2006-05-30

The Coffee Man, The Wolverine, and Me

There's nothing like a little embarrassment to bring a girl back to reality. I've been seeing Coffee Man for a long time. As for when I first noticed him, I can't really say. I've thought he was cute for a VERY long time but when did a little spark that dates back to like March of 2004 ignite into a Burning Man-sized effigy to junior high, invested emotions toward virtual strangers?
I have no idea.
Probably around the time that this year's growing out my hair, taking up skating, and tanning my leathery aging bag of skin was better than the pasty, Goth-looking weirdo from last year.
That's probably when I lit my first candle for Coffee Man and fell in like.
Fell hard.
Like - love - burning hotter than the Tucson sun in June... whatevs.
It's probably all over now because, as I learned on Memorial Day, Coffee (ohpleaselethimbeover25) Man has very protective and snorty older brother.

SUNDAY.
I will swear to my dying day that Coffee Man and I saw each other the second I turned onto the street to get to his coffee window. It was like a 1990s movie with a U2 soundtrack. We stared each other down with what I can only describe as mutual relief - mine that instinct hasn't failed me and he totally knows my Bitchin' Honda and watches for me and his? I've decided that he must have felt finally a sense of peace and purpose when I pulled up because he's been waiting to see me so that he can profess his love to me. Naturally, he was expecting to see me at Rollerderby a few weeks ago but i wasn't there. We would have laughed over a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and I would have sidled up right under his arm and perhaps we would have shared an innocent kiss over a crumpled piece of paper with my number on it, in the parking lot after the crowd had finally filtered out.

I know I make this shit up so that it's funnier, but all of those doofy things that happen when you have a mad crush really do happen to me when I pull up and he's there in the coffee shop. I love it when he takes my order and when he can't because he's over at another window with another customer, I whisper to him that I love him and then I try to will him over to my car, using Russian mind tricks.
Which, by the way, don't work at all. I've clearly lost any ability that I used to have in the mind-melding arena. You snooze, you lose, I guess. And how long has it been since I've had a goofy crush?
Forever, that's how long.
Hook-ups, a couple of steady dates, come-over-and-watch-a-movie over the last two years, yes. One boyfriend but when I met him, he didn't make me giddy, so much as he made me....
um.
Never mind.

On Sunday, we shared a romantic stare-down with him leaning out of one window and me pulling up to the other window. When I got there, he was breathless and sweaty and I was, as usual, reduced to nothing more than lip gloss and giggles and playing with my hair, hoping that the zit I painstakingly covered up was still under control, and resisting the urge to tug at my shirt so that he would be able to look down it.
Which I am totally not above but then I remembered that there's really not a while lot going on there these days and that I would need to rely solely on my wit and my pretty face.
Basically, I would need to rely on my face...
As for the wit - who can be witty in the face of a dreamboat? Maybe he needs a haircut and he's totally sweaty and his voice is all kind of soft and dreamy.
Although I am not normally one for sweat, I even love his sweat.
I know, right?
This is not normal, considering that for about two years, people have generally grossed me out.
I crave this guy's sweat?
Okay.........
He gives me the worst case of the giggles and a little bit of cottonmouth, even. I get in front of him and I, Sarah - Solver of Problems, The Heavy, Gigantic Raise, Training the Trainer, Running the Seminar Every Year, Hosting the Bruce Springsteen Box at Glendale - I get around this dude, who's NOT older than 25, 28 maybe as like a maximum, hope-for-the-best.... I get around this person and I can not speak without feeling every stumbling word hanging out in the air after I say it.

I stopped my car and pulled the emergency brake, to signal that I love him and will never leave him, of course.

You know that silly smile that you get when you are just completely delighted by someone and when you realize that he very definitely saw you coming and you can spin it in your head that he made a point to get to you? Fast? I had that smile, BAD.
Through THAT kind of smiling, and despite being a little entranced by his *perfect* blue eyes, I was all, "Can I get a soy special?"
"With whipped cream, right?"
"Yeah....
......."
"I didn't see you at Rollerderby - were you skating last time?"
"No - not yet... I "
"That's right! Which team did you...."
"I think I'm going for..."
"I know a bunch of girls on that team. Are you going to be at the next bout?"
"Totally, are you?"
"Yeah."
"Right on."
Now, at this point, I was briefly considering the fact that I could take this U2 moment all the way and live out my 1990s movie fantasy.
I could have gotten up on my knees and leaned way out of the window and he would have not hesitated one inch and we would totally have Frenched right there, with the cars lining up behind mine, people honking and wanting coffee but also honking in the name of love.
If it had been raining, I would totally have done it.

But it was really nice out and there WERE cars behind me, so I resorted to the Valley Girl trick of using intonation, rather than actual words when he smiled down at me. I left him with an "Awesome", said in such a way as to convey to him how much I love him and how I am willing to forge a life of coffee, sunshine, Rollerderby, and dogs in any warm state that he chooses to live and to finish his theater major, before he begins a PhD in poetry while I totally support us and our dogs and even work part time at the coffee shop in the eveings so that we have the life we wanted to have in my late-thirties, his mid-twenties.

