has found you. He’s on the phone again: He wants to know when you’ll be back, where his ball might have rolled off to this time, and how his latest Instagram post is doing.
Twelve: Make it Nice
Surprise us. Make it nice.
The order is a one-two punch in a crowded bar, a veritable gauntlet thrown down to a backing chorus of something good and sometime today. The bartender dries his hands on an over-wrung towel, adjusts the already excessive roll in his sleeve, and sizes up his two impatient challengers. Two heads among too many.
The gent is an easy mark; a walking, talking anachronism. Beard, braces and a slick-back undercut chime along with a fully-buttoned and ill-fitting waistcoat in a lacklustre rendition of HBO told me what a real man looks like. His is a Sazerac. New Orleans’ first and finest.
The lady is tricky, agile in her carefully-curated collection of clichés. She’s sporting a one-night-only dress, but it’s hidden under a cropped lambskin biker. An array of pin badges form a chain maille armour down the left lapel. Ignoring the mezcal curve-ball she threw two orders ago, the bartender opts for the safe bet. Hers is a Cosmo. Conservative but not without a certain sass.
The Sazerac is all flame and fury. Rye or die. No brandy split. The bartender drops two slugs of Rittenhouse straight into the mixing pit. He follows through with Peychaud’s bitters: Two drops of crimson in an ocean of amber. Altogether an angry mix, a real bar room brawl. A touch of sugar syrup provides a timid voice of reason. After that, it’s up to the ice to stop the rye and the bitters from killing each other. The bar spoon dances a cautious, clockwise number around the fray in a vain attempt to simmer things down. The fire-red rage of the rye is tempered further still upon absinth ambush. A mean old rinse with a chip on its shoulder. They’re familiar sparring partners that waste no time falling back on old habits. The humble lemon peel, expressed and discarded, quells the ruckus once and for all. A brief life well spent. Harmony restored.
The Cosmopolitan is an orgy of vodka on triple sec on cranberry. Russian stallion atop French fancy. Citrus zest rubs against sugar’d sweetness. In one motion, the bartender rains ice over the whole sordid scene and seals it shut. A preparatory snap of the tin resounds like the crack of a nine-tails against a bare arse. The next ten seconds is a rhythmic violence of ice on steel. The whole mess is left to catch its breath in the slender frame of a lead crystal cut coupe. A naked lighter flame held to a freshly-shaved orange zest paves the way for the money shot. One, joyous spurt of citrus oil that ignites, mid-air, over the breast of Marie Antoinette (or some such, said-same mythical tit). A shower of white-hot brilliance on peach and pink.
The bartender takes a step back, names his price and basks in the glory of his creations. He watches the couple take their first cautious sips already anticipating the accolades they’ll surely bestow upon their singular manager of moods, their peerless master of mixology. He readies the usual choreography of false modesty and quiet intellect. He counts the big fat tip in his head.
A swing and a miss. The couple shoot the bartender a politely disappointed glance before laying the exact change atop the bar and walking away with their unwanted fistfuls of hubris and ego. The bartender’s mistake was obvious: He should have gone with a couple of Aperol Spritz. There’s no money to be made in violence and porn nowadays.
