After work, I thought to indulge my fancy at Williamsburg’s Read café, one of my new favorites, not least because of its proximity to my home (in Polish-occupied Greenpoint) and its $2 happy hour drafts. This time I ordered a chocolate/raspberry scone and, because beer didn’t seem a suitable companion to the pastry, a cup of black coffee. I settled in at a corner table and cracked my new copy of Jonathan Ames’ The Extra Man.
Having, for the time being, grown weary of the Russians, I’m on a bit of an Ames’ jag. I just finished What’s Not to Love and Wake Up, Sir, which were both so hilarious I had to promise myself that I wouldn’t laugh out loud while in the café. Laughing out loud when reading to yourself in the privacy of your own home is acceptable, but in a social environment, it’s to be used only as a tool to attract the attention of others, and I didn’t want to do that. I had come in to read. Besides, getting caught unintentionally laughing out loud with your nose in a book is almost as embarrassing as its sister faux pas: moving one’s lips while reading. It was a struggle, but I managed to reveal no outward expression of the pleasure I was experiencing within save for the occasional smile. Smiling briefly to yourself is acceptable because it’s somewhat intriguing. Though holding a smile too long can make you look simple. It was just a quarter after six, so the place wasn’t too full. The waitress was unusually efficient and accommodating. I enjoyed the scone and the coffee, though it was a bit scalded. And I enjoyed Ames. His antagonist, Louis, adopted his own persona: that of a “young gentleman” of the sort from an Evelyn Waugh novel. It helped him cope with his insecurities while he sought to satisfy his curiosity about cross dressing. But after a half hour or so, I felt I wouldn’t be able to contain myself for much longer, so I put down the book and pulled out my notebook.
I often go to cafes to read or write, a habit I had picked up after months spent trying to avoid an undesirable roommate. But I’m painfully aware of the clichés such a habit evokes: the intense journal writer vacillating between feelings of love and suicide in his Claire Fontaine notebook, the young nouveau Rimbaud who just waits to catch your eye so he has an excuse to share his latest bit of decadent cleverness, or the unemployed guy who tries his hardest to convince you -- and himself -- that he is so much more than a man without a paycheck. And while I have been just such an intense diarist, erstwhile poet, and unemployed person “with so much more going on,” I never wore these tragic personae on my sleeve. Besides, at the time, I’m sure I thought I was the real deal. Though sometimes I like to pretend I’m an expatriate, which I’m not, of course, having been born and raised in Newport, Rhode Island, and educated in Boston and New York. But Read is helpful in advancing this guise because it is often filled with foreigners and there’s a computer that you can rent by the minute. Expats and backpackers always use Internet cafes, almost as much as they frequent check-cashing businesses. All it usually takes is for me to place a Russian language newspaper or book on my table and my costume is complete, though I’m sure this all goes unnoticed by the other patrons. But it doesn’t matter. The ruse is for me alone.
Sometimes when I write in a café, I pull out a couple of books and open them, one face up, the other face down on the table, and occasionally glance at them to give the other patrons the impression that I’m studying or doing some serious research. That way, when I can’t think of what to write and I stare blankly out the window at passersby, I seem as though I’m only taking a break from my scholarly labors or perhaps ruminating over some abstraction. But it’s not that I’m trying to come off as a harried graduate student, I just don’t want to come off as a would-be writer in a coffee shop.
I managed to scribble a few paragraphs into my notebook, which wasn’t from Claire Fontaine, a favorite among coffeehouse writers. I use a regular one subject, spiral-bound ruled pad that you might purchase at a Duane Reade or a Staples. Its lack of pretension deflects attention from myself as a writer in a coffee shop. My coffee and scone finished. I decided I could then order myself a $2 beer and to continue writing.
