Shorthand for Nothing

One Sunday morning at the Hurricane Cafe in Seattle, I left a poem on the napkin for the waitress. It’s one of the notions I have because I’m a writer and a dabbler in poetry–that I like the idea of leaving something on a napkin. Obviously I tip, also, but I entertain the hopes that getting a poem on a napkin would brighten someone’s day.

Unfortunately, I’m not at all good at coming up with poetry on the spot. I don’t want to leave something too dark. But dark is what I’m best at. It’s hard to immediately produce something cheerful, or even wistful, nostalgic, or thoughtful that I feel would make a good gift.

Ultimately I end up leaving a few lines from a song scribbled on a napkin. I need to work on the poetry thing.

The poem I left, by the way, that Sunday I mentioned, went something like this:

‘She smells like quiet drives in the rain. / The weather is cold and unpleasant / but the car is warm / and the windshield wipers freshly changed / (And from the car it’s easy to imagine: / the rain is clean and renewing) // And despite the clouds blocking the sun / it’s bright out / and the colors are clearer / than the sunniest of days. / Such a day could not be called dreary.’

I obviously don’t have the original draft, but I think I prefer it that way.

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I’m never sure what to make of Charlie’s Kitchen. It has a very cheap cheeseburger which is tasty, but other, much tastier things for the prices I’ve come to expect from most restaurants. It’s got a full bar and is a seat-yourself establishment, but it doesn’t seem terribly bar-like apart from that. Charlie’s is a place of indecision.

Too often we duck our heads in and it’s too busy and decide to go to the IHOP just a few stores down. I feel like we overlook it too often. Especially upstairs it’s almost exactly the sort of atmosphere I appreciate in a restaurant, though the coffee is not as plentiful as I’d like. But then, it’s got a full bar. It’s a place for ordering beer. Maybe I’m too used to late nights with unlimited and rapid refills on coffee. It seems perfect, but there’s something slightly askew.

I feel a little odd writing this. I really enjoy Charlie’s, and wish I went more often. But it has an atmosphere which is deceptively close to the cafes I’ve always frequented–just something is a little off. At Charlie’s I always feel like I can’t quite make up my mind about where I am, what I want.

The food is damn tasty, though, and the drinks are reasonably priced. I think I should abandon the notion that it’s a place for coffee.

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It didn’t take me long after moving to Boston to find a diner that was open for late nights, even if the public transit here closes too early to have enjoyed the frenzied late nights I have come to know and love at other such establishments. The South Street Diner fit the bill.

Here in New England, the word “diner” has a different meaning. In the northwest it tends to mean the same thing as cafe or restaurant, with connotations of truck stop. In New England they come with history. They’re made to resemble trains. But the culture, the feeling, what has always drawn me in, remain the same.

So it felt familiar to me even while it felt like rediscovering the greasy spoon scene. The food was beautifully greasy–French fries covered in gravy, juicy burgers, food which does not apologize for its effect on your health. The lighting, after dark, has that purple glow that comes of red and blue neon signs providing much of the illumination, with enough overhead lighting to prevent it from being a headache.

I’m not a regular yet, but a few of the servers have a way of making me look forward to becoming one, and that’s the sort of thing I look forward to when all I want is all the coffee in the world.

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I’m going to start cataloging my notes for Meetings With Remarkable Men here. I’m going to start by exploring some of my earliest experiences with diners.

It all really started in high school, at my church youth group. After the evening’s events we would often go to Shari’s to further socialize. There were large groups of us. We were loud and annoying and didn’t tip, and if any of the servers who had the misfortune of serving us are reading this, I am very, very sorry. As large groups often are, it was loud and often chaotic. People forgot about food, conversations were fragmented and often overlapped with other conversations, and I often found myself bouncing from one to the other–probably listening. In groups, I listen. It’s almost more enjoyable.

It was a stark contrast to the quiet of the youth group–which ended on an introspective note, and the socialization that took place after was always subdued while still in the building. This was people in their element, being served, talking, laughing, enjoying themselves, pretending the rest of the universe didn’t exist–and in many ways pretending the rest of the night never happened. I didn’t develop people-watching tendencies until much later, but I started to think of the late-night diner as a neutral zone. No authority figures–waitresses certainly didn’t count to this group. For a high school student, there are few occasions when there is no chance of interacting with someone in authority, be it a parent, a teacher, a youth pastor, or otherwise. The other options are movie theaters, or a parent being out of town for the weekend–one of which was generally not an ideal time for socializing, the other of which was hardly reliable, especially for a kid like myself, who seldom simply went somewhere just to hang out.

I enjoyed this little routine, of bumming a ride out and a ride back, drinking a milkshake, talking, laughing, being loud and obnoxious and proud of it. I was free from social responsibility and free to be a part of the group. This declined as some of the older, more charismatic kids graduated and moved on, and I started slipping away from my religion and, now that I could drive, doing more independent things. But it was always a positive place in my mind.

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Over the past week or so I’ve started envisioning what the book I’ve been wanting to write, about diners, greasy spoons, coffee shops, and truck stops, is going to look like. Previously I had no real idea. I figured maybe it would be a laundry list of various places I’d been, some anecdotes to tie them together–and it was about as shapeless as that sounds. But I thought up a title, and for me that’s the hardest part of anything I write. “Meetings With Remarkable Men.”

I have spent many hours of my life at cafes, usually drinking drip coffee, eating bad diner food, talking about the world. In a way it doesn’t matter who you’re with, so long as they’re just as committed to the adventure. I’ve had hours-long conversations with people I barely knew and people I’ve known forever, gone home with my voice cracked from talking so often, my hands shaking from the caffeine. It’s a neutral ground for stories. A haven from the real world.

I keep going back because it’s always a new experience. You come home with new stories. You feel like you’ve accomplished something. The experience tends to fade with time though. It’s time I started capturing the moments forever.

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