Et Tu, Bariste?

Nov 10

It wasn’t oat milk. I pulled off the lid and stared deep into the frothy pit of no return. There it was, a half drank double shot vanilla latte I ordered that would betray my senses and put my body in a state of peril. It was like my esophagus was a bouncer and he just let in the drunkest person they knew to fuck my shit up in club Digestif System. But there I was, sitting in my car in bumper to bumper traffic on the 405, with the nearest exit under construction. Et tu, bariste? Si, It was cows milk.

I know I raised my voice at the barista when she ran out of bramble berry scones. Everyone knows I need my bramble berry scone! HOW COULD SHE NOT KNOW I NEED MY BRAMBLE BERRY SCONE! She wouldn’t give me my free coffee either. The Blue Bottle stamp card couldn’t have been expired, but the date simply misprinted with the previous month. And that purple hair hippie of a manager wasn’t any help either. He was probably hiding the scones in the back for himself and his little Burning Man cult. I guess he was right though because they weren’t in the back. I checked for myself.

Maybe it wasn’t their fault. These lackluster young adults trying to make a living in Los Angeles while pursuing the impossible dream of becoming the next Scorsese or Witherspoon. A quirky barista with a dream of being in the next Legally Blonde or Sweet Home Alabama. I wasn’t going to tip, but maybe some advice would have sufficed instead of telling her to quit Hollywood while the housing market in Arkansas was low and she could afford to be useless over there instead.

I put on the Christian worship channel on Sirius XM, vowing I would convert if god saved me, this one time, from the destruction that would soon take place if the freeway didn’t open up. I tried Muhammed and Moses too, but they don’t seem to have radio stations.

It was like God saw what happened at that Blue Bottle in Santa Monica. The one time he payed attention to my life and saw the back end of a bad morning. Me waking up late, losing my keys, forgetting to grab a banana, almost hitting Mrs.Rosenbaum as she crossed the street for her morning stroll, getting a call from my boss that I was getting demoted to junior salesman, my dog peeing on my sheets, and I really didn’t want to get dinner with Steven tonight. He tuned in to the worst program and rated it a solid zero. It was hopeless.

This is it. This is how it goes down. My life long bond with the organs inside was about to conclude. I guess this is the epitome of karma. This is where my life looks itself in the face and goes “welcome to reality.” Maybe if I didn’t walk into the back and throw boxes in search of that scone, call the manager a “Grimace haired mother fucker,” and just payed the whole ten dollars; I would be sipping the sweet nectar of alternative milk.

But my fate sank in with me. The froth from my coffee turned into a froth in my stomach. The bowels that trained with extensive clenching techniques seemed to have choked in the ninth inning. It was hopeless as I saw the life of my Top Man jeans flash before my eyes. No plea, cry, or prayer could save me now.