But no more words came. Between glancing into my prop books -- which would have betrayed my weak, scholarly façade, as one was Ames’s The Extra Man and the other was a photography book about hot rods -- and starring blankly out the window for inspiration, I noticed a young, not unattractive woman stealing glances in my direction. She was drinking a cup of chai and struggling with a ESL workbook, which jibed nicely with my expatriate leanings. I tried to ignore her and focus on my writing but I could feel the weight of her eyes on me and so I began stealing glances of my own in her direction. I was trying to ascertain the reasons for her stares. Did she find me attractive or intriguing? This wasn’t readily apparent because there seemed to be something inquisitive about her glances. Which probably meant that she thought I looked funny…or maybe she had caught me laughing out loud! She’d appear to focus on her ESL workbook and then she’d look over at me. A couple of times our eyes met and we’d both look quickly down into our books. I allowed myself to believe that she recognized a fellow expatriate in me and it had piqued her curiosity. This went on for some minutes until she finally looked up at me and said in English with a strong Polish accent, “Hey, what are you doing?”
“Excuse me?” I responded, fearing that I had only imagined her glances and that she thought I was ogling her like some sort of creep in a coffee shop and now everyone else in the place assumed I was too.
“What’s that you’re doing there in the notebook? What are you writing?” she asked loudly, drawing the attention of other patrons. Found out! I’d been caught writing in a coffee shop and now this Polska, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-years old, was calling my bluff! “Are you writer?”
Her tone wasn’t accusatory, and she seemed genuinely curious. But other people were looking at us, waiting for my response. My mind raced to come up with some scholarly connection between Ames and hot rods, but nothing came. How could it? And, not knowing the backgrounds of those within earshot, I didn’t want to risk fudging something. But I didn’t have to.
“Wow, you are writer!” She exclaimed. It was worse than I thought, she had completely outed me as something I was trying so hard not to come off as! And in front of a room of people writing in their own notebooks, even. I was being mocked by a twenty-year-old girl still trying to learn English. “Why not write in office or library for inspiration?”
She got up and came over to my table and sat down without asking. She was probably more like eighteen or nineteen. Great. Now not only did I look like some sort of beatnik poser, but also one who lures minors back to my place. “What are you writing?!” She gushed.
“Oh, I’m just making notes…”
“That’s many notes! What about?”
I was trapped so I came clean. “ A story about some Turks who figured that I was gay, so tried to steal my date after I got beat up because I wasn't a woman."
“I wish to be writer, but my English isn’t good yet.” She looked down, as though embarrassed and noticed my Russian newspaper on the table. “You Russian? Your English is very good!”
“You could write in Polish.” I didn’t respond to her comment regarding my ethnicity. Again, this appealed to my coffee shop-expatriate yearnings. She could be a writer in exile! And, since this was my fantasy, so could I. Spurned by the governments of our respective nations, we had each sought refuse in the United States. Our convictions undiminished, we continued to write in the same spirit that had forced us to bitterly quit our homelands. Upon meeting in a Brooklyn café, we immediately recognized within one another kindred spirits. Thusly drawn together we embark on a brief yet passionate affair. She returns to Poland and eventually wins the Nobel Prize for Literature and I remain terribly misunderstood in a Williamsburg coffee house, scribbling in a journal amid Russian-language newspapers and picture books about hot rods.
My daydream was interrupted when she received a call on her cell phone. She spoke quickly in Polish. She seemed annoyed with the person on the other end, but had to continue the phone call. While talking she took my pen and wrote a phone number in my notebook, and a name, which I presumed to be hers: “Katia” She then got up and, covering the receiver with her hand, said, “Call me. We speak English.”
Now imagine who can you pick up (or who can pick up you) in a lovely pastry cafe (net connection provided patrons only)which is wittily named "Uprising", especially considering this particular branch located in Beyrut Bay Ridge.
Their carrot muffins are irresistable.
Aside: don't intend to ruin your fantasy, lord knows we all need some and all that, but Russian writer reading and writing in a cafe over cup of coffee and scone is totally out of character. Try "rjumochnaya" with drunken confessions instead.
Posted by: Tat | April 04, 2005 at 01:51 PM