I'm a salmon

Do you drink coffee? I do. I like it. I especially like what it does to your body chemistry. Well, I like what it does to my body chemistry. I'm less invested in your body chemistry, unless I need you to be a coffee monster, but that is strictly case-by-case. I mostly make my own coffee, or it is made for me by someone in my household. Sometimes though it is made for me through an exchange of currency for goods and services. I have a preferred establishment for this exchange. It is around a corner, and there is minimal street crossing. There are also smiles, hugs and pleasant verbal exchanges that take place. I haven't always been a hugger, but I'm working on it.

At my little coffee box where my coffees live before they are mine, I am a known guy. Not known by name, but people know me. People who work there. For a long time I was the friend of that friendly guy, then I was the life partner of the friendly guy, then I was one of the gay guys with the baby. I wasn't particularly well known there for a long time. Assumptions were made, and those assumptions were for the most part wrong. Nearly all of the part in fact. Things have been clarified, and now I am the guy with the uneven chest hair.

On those occasions that I go to extract coffee from these people who now know me I more often than not engage in some chat, which I enjoy. I get hugs, we make jokes, and we chat about our lives. It's all about affirmation. There are key players in this scene. People who attend the till, walk the floor, and mix the milk and coffee together. Usually soy, because of my body, which doesn't do lactose in the regular way. These are the people who are most accessible to customers. of which I am one. These are the people who are saying words and sentences with me in order to construct the chats. It's a two way street. You need people going both ways for the chat to happen, which brings me to Blonde Coffee-Girl. I'm not saying she goes both ways. I see what might be implied there, and that isn't what I am saying. It wasn't a double entendre. Just single. One entendre. It's a two-to-tango thing. Her orientations aren't really known to me, or my business, except the vertical one, in that she is standing up, which is important in a professional environment where coffee is made and customers are attended to.

Anyway,  Blond Coffee-Girl is the one particular person who hasn't been communicative beyond the taking of orders and the general congeniality of the receiving of customers into the establishment, which is about the limits of her social obligations towards me, and other customers. She isn't rude or anything like that, it's just not what I get from the other staff.

All of this changed last Saturday, or Friday. I'm hazy on days. Probably Saturday. I was unwell on Friday, and then I was all about the coffee on the Saturday. On this Saturday (or Friday) I broke down the social constraints that had been preventing us from engaging in distinctly unmemorable conversation, if there were any such constraints. Perhaps it was shyness. I used my slyness to rend whatever it was asunder. It wasn't particularly sly actually. It was based more in common sense, but if you knew me, you would know that my relationship with common sense would be listed under acquaintances. We're Facebook friends, but I don't have an e-mail address. The end result being that when I do common sense it feels sly. I feel really clever. I'm in the realms of 'I have hung the hand towels that own in the bathroom, so that they can actually be used. Where is my prize?'.

This kind of thing is normally in the telling, and I think I could tell it in such a way as to make it sound particularly clever, but I'm far more inclined to undermine myself on this one. The truth of the matter is that I was talking to my Indian buddy, whose coffee box I'm pretty sure that it is, and I casually included her in the conversation. This is how one normally does these sort of things. Think of how you start talking to people in your life. This is the way that we do it. Sometimes we just walk up to people and introduce ourselves, but that isn't the average way. It is a special occasion kind of way. At the time though I felt like some sort of intrepid socialiser. Totally swimming against the current to expand the number of people who would actively participate in listening to the things that I say, which is the goal here, and actually the goal in most places in my life. That is what I am seeking.

Why am telling you all of this now? Well, I'm going back in there tomorrow, and we will find out if the status quo has changed into a chatty sort of quo. It should actually be 'a chatty sort of status', but I liked it better the other way. The English is bad arse and deserves our respect, but in the word-face abuse-to-amuse is totally my wont. So, you'll know the quo go. Yo!