STARBUCKS GIRL
I live a life of quiet dignity. Which is to say I live alone, and unfucked. But, like most of you I’m sure, I’m as complicated as it comes. At night when I can’t sleep, I make lists in my head. “Number one, start a list. Check mark.” It’s like I’ve already succeeded! I find it numbs me to sleep on those nights I need numbing to sleep. Did I mention the unfucked thing? Other times I lie there and I think of practical jokes I might play on my cat.
(giggles)
Wouldn’t Mr. Noodle be surprised if his bowl was on the top step?
(giggle)
I lie awake, contemplating how to do things better. How to be more efficient. How to get into Trader Joes, grab my things, and get out as fast as I can. Some nights I fantasize about a shopping spree. The route I would take if I had an empty cart and two minutes, I would move like a Navy seal grabbing fist-fulls of expensive fatty foods.
(beat)
Every day I go into Starbucks. I move past the pretty half-shirt girls ordering complicated coffee drinks. I order tea. I’m already an outsider. But I like to keep my interactions to a minimum. If I ordered a fancy coffee, everyone would look when they called out my name. Calling out, “Chandra! Neven! Mazapan!”...I hate drawing attention to myself. I pee at home. I can’t stand having to ask for the bathroom key. The bathroom key dangling off a degrading length of wood is too much for me to handle. Why would that piece of wood need to be so long? Are they contemplating some trouble in there? An ambush? No. They’re just trying to degrade me. To know my comings and goings. Why do we need a key anyway? Because I know as we speak, a homeless guy is in there rotating his clothes. I order tea. But at night, I imagine if I ordered a fancy coffee, what my Starbucks name would be. Rita. Rita breaks hearts with a glance. Her cat is not named, Mr. Noodle, her cat is named “Cocaine,” and not because he’s white in color, but because she actually does Cocaine off of him. Rita doesn’t wear panties, because she left them somewhere. Rita says things like, “Listen, are you going to suck my tits all night, or are you going to fuck me?”
(beat)
Usually my body doesn’t show, or I don’t let it show, and I don’t really have one of those bodies. Usually if a bit of my stomach shows, some one says-
(pointing) )
-“You might want to do something about that.” But today I walked into Starbucks, and I was wearing, as fate would have it, my older sister’s jeans.
(catching herself)
Er, actually, she’s my younger sister, she just seems older because of all the mistakes she’s made. And they were a bit tight, and I looked up, and people were staring at me. Men looked up from the screenplays they were writing, and stared at me. I must also say, and we don’t have time for this, but I have a very complicated relationship with my hair. And for reasons that are too long and tedious to explain, it was the perfect combination of dirty, windswept, and spit laden, that made it, dare I say “perfect”. Well, for me, perfect. I looked up and I realized-
(triumphantly)
-that I was the best looking girl in Starbucks today! When I got up to the counter - I ordered a drink of just foam. They wrote “Rita” on the cup.