This essay was published in Bletilla: Memories Preserved From Times Lost, which can be found here
Every person has points in their lives where a certain aspect of their being is born. Mine happened to be on an arbitrary Friday evening, staring out a window and sipping on a cup of coffee in a sizable but emptying cafe. It’s as if I suddenly started existing at that moment, eyes opening to a group of partygoers walking by the window. The one carrying a cardboard box suddenly tripped on the curb, spilling whipped cream canisters that loudly clanked on the concrete. “Not the whippits!” someone in the group screamed out as they scrambled to pick up as many as they could. Looking left, I locked eyes with the person sitting in the table next to mine and smiled; unknowingly meeting a close friend of a future friend.
That moment beget many others, similar in nature. It was the first time I had truly gone out into the world on my own. I clung to that coffee shop, gradually increasing the frequency of my visits as I got more comfortable existing in public. After my classes for the day wrapped up I would join the long queue of regulars, staring at the various pastries and studying the varieties of drip coffees as the locals chatted. On weekends the cafe was so packed that I would sit at the coffee bar to study, saving the tables for proper groups. Eventually I started to converse with the baristas, often commenting on their music selection or the particularly rude customer that had just walked out. Putting names to the faces I had become familiar with as I read and worked on my college assignments.
The frequency of my visits increased sharply once I moved closer to the cafe. Instead of taking West Virginia University’s crumbling PRT system, all I had to do was walk across the Walnut Street Bridge. I would wake up in the morning, shower, then immediately head to the cafe and order an off-menu breakfast.
Opening up a tab that would last all day, I would leave for classes after breakfast and return in the afternoon. This was around the time where I became very involved with the radio station, and the amount of people I knew expanded far beyond what I ever expected it to. I remember coming in one day after doing my shift and finding the radio tuned in to 91.7FM, and one of the baristas I had became friends with rightfully ragging on my poor song selection. Outside of chatting up the baristas, friends would often stop by and sit at my table, and we’d mutually pretend to do coursework as we distracted each other. The impromptu nature of it all is something I treasured even at the time- there aren’t many places you can loiter at all day and randomly see four to five of your close friends.
A year later I had moved again, but was still in the same neighborhood as before. This was when I finally talked to Simone, an older regular who would arrive in the morning, sit at the coffee bar, and annoy the baristas like I did. Despite often seeing her in my periphery, we had never properly met until this point. But in a desire to avoid my mundane readings, I introduced myself. Right off the bat she described each of her lovely cats that would bask in her sunroom while she tutored vocals and piano. Gradually we began to have lengthy conversations a few mornings a week where she would describe entire pieces of her past in detail. Like how drunken Morgantown couch burnings gradually became legitimate issue on her street. Most interesting though were the stories about her experiences in New York City as a young musician. The way she verbally painted a scene enthralled me, to the point where I would usually miss my first class of the day. Listening to her talk about beating up a mugger near her Manhattan apartment, or grabbing a bank teller by the collar and threatening him for the money she was owed. I forget the exact details of that story, but I’m certain there was for a perfectly legitimate reason for doing what she did.
The last regular I got to know was a PhD student confusingly studying fashion and computer science. We bonded over our mutual interest in textiles and garment construction, and they’d given me a fixed up sewing machine to sew masks for a drive.
It’s odd how many special moments like that came up from that old coffee shop. Even the small ones, like the rare cases a certain friend would drop by to discuss music and dental work. Or the times I invited someone to hang out just to make fun of him for nursing a book on mushrooms for several years. And of course I can’t leave out the time I made my date read and interpret Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit to me, which shockingly was enough to interest her in a second date. I want to just write and remember all these people important to me, even if I’m the only one who cares. Just like how Simone would go on and on about her past in captivating detail. I hope that after all this time she still goes and sits on the bar stool closest to the register, loitering all morning and talking at the baristas while they attempt to take orders. Because of fellow inhabitants like her, my life became much fuller in the years I spent at the Blue Moose Cafe.
