Untouchable

I am a pariah. I came to this conclusion last night while being outside a local coffee shop. Not one of those smooth jazz-playing, $6.95 soy latte with hazelnut drink places. I'm talking about a dark, beneath the city street, dimly lit, throw-back from the Beatnik era coffee shop. The place literally smells of history. The coying smell of tobacco smoke waifs through the air like an unhappy spirit. The shop is where I spend some days to escape the pain of civilized society. A underground resistance to the corporations and drones the work above us. This is where I met Ellie.
I had just finished walking on a cloudy day. It doesn't matter which day. They're all the same to me. I kept thinking that day that I am one of those people who aren't "mold-able". I don't want to be a working man. A bygone relic of the Nuclear Family. I am me. With that statement I realized I need to fill my body with something cheap and legal that can keep me in this frame of mine. Not necessarily nihilistic in my views but more apathetic. So I discovered a small hole in the wall shop.
"Asmodeus". A perfect name to this place. Who knows how many secrets have the walls listened into. I walk down the cement steps worn by the feet of the anti-culture. I move my ten-dollar sneakers down to the cracked, faded brown door. I open it and am brought into a room of silence and quiet anger. A cracked wooden bar painted black lies against the right-side of the room. The shop seems to devour the feeble light. Everything is dark. Moody. My kind of joint. Perfect for the frame of mind that I had painted for myself. I move my legs towards the bar. A blackboard with white chalk lettering tells me my 6 choices. I order a coffee.
I move to the back of the shop to a nice secluded corner. All the corners are secluded. I wrap my hands like a prayer around my cup. Staring intensely at the scratched, graffiti-ed table top. Does RG still love DW? Is Korn the best music? Doubtful to both. I try and think my way out of my box when she came in.
She was neither gorgeous or plain, neither fat nor skinny. She was classical beauty. Her hairy, a dirty blond, was like the after flash of lightning in the thunderstorm of the room. I won't go into more detail. It's best to let you imagine the rest. I couldn't help but stare. Maybe it was the lack of sleep or the coffee buzz hitting me but I knew I had to talk to her. She turned to walk towards me. I froze. Could she be an FBI agent finally tracking me down? She didn't look like one. Her hair was uncombed and unkempt. Her gray sweatshirt was frayed at the collar. Even her blue jeans had tears and rips. She came right over to me. Sat down and started drinking my coffee!
Now, I had seen many things. Monkeys coming out of lampposts. Colors and scents that I can't describe, yet nothing in my world had competed with this...this brazen act of desecration to a mans coffee.

"Excuse me," I politely rasp. Last night must have broken my larynx. "Thats my cup".

"How very capitalist of you" she retorts. I think I am in love.

She reaches across the table. "Names Eleanor Horst, everyone calls me Ellie"

I gave her my hand and my name. This woman was amazing. We spent most of the daylight speaking of philosophy and humanity. Her grassroots ways mirrored my own. We were kindred spirits. If we had a sweat tent we would pass the peace pipe and speak of dreams that the Great Spirit gave us. Instead we talked in hush tones in a downtown, rundown coffee shop. We were on a wavelength that I never dreamed possible. This was my summer of '69.
Over the next weeks Ellie and I became closer. Nights laying on my mattress staring up at the ceiling while watching the smoke curl upwards. Nothing would be said at those points. We were back in the womb. Two people in such semblance that our words would probably shatter this moment. I have felt things in my life but this beats them all. I think I'm happy.
After two months our relationship ended. She became more optimistic. She even got a job. She wanted things out of this life. Me? I want to wander, to search for a higher meaning. To be like a Shaolin monk trying to reach enlightenment. We had to go our separate ways. For about three days after, I maintained a level of buzz that would've killed a lesser man. Then I realized that this was karma at play.
Was this a sign from above that I should make something of myself? Get a job? A wife? A car thats not older then myself? A white picket fence, 2.3 children, and a dog? NO! I refuse. I am a pariah. I need none of these things. I intend to wander this place searching for something that I can't search for. I need to be away from people. That is of course if Nixon doesn't get his grubby hands all over it.
Perhaps she really was a government agent. Sent by the Nixon commies to break me and make me become a lumping socialist. Well, it didn't work. I saw Ellie once and a while after that. Meaningless idle chatter about inane things. We could never get back those months of nirvana. Maybe she was a communist. Or a optimist. Same thing really.
I lurch back to this time period and space. My cup is empty in front of me. Like Ellie and I were. Once filled with steaming energy, now nothing is left but the lingering taste and the dregs at the bottom. I shake my long greasy hair. No, I don't think I will ever find someone like her. She's a good spirit. I am on a different path. Running away from Commies and other agencies that probably want to keep my brain in a stasis pod to be put into a robot in the year 2346 when the world is using cyborgs to take over the last remnants of free society.
I throw a few bills on the table and shuffle out. The place hasn't changed, but it seems my memories have given the black room a whitewash. I leave through the door and enter the brightness.

FIN