The Coffee Marxist

And so it begins again. Yes, call me a sucker, for I have truly proved myself to be one time and time and time again. I would not even be wounded by such a label as I have applied it to myself with my own lips far more than you ever could with yours.

Every time she left me in admiration, shallowly, of her beauty, deeply, by the intelligence and frankness of her manners. It can scarcely be doubted that I favored such a fortunate arrangement as we had in order to become closer. It is true that even then I sensed something wrong, but so lost was I that I refused to see it. All it needed was time, I thought. Still there were signs-her language, cut as roughly and as coarsely as a side of bloody fresh beef on the slab, spoke of nothing but worldly circumstances that intruded on her life, in such a bitter and scowling manner it left one at a loss for words. Her eyes, beetle-black as her hair, many a time where palpable and dripping disdain was obviously painted, nevertheless left me enchanted.

Usually not long after the first few meetings I felt I was on a very intimate footing with my beautiful apparition and begin to talk and act thusly towards her. To my dismay, for all my tried affection her reply was to me:

“I suppose it will be called rude and improper to not receive your civility and admiration, but it is not my way to care very much about codes of manner. I will not make a curtsey for you, for I am sitting on horseback and this horse shall obey only me and not you. I know it is true that I deserve your admiration, for I am stronger and more beautiful than thy, and care much less for others (including you) at that, and thus I am in control of this relationship. I shall remain loyal to my detached ways, for I prefer to live within the ridiculous confines of imaginary illusions of ‘freedom,’ envisioning myself as a wild hawk who, as soon as he is limited from his soaring, shall dash himself to pieces on the bars of his cage, and you sir, are no more than another cage to me.”

“For I am exhausted as a beautiful one may be of explaining, day in and out, to various men far better-looking and dashing than yourself why I will not share a bed with them. The countless men such as yourself with which I have interacted playfully-they were nothing and meant even less much like the next, and I tire of such things. You sir, shall remain what you were all alone-another nameless, faceless fan boy of mine, which never even had the benefit of seeing the long line before and after you, because your kind had come to me one at a time.”

Ah yes, my dear reader. All of this given to me, suddenly slapped down in my lap rudely as an iron anvil dropped-yes. Shattering and shredding my arrogant and utopian fantasies of how things ought to be. And not instantly was this delivered once my admiration had been made known, to be sure, but only after a long enough period had passed that it allowed the bloom of various dreams doomed from the start.

Yes, you may assure yourself that she bided her time, allowing me the full freedom and space so that I might express myself fully, to go through each motion and speech that I wished without the slightest constraint, all the more that I might expose myself as the misguided fool that I was, and to perform with more skill the role of a gesture in the court, exposed and raw to the world.

Then, one day following soon after-no day of special importance I can discern but one randomly chosen as good and as fitting as any other-she gave the speech. She smiled at me, with such apparent knowing and haughtiness that she reserved for the rest of the world: “Ah, arrogant sir, how you still imagine yourself to be my knight in shining armor! Are you such a dreamer that you would put me to rights? Well, allow me to put you to rights!”

In all this she formed herself as the sensible and hardened one, the one with the roughest existence and the most life experience, who had so much credit to speak about the harsh realities of the world such as that I had no right to respond or appeal! Yes, apparently it is to be the hardening of my arteries that makes me wise, and in that respect I am sadly lacking. For have I shot a gun before, in need rather than in sport? No. And I am equally an ignorant stranger to the savage group which she has been charged with residing among. And do I not blush to be so? Why, she must disavow my alliance for such an unspeakable crime! And how I tried to talk through this, but they were met with similar words:

“I must inform you at once,” she said to me, “that compliments are entirely lost upon me. Do not, therefore, waste your pretty sayings, for they turn to ash in my ears. They serve fine and stupid gentlemen such as yourself who imagine I am impressed in the least by your existence, those gentlemen who travel the country, using these sayings on women in much the same way colonialists used rings, bracelets and charms upon the inhabitants of newly discovered lands. Do not exhaust your stock upon someone much more worldly than you, who insists she knows their REAL value.”

I was silenced and confounded, wounded as one might imagine anyone would be. Before I could ask why, oh why must I, a man who wished no harm, be the subject of such cruel satire, she anticipated my response and found herself unconcerned.

“You remind me now,” she continued, “Of a man with an enormous sackful of money who finds upon reaching the market that it has been turned to slate. I have cried down and ruined your entire stock of discourse with one unlucky observation. And now you wish to cry your injustice. Get used to it, is all I can say, for this is the way of the world-the world I know so much better than you do and will remained convinced as such. For we are alone in this world and shall always be.  You should know by now, young fool, that I will not sugarcoat it for you. You are belied, sir, as every gentleman with a fancy silk hat that has tried in the past to get to know me has been. You have failed.

Go and shed your pointless tears now, for you shall never have me. You will weep and mourn your loss, but what do you expect of me? To have pity and run to you through a field of flowers? Likely. I would advise you to forget my sex and think of me as a sexless and genderless object, a co-worker of yours if you will. If you wish to speak to me, speak to me as a male traveling companion, for then you will have no idea how much I shall like you. But this is all you shall ever have.”

Oh how am I to deal with love for you, I asked? How in God’s name am I to be cast aside and brushed away so easily when I have committed no crime greater than existing and feeling? Why, must I, a man who endeavored to wrong you naught on purpose, to believe you want no love?

“I do not need your assistance!” She said, “Nor do I want it. I do not want your thoughts, for I see them already and know them well. You think me a strange bold girl, desirous of a friend and mate and willing to attract one by her freedom of expression and ignorance of the softer side of the ‘fairer sex.’ Permit me to shock your arrogance, but you were never more mistaken. All the apparent affection I have bestowed upon you I would have likewise upon my own uncle if he would listen. I have confided in you solely because you were the first listener I found with intelligence enough to comprehend my words. I assure you I would have said it to anybody, not just to you because I thought you would understand, because I cared not a pin who heard me or if they understood or not, nor if they particularly enjoyed it.”

Ay, but what could I say?