current mood: pensive
current music: Jack Johnson – Upside Down
The sun beats down on my black IBM ThinkPad as I sit on the wooden bench, waiting.
I hadn’t expected the coffeeshop to be closed. That changes things a bit.
Start Firefox. Check Google maps. Check watch. T-minus two minutes. There’s a Starbucks two miles away. Perfect. I’ll wait for her to show up.
Check watch again. T-plus seven minutes. This is the right day, isn’t it? Geeze, that’d be just like me, showing up on the wrong day. Nope, it’s the right day. Wrong time? On tour you change your watch’s time a lot, crossing into different timezones. No, time.gov says it’s 18:38. Well, then.
Probably should have gotten her phone number at some point. I have a cell phone, I guess I’ll use it. First call to a friend unanswered. Try another. No answer. Finally Julia picks up. No problem, she says. I’ll text you her number. She does, and I call.
Whoops. Forgot to specify Bongo Java east. She’s at the Belmont location, which is apparently still open. Good job, Sparks.
Drive over there. I’m now half an hour late. Get my drink, go outside. I was planning to pass off the whole situation as being “fashionably late”, but any pretext of class is now gone. She already has her drink, a cold coffee drink whimsically named “Mochahantas”. I was forewarned in the gravest tones not to order such a drink. I just have coffee – black. She apologizes for the mix-up, as if it is somehow her fault. A brief moment of awkward silence. I ask how her day was, attempt to make small talk. She says good. We talk about her job, how she doesn’t like not being able to be creative designing print ads. We talk about how we both came to Nashville, how we both sort of just came here randomly. How we both ended up at the People’s Church when we first came here – and we both didn’t like it – how we ended up at Mosaic. I am acutely aware of my propensity for saying ridiculous things, and I consciously try not to. Her purse is made from old t-shirts sewn together. That’s cool. I think to myself that I should do more creative things like that.
Mostly the awkward silences are few. I actually relax a bit – difficult, because of the caffeine coursing through my bloodstream. I talk a bit about my church background, some of the reasons why I left POG. She agrees with me that buying your sermons online isn’t cool. She mentions that today is Matt’s birthday, and everybody is meeting over at Q’Doba later for burritos. We walk back to our respective cars, and head over.
There’s seven or eight other people there. We grab burritos, chat with other people around the table. The time advances, the restaurant closes. We’re all still sitting outside, chatting around a table. It comes time to leave. I try to catch her off to the side, say “Hey, I had a great time…we should do it again sometime.” but it’s impossible with everybody hanging around. Eventually, I manage to sort of half-shout across the parking lot “Hey! Thanks for joining me…we should do it again sometime!” and she sort of half-shouts “Yeah!” while getting into her car.
“Okay then.” I think. “Now what?”
Exit, stage left.
Sparks