Arabica is not just a
bean, or a place, in my
inglorious youth in
Shaker Heights,
Ohio, Arabica was the name of the local
coffee house. A kind of
heaven.
The tables were made of
solid oak with
coffee rings soaked into their surface so deep that the grey
dish water rag that the
waitresses would use slough off the
spilt sugar and
scone crumbs could never pull out in a thousand rubs. The ceiling was painted to look like a blue sky on a cloudy day, giveing a
surrealist air to the shop. Kids played
magic cards and
chess in the
back rooms. Young
punks in
mowhaks leaned on the window watching the boys in
baggy pants with heavy
wallet chains doing
high jumps with
skate boards on the bench out side.
Terrible horrible
poets stood at the always-
open mic muttering such favourites as
Nobody loves you.
it went like this:
“No body loves you
nope they sure don’t
you are all alone
hear them
laugh
ha ha ha ha
ha”
We always clapped anyway. You
never boo down a poet even if she makes you
twitch in pain, it’s impolite right?
There was only one thing wrong with Arabica. (oh, Arabica, Arabica, Arabica of my dreams)
I was not allowed to go there.
You see my dad saw a
gay pride meeting there one day and a bunch of
Socialists another and he didn’t want me to fall in with those people. He called them “a bunch of
touchy-feelies” so all through
high school I never got to see the
heavy oak tables or hear the
bad poetry, or even read some of my own. And then, not long after I went to university, they tore it down and built a
starbucks.
and
I cried. I really, really did.