Voyeurism. Most people think of peeping toms, looking into the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the people there or being sexually voyeuristic. Today I am unleashing my inner voyeur, sitting in a coffee shop and checking out the people that are coming and going.
There are the coffee drinkers, whose voice sounds like they had a pack of Marlboro’s for breakfast. Then, the bleached blondes who are drinking skinny lattes, heavy foam. When, in reality, a true latte should have no foam. You want to tell them they are drinking cappuccino’s, but they don’t like the coffee flavor. Yeah. There are the people on the laptops, like myself. Some working, others poseurs. Look, I have my iPad beside my MacBook, talking on my iPhone and I am doing absolutely nothing but discussing the Grateful Dead and how Jerry would’ve loved my Dead Head ways. Bite me.
The boy to my left studying and listening to tunes. He is ultra polite, and helped me move my table so I could get seated. The man to my right is on his second “meeting”. It’s more gossip, as the man meeting him is sadly unemployed, but if you are going to bash people that don’t hire you in public, did you really need to be hired by them in the first place? I wish him well on his job search, as well as good karma.
The man across from me, hot coffee, lid off. With a Naked juice, his eyeglasses case and won’t take his bagel/muffin out of the bag. He’s nibbling. There is the single man that has been sitting at the large table, for six, for an hour. Reading the paper. All alone. Pompous. His Burberry scarf, shoes and jacket just add to the arrogance as his look dares anyone else to sit there.
The fashionistas area in out in full force today. Walking around like they are the best thing this retail establishment has seen and looking down on we the people of jeans and long-sleeved t’s land. I want to stand up and instead of saying “We the People of these United States”, say “We the chunky, tired people of the under-caffeinated”, but I don’t feel that would go over well.
So, while I am in the middle of my necessary narcissism, I am also enjoying watching everyone while being. It’s sociological study without being scientific. Watching people do nothing but move in and out, a slave to the legally addictive stimulant they are consuming in the great land of innocuous, cheap, multi-faceted consumerism known as the “coffee shop”.
