Coffee Shop Girls

August 17, 2004

I mentioned the name of a girl to L.B., and it wasn't a name she recognized, so she asked, "Where'd you meet this one? The Internet? Or is she one of your coffee shop girls ?" Somewhere between the stories I tell on this site and the ones in my book, I seem to have developed a reputation.

I was embarrassed and simply said, "I haven't been drinking coffee." It was true when I said it. But I started drinking it again. There's no way around it. Several months ago, when I handed the first draft of my book to my writer-friend, Joe, he read it and said, "It's a good first draft, now go and rewrite the whole thing." I'd just spent a year getting through what I'd written, and it wasn't what I wanted to hear. But as time goes on, it turns out that it's exactly what I'm doing. I'm on a roll at the moment—writing, cutting, and polishing my nights away. I write until 5 a.m., only to wake up again at 9. I have to get up that early because, during the day, I have—what else?—a day job. That's where the coffee comes in. I don't need it at night; I can write all night long on pure adrenaline, but when it comes to being productive at the day job, I'm useless without it. But coffee isn't such an evil thing, is it? It's not like I'm popping bennies or anything. Although drinking coffee means buying coffee, and buying coffee means meeting coffee-shop-girls, and--if L.B. is to be believed--an addiction to coffee-shop-girls is a more dangerous health risk than the coffee itself. Could be.