Dear Coffee Shop Boy

Why so sad? Why do you never smile, even when I leave you a dollar on a tab of $1.75 so that you will like me better? Is it because you are located on 13th and Pine and seem to attract a steady cluster of homeless people who sit at the outside tables rolling their own cigarettes and then breezing in to use the bathroom in the basement? Is it because you are an artist and you know that your talents are being squandered as customers demand you to make them vanilla lattes with a shot of hazelnut? Is it because the loud, jarring music that you play enhances your anger; that the daily dose of Rage Against the Machine (meant, possibly, to keep individuals from staying at the coffee shop indefinitely) reinforces your sense of disenfranchisement and boyish angst? You're cute, with your round glasses perpetually fogged by the steamer and your dark bangs that hang over your eyes, but I don't think you care if girls find you attractive. You're probably jaded from the continual stream of waifish girls in short dresses and jeans, the ones who arrive with their new Mac laptops, plug in for hours on end, and barely give you the time of day because they are waiting for their boyfriends, all of whom are in bands and leave their hand-drawn fliers strewn on the sticky tabletops. But try to look on the positive side of things--the fact that you have access to as much caffeine as you want as well as dry cookies and day-old, flakey croissants. No one seems to be enforcing any form of customer service on you or complaining that you barely ever speak, just stare with veiled hostility at the person in front of you without saying anything, waiting for them to order their stupid drinks. I keep coming back because I like the oranges you sell for a mere fifty cents and because maybe, one of these days, you'll recognize me and say more than, Uh-huh, when I tell you thank you for giving me my drink.