More from his side of things

I weaved past others standing in line. I heard the guy who’d been behind me walk up to the resister and say, “Can I get two macchiatos and an espresso with half vanilla and half milk.” I spotted Allison, seated facing the glass doors, facing an empty seat and I had this feeling like I was about to plant myself in The Hot Seat. When I sat down, I would be crossing a line, a boundary; some fixed point in space would be altered forever. An existential choice was being made.

            I sat facing her.

            “So you’re a writer,” she said.

            And we were off.

            “Yes,” I said, sipping tea.

            “What do you write?”

            I shrugged. This common question, one you hear endlessly from non-writers, from other writers, at conferences, in writing classes, etc. What can you do but answer it. I always wanted to say, “I write what’s in my heart.”

            “Novels. Short stories. Nonfiction. Started out writing poetry but have since moved away from that,” I said.

            She grinned. Sipped her coffee, which had cooled. “I hate poetry. No: correction. I loathe poetry. Snobbery. Pretentious buffoonery.”

            I laughed out loud, a fast crack of thunderous, deep-seated humor; my neck ripped back. “Me, too. Poetry sucks. Too insular. Too self-aggrandizing. Self important. Sad bastards.”

            We somehow knew and both lifted our mugs, clinking them together simultaneously. “To the death of poetry,” she chimed. I nodded. We were in agreement on that.