A coffee house is a dangerous place, at least for a writer. The two women at the table next to me are talking about their husbands. Both of their men are apparently evil, and that fact is not changed by the occasional “But he cuts the grass.” One of the brutes is addicted to sports and has no interest in romantic comedies, the current fashionable length of men’s shorts, or stars dancing.  The other woman’s orc likes movies but only the action ones where cars explode, guns blaze, women wear torn shirts and jeans, and men say things like, “Here’s a present for you” and then toss a hand grenade. This Neanderthal only wants to take her to movies that have a number in the title like “Death Wish 6,” and will not trade time with her for An Affair to Remember.  The wives’ conversation epitomizes one of the dangerous truths of a coffee house: Life is a struggle between the brutes and the civilized.

Two men sitting at separate tables have the first requirement for entrance to a coffee house in Madison, a laptop, but both screens have only spreadsheets on them.  These men are not brutes; they are zombies, and their occasional pecking at the keyboard shows a shallow fascination with numbers amounting to nothing.  For a moment I thought of the possibility of describing them as T-shirted moguls moving millions of dollars with the flick of a finger and creating or gutting corporations based on the digital cell on an Excel file.  No, I can’t go there. They are boring serfs.

A young man with long blond hair and a bad beard just walked in wearing a black T-shirt that says “KNERD.” His thick, dark-framed glasses confirm his T-shirt. He orders two breakfast sandwiches, obviously not caring about his dietal health, and shares one with a young woman who joins him, her thick-rimmed glasses tagging her as another knerd. They may simply believe that the world will not last long enough for their dietary choices to matter. They are plotting a conspiracy, perhaps something that started years ago by downloading pirated music, but now has expanded to hacking NSA files and creating avatars to protect their own privacy while they expose national secrets, even though there are no national secrets anymore. Their current conspiracy is the result of a chance meeting with a fellow knerd, a biologist, who realized and now can prove that the demise of the honey bee population is not due to mites or weed killers as popularly thought, but rather is the result of recruitment of millions of bees by the CIA. These real killer bees are now equipped with tiny surveillance cameras and mini hypodermics.  They are training in a secret location near Death Valley where escape for them is impossible until their “orientation” is complete. The bees work in trios, two camera bees (stereo vision for depth perception back in Death Valley) that fly in formation with one hypodermic bee. Code: Ciel Team 3.

A young man with Knerd genes somewhere in his background is at a table about ten feet away.  He sits alone, but he is not alone.  On his table are an energy drink, a laptop, an iphone, a mini-tablet, and a portable hard drive. The mini-tablet has a Google view of Fort Knox on it.  He is obviously playing some kind of web-based game. Boring.

Oh no, the two women married to brutes just left, their smiles belying the fact that they are going back to lives of quiet desperation and the never-ending battle to raise the consciousness of the world’s lower life forms. Their smiles are enigmatic, as if just talking about their husbands’ shortcomings has made them feel better. I don’t understand. Now they are laughing. Their efforts are heroic.

In the corner is a bearded, middle-aged man whose eyes have the haunted look of a fugitive.  He is typing furiously, either because his UW dissertation is due tomorrow or because he is writing the Great American Novel.  I’m going to go with the Great American Novel. It is the story of (spoiler alert) Lee, a young man born into abject poverty in Tupelo, a lost child his father nicknamed “Hound” before leaving his mother. Hound left Tupelo and failed in several business ventures involving bees – no, involving suede shoes – until he was drafted into the army. Upon his discharge he became an American icon in the entertainment business, really the only business the United States now has, and then, well, his life ends tragically. Yes, it will be the Great American Novel.  His story is our story, minus the private aircraft, sexual encounters, and drugs. I wish this fellow writer well. If nothing else, he types with amazing speed and dexterity.

Sitting near the window is another middle-aged man who has managed to sneak into the coffee house without a laptop. He has an old-fashioned book before him and a legal pad. He writes with a 1960’s Bic pen. His eyes hold the far-away look of a visionary, but one who has seen it all, and it is all bad.  No, he has seen it all, and he knows that it all passes, and the passing is good. He is writing a memoir, a single copy that cannot be emailed or e-booked, and he wants it in a form that reflects his character. His pad will become a manuscript, his handwriting a reflection of his personality and story.  How unique. It is the story of an observer, one who has lived through and studied four ages, the Age of Mass Production, the Age of Mass Media, the Age of Acceleration, and the Age of Everything Apple. He writes on a pad so that his identity/manuscript/ideas may not be stolen. He divides his pages into three piles, one kept in a bank safety deposit box, one kept under his mattress, and one kept in a backpack that goes with him everywhere. Every third page is kept in each safe place. What he sees is … oh no, he is looking at me, and he realizes I am a writer.  This is terrible.  I cannot bear such scrutiny. The observer cannot be observed or he is no longer the observer.   How can I make things up if…. I’m meltinggggggggggggg…….

A coffee house is a dangerous place.