Tully’s Again

Posted on August 1, 2002 in Cafes

I went back to Tully’s today, made my peace with the manager, and found we were both happy with our mutual understanding of what happened there the other day. The barristes had been wondering among themselves about what I was always writing about. This one day they let a goofball boyfriend of the soccer girl know about their curiosity and for reasons that probably had a great deal to do with classic late adolescent testosterone poisoning, he decided to “out” them. He thought it was cool to put the squirm on the guy who was different. Maybe he felt threatened. There is a stage that young people go through when they think that being an artist is utterly cool. They don’t know yet that we sometimes wake up screaming in the middle of the night or work for hours in public places ignoring people or whimper when our pop tarts go cold because we have been just too busy doing our thing. I suspect it was a calculated move on his part to belittle me and shame his girl into complaisance. Kind of like the evil king in the Mahabharata stripping the clothes off Draupati so that he’d embarass her brothers.

I let the manager know that the kids can ask about my writing. I can’t always share it — I definitely do some stuff which is adult content, but they can ask. I am a bit secretive and I do have that “look of Baudelaire” to protect me when I need real privacy. But they may ask. I don’t have a problem with that. There’s only one dread remaining, something I am not sure I know how to handle yet. I can handle puppy love. I can hold any woman at arm’s length without, usually, hurting her feelings. But what am I to do if they start bringing me their poetry for me to read and critique? There’s a scary thought.