MONDAY.
Holiday.
I should have known that when I went to a yoga class I never go to and I got stuck next to a very smelly, crystal deodorant, SUPER dirty-footed person who, trust me without making me go into details, had not showered what I can only assume to be a record amount of time.
It was a crowded class and I was MISERABLE next to this chick.
I should have known that she was a portent from the ancient gods of Signals: This is Not Your Day.
Go Home, Little One.
Don't You Have TV to Watch? Unsolved Mysteries is Starting in 20 Minutes
The signs couldn't have been more clear had they been tattooed on the instructor's head backwards and reflected in the mirror, and also floating up in smoke letters from the incense. That wasn't burning but REALLY needed to be, if you get my drift. Crap it smelled in there, so bad!
To add insult (theirs) to injury (also theirs since I was reminded of why I never go to that class, ever, EVER), as I was fluffing my hair and checking out my tan in the full-length hallway mirrors outside the actual studio, my cell phone rang really loudly and must have disturbed some of the more determined seekers of enlightenment, who were still in chavasana, snoring or seeking, or whatever it is they were doing.
Since my ring tone is Poison's 'Talk Dirty to me', I can only imagine that maybe I was Karma for those, who foolishly think that lightness of being can be found inside of a second floor strip-mall studio with the farty smell of vegans lingering in the heavy air; Karma for the people who don't wash their feet before they go to a yoga calss where there is AT LEAST one partners exercise, MINIMUM. Karma because of how fucking awful the most determined smelled and how they crowded me out of a spot by the mirror where I was totally planning an hour and a half of shining out my vanity and admiring my mastery of asana in the mirror.

But I digress.
I should have just gone home, you know?
But I was still fueled by the excitement of maybe not-quite unrequited love.

So I pull up and My Guy isn't working, which is fine. With him not in the facility, I have a little time to take I like to call Investigative Measures. These are the detail observations that you can make about people, notably when they aren't around.
I order a soy special and this time, I have to TELL the guy working that I want whipped cream, he didn't assume it to be so, like Coffee Man (child), who knows about my sweet side. The guy who's working is another regular - in fact, when I ran into Coffee (extraordinarily young) Man he was with this guy and they seem to be pretty tight.
Like brothers.
No really.

Brothers.

"Hey what's your friend's name who works here?"
"You mean my BROTHER?" This was not exactly the response I was hoping to get.
First of all the guy working on Memorial Day is also a regular there - he wears a wedding ring, he's uber-tattooed, and very, very hip. I would naturally assume that this is not a person who I would want to spend too much time with because I would assume that he would piss me off by being too cool for skool and with his "I'm looking down on you, Classic Rock fan" attitude. My plan all along was to rescue Coffee Man away from this Mr. Hip, aka, The Wolverine, before his fate was sealed and he dropped his theatre major for something like computer engineering and Macintosh Purchasing Geekdom.
Second of all, I'm not calling Mr. Hip The Wolverine for nothin'. He said, 'You mean my BROTHER?' with a kind of over-protective tone, a little like you-have-no-business-asking-about-my-helpless-angle-baby-brother-you-vile-whore-type-skating-hag kind of a tone. I have to admit that I was stopped dead in my lacivious tracks. A D'oh in the headlights.
Brother?
That's his brother? And why did he say it so loudly and possessively? Was it out of surprise? Because he can see that I am totally Mrs, Robinson for the dog-owning crowd out there? What the hell? Why did he say, "You mean my BROTHER?" This is bad.
Sarah, dear, you just asked this dude's big brother for his name and now you, officially suck junior high style. Way to go, Champ, and good thing you have the d-o-double-g to keep you company for the next 8 years until you and Chelsea become ground-breaking herstory makers by marrying for Best Friends.

Finally, Wolverine kind of snorted out Wunderkind's name, and I am surprised I remember it, considering that I was suffering from a sever attack of mortification. The snorting, was probably due to my lack of an armsleeve tattoo and, possibly or, funky chunky glasses.

All things considered, it wasn't the, "Uh... Mark?" response, or even the "Yeah - Tim!" answer that I was expecting. It was, "You mean my BROTHER?"
Yes, Wolverine. I mean your brother.>br> So, Wolverine in your display of protecting the weaker, and possibly more needy members of your Den. That's fine.
But you gave me his name and you can't stop us from flirting on Sundays, unless you tell him that he's not allowed to hang out with me but that would TOTALLY be fucked up because I put out and do you really want cock-blocking your brother on you conscious?
Do you, Wolverine?

I thought not.
So, I will see you both on Sunday and then on the next Sunday and then at Rollerderby, and then me and Coffee (hot) Man and I?
We'll be living in your guest room with the dog and our three kids and you won't be able to do anything about it, Wolverine.
Just wait and see, not even an over protective and involved older brother can stop the true love that me and Coffee (sweet, sweet, sweet) Man and I share.

arizonasarah at 8:50 a.m.

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