It is Saturday morning and I am in a charmingly philosophical mood. The freshly ground coffee nesting warmly in the pot to my right has little bubbles on the surface like fish eggs and when I raise the cup to my mouth I notice that the bubbles contain rainbows. I sip the brew...Ahh rich aroma; Ethiopia crashes through the sensory divide and invades my private space. Though I am clearly not in Ethiopia but London, Stoke Newington - the greatest place in the whole Universe. Oh, yes I have been to the stars on the back of aching mahogany beams.
Back on Earth the waitress shuffles busily to my left leaving a trail of sweet perfume and broken hearts in her wake. I look at her and oddly sadistic thoughts flutter into view - thoughts of the sexual things I'd like to do to her behind the counter and on the shiny table tops. Naughty sexual things that I can't describe here as this blog is rated PG. I swipe the thoughts clear; like one swipes a truculent layer of grime off a window pane, and continue with my work. But I am finding it difficult to concentrate.
Presently a man walks in, a Turkish man, and sits down. He is wearing a badly fitting suit jacket with enormous lapels and not-very-shiny brass buttons. He places his elbows self-consciously on the table and looks around wide-eyed, his gaze scanning the clientele and stopping for longer than is necessary on some of the prettier faces. The waitress comes over to take his order. He orders in a series of low guttural barks that betray his lowly uncouth origins. 'I am Man. I want food'. He continues to stare at some of the prettier faces; staring for longer than necessary. How long should a man stare at a woman not to make her feel uncomfortable? I think about 7/10th's of a second is long enough to acknowledge her existence. Anything longer betrays a keen healthy interest. 4 seconds or more and we are looking at unhealthy sexual interest that borders on psychotic disturbances in the frontal lobe area of the brain. It is 20 seconds and the man is still staring - at the same woman.
Oddly enough (or maybe not oddly enough) the reaction of the female in such cases will depend on her perceptions of the man. Is he well dressed? Does he appear as a gentlemen? Well to do? How is he groomed? His mannerisms? Are they coarse and slovenly or urbane and refined? What are his shoes like? His eyes, how deep are his eyes - can you see straight though them all the way through the emptiness or are they impenetrable and how close are they to his nose? It's funny how you can read someone within a few seconds of having seen them. A useful device in the small tribal bands in which we evolved. Women are much better judges of pseudo-psychotic-sexual tendencies - for obvious reasons. The woman shuffles uncomfortably under the murky gaze of the sexual predator. Is he on the prowl? Finally she gets up to go to the loo. Yet the man shifts his gaze not an iota. What is he looking at? An empty chair? Oh! The television! He is looking at the television positioned to the right of the woman and my field of view made me think he was looking at her...oh well. I chuckle to myself and think of something to write.
The waitress returns and I order another pot of special brew. I do come here often and she knows me by face and we do chat occasionally in between the sound of clinking china and wooshing 15Bar pressure espresso machine. I can't quite recall what we talk about, all sorts of pointless stuff, but just to see her smile at a little joke of mine is bliss. I imagine seating her, with legs akimbo, between the knobs of the coffee machine, and making love to her whilst the coffee beans swivel about in the crusher and the milk frother for the cappuccinos reaches bursting point...and starts dripping all over the counter.
Oh God.That's disgusting...
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