The girl who serves coffee at Starbucks

There is an American girl who talks a lot at Starbucks. She’s a server, she talks very-quickly-and-with-great-animation-and-really-wants-to-know-about-your-day-and-what-you’ve-been-doing-and-she’ll remember-(try to)-too. She looks a bit like a female Harry Potter, right down to the glasses—and I’m sure she’s a reader (of Harry Potter, that is—and I suspect she has “concerns” about JK Rowling’s hateful anti-trans turn).

She looks a bit like a gerbil, her face is chubby like a chipmunk and just wants to be “liked” (squeezed)—it’s attuned to receive positive feedback, she’s not unlike a Disney character in shape and proportions (and by that I mean the modern ones, the ones that look like squeezable gel-filled pouches in Hawaiian shirts).

Hyperstition is real—it’s true fiction, the characters have walked off the screen. Her workmate looks like that Latino Space Marine from Aliens—her head is more closely shaved than mine, and I’m not sure I could take her in a fight (she looks like a pitbull, but, even in her condition, I’m not sure I could put the boot into this bitch). So what suburb of LA do you live in? LA? This is England (mate).

So she’s very loud and very talkative and wants to talk about what you’ve been up to—she effervesces, like an open can of Diet Coke, but real fires burn cool (that’s to say, she doesn’t have real energy—just hysteria). What will happen to her is that she will be out-grouped because she behaves in a non-culturally appropriate way and that is read by people—just like if you dress differently—as a threat, actually it’s read as an attack and it will be punished (in a deniable way, naturally) until she conforms.

Sure, the customers are polite to her face but as soon as they leave they say, “It was that unbearable American woman again, she’s so loud, obnoxious, and false.” So she’ll be split and projected into and regarded as “enemy”. If she heard what they say about her behind her back she’d be very upset (angry) because for her it’s real.

It’s why black people—ethnic minorities in general—have high schizophrenia rates in Western societies, people say to them, “I don’t see colour, we’re all just humans,” and then talk about them behind their backs, about how they’re blacks (who are like that)—it’s enough to make you paranoid, drive you schizo.

So I’m a void, more or less—not always but most of the time. So she was a bit disturbed by me because I just didn’t give her the friendly responses she was after—not because I thought, “Fuck you, you stupid bitch, I’m going to make you suffer. I’m not going to say, ‘Hiiiiii,’ and tell you about my day.” That’s to be full like she’s full, just in another way.

I’m just empty—that is to say I listened to her, really. When I said my name (mandatory at Starbucks) she just went, “Taaaahhhhhmmmmmmm,” in that really long drawn out way Americans do when something makes them excited and joyful. It’s like they say, “Allllll riiiggggghhhhtttttttt,” in another context—when you make them pleased and excited in a vaguely sexual way (it’s almost too much to bear but do go aaaahhhhnnnnnnn).

It’s stretched out by women like that when they want to sound like your mom—with that long sooooottthing sound and a breast to hand (very milky). They’re cooing at you, placating you, building the positive feedback. “You hit a home run, aalllll riigggghhhtttt, tahmmmmm. You can have a cookie.” (“I have been a good boy, mom.” “Aw, you’re always a good boy, sweetie.” “I know”).

When I came back the next day, she said, “Taaaahmmm, isn’t it? I remember you from yesterday,” and I said, “I’m a memorable person,” after a brief pause and she went silent and almost stood back a bit—her head went to her breast a bit, like I’d flicked her with a towel. She did a double-take, in other words. The reason is that she wants to be a memorable person—that’s why she talks that way all the time, to make you like her and remember her. When I said, “I’m a memorable person,” she saw in me, like a mirror, her true desire and it stopped her dead.

That’s what she really wants to hear, but you can’t tell someone that. You can’t say, “I’ll always remember you,” because they’ll just say, “You’re such a liar,” because they want to hear it said again and even then they won’t believe it (they just hear “another phoney who says what he thinks will get something out of me, but, sure, say it again, I’ll pretend to enjoy it”).

But if you mirror it back to them, it completes the circuit. It can’t be done through calculation, it’s not an intellectual operation. I didn’t think, “I’ve got you where I want you now, you little bitch.” That is another game—that is when you are thinking, plotting, scheming. You’re not blank—you’re full of yourself, full of shit.

So she liked that, really liked it—because it was real. Yet if she talked about me with the staff she’d say, “What about that guy—oh my gosh (she was very into “oh my gosh”, not even God—so Puritan, a minced oath; straight off the Mayflower, baby) he’s he’s, gosh, he’s just something else, like I don’t know?” Perhaps forty years ago she might have said “he’s outta sight” but I think that has dropped out of the American tongue. The English staff would just go, “Yeah, he’s certainly, certainly…something (a piece of shit, in the English tongue).”

She was very into awesome—Americans are very into awe, it’s to do with the large spaces they inhabit; they are constantly awed by them and can’t orientate themselves psychologically. “It’s AWE-SOME.” “Yes, we’re standing next to the Grand Canyon and, just like the Hoover Dam yesterday, it is awesome. I agree.” AWE-SOME, AWE-SOME. That’s AWE-SOME. I don’t know, this coffee shop is quite small—like the country it’s situated in, are you awake?

If we’d gone on, if she’d said, “And how was your day, Taaaahhhhmm?” I would have said, “Oh, great, I’m in control.” That would have stopped her dead altogether, because her whole non-stop talk and narcissistic efforts to be friendly mask chronic anxiety and a desire to be in control.

If she can make you like her, she’s in control of the situation—you’ll never abandon her (and why are you a server in a coffee shop in Britain, when America is richer; it’s not a rational or normal decision—do you have abandonment issues, why have you abandoned your mother [country]?).

So that would have stopped her dead, because she’d have heard what she really wants to hear—I’m in control, I’m in charge, I’m wearing the pants (I can relax, I don’t have to manipulate this person to stay in control to fool everyone I’m in control, to fool myself). I talk all the time to be in control, but I’m really totally out of control—will anyone acknowledge that I’m in charge and completely out of control? (Women, eh).

However, how such a statement would be interpreted by other people would be, “That arrogant skinhead with the blue-tinted sunglasses said ‘he’s in control’—who does that prick think he is? He’s fascistic”. She’d probably say, “Yah, yah…he sure is different. Yah.” She wouldn’t be so critical because she can’t be due to the form her narcissism takes and also because I completed the circuit with her (woke the flower inside).