The cafe with five faces, p.18
The Café with Five Faces, page 18
It was with this self-same attitude that he consulted the menu and he looked equally lost trying to avoid the wine page. Almost as though he’d stuck a metaphorical pin in whichever section he opened, he asked for a hosszú kávé tejjel, although without the fully correct Hungarian grammar. Jen, with markedly more enthusiasm, told me to make that two. As I left Budapest, I heard Jen asking, “You do know what you’ve ordered, don’t you?”
As Jimez was talking about the bottomless waters of his love life in my Budapest room, this seemed like an apt moment to share a photograph of a sunset over the turbulent Atlantic in Cape Town. It works in my mind, anyway.
2018: 33: Beirut: The Grass is Always Greener Somewhere
Jo stood at the bar in Cape Town, en route to her regular Beirut haunt, staring at the menu for a good few minutes. At one point, she was staring so intently through the menu, I wondered if she had fallen asleep standing up. Eventually, she shook herself awake.
“Look, I really have no idea what it is and it sounds pretty disgusting, but the majority opinion says you only live once, so I’ll try some kombucha.”
Kombucha has several debated side effects, with positive ones including the cleansing of the system; nothing in my research to date had suggested it would turn customers into temporary statues while they contemplated drinking what is essentially fermented tea. This sounds simple enough, although it isn’t, so its place on my menu was a provisional one using a bought-in product while I considered the attributes of making an in-house version. As I market my café, or at least the drinks menu in Cape Town, in the Third Wave of coffee, I thought I might as well experiment in the (self-termed) third wave of other drinks.
“Good choice,” I commented, although I wasn’t fully sold on the idea yet, having only previously sampled rather vinegary home-made efforts at a time when I was made to feel like a guinea pig. “I’ll bring it through for you.”
Unusually, Micky arrived after Jo and ordered his most frequent beverage of Yunnan Green tea.
“Not tempted by an ibrik?” I asked jokingly.
“I’m still removing grains from the last time,” said Micky, heading off to the comfort of the Arabic cushions, while I was left to wonder how many weeks it had been since he had brushed his teeth.
I had just put the two drinks on a tray when Misha made an entrance by stumbling over the doorstep, having ‘forgotten’ to remove his shades. Covering his embarrassment by looking at what I was carrying, his attention was drawn to the glass. “What’s that?” he asked, briefly removing the dark glasses.
“Kombucha.”
“I’ve heard of that,” he replied. “Interesting, interesting. Go on then.” I was left to assume that was an order, although it marked a drastic change from his customary bottle of red, so I put another glass on the tray and then followed him into what was now an unusually cramped Beirut room, just in time to find Misha apologising for tripping over Jo’s discarded shoes in the doorway.
“There are two rules in this room,” Jo pointed out, although I, as the manager, was only aware of one. “No shoes and no dark glasses, so please take them off.” You don’t usually argue with Jo, and Misha, lacking Dutch courage, certainly wasn’t brave enough to try.
Once the three were settled on the Arabic cushions with all shoes and shades removed and with drinks in hand, I awaited judgement on the kombucha. Jo was certainly the more positive; either that or the best at hiding her true feelings. Misha looked as though he had sucked too hard on a lemon and reached for his shades – covering his eyes was an automatic reaction, although how this would disguise the rest of his face, only he seemed to appreciate.
“I’ll persevere, don’t worry,” he finally managed to utter.
“Ah,” said Micky knowingly. “Another victim of a Chaelli experiment; you should have tried the coffee he made me a while ago.” He wasn’t going to let me forget, which I regarded as something of a pity as I particularly like a good ibrik and I considered mine to fit the bill. “Anyway,” he continued, a little more tentatively, “are you still cheating on whichever poor nameless sod you referred to last time?” Micky seemed emboldened by the moral high ground he had been taking with Misha of late.
“At it again, eh?” Jo’s interjection was minimal but laced with disapproval.
“I just can’t buy into monogamy,” admitted Misha, almost as if pleading for help. “One day, I like this person more, the next day another…” He tailed off, actually looking unusually embarrassed.
“Yeah, the grass is always greener somewhere else, isn’t it?” Sympathy was lacking.
“I have a confidence issue,” Misha continued, without registering the thinly veiled criticism. “Every time I see a girl I like, I just assume she will be interested in going out with me and that, in turn, intrigues me and interests me in her.”
“I have a confidence issue as well,” said Micky. “Every time I see a girl I like, I just assume she won’t; she’ll have no interest in me whatsoever and that, in turn, makes me walk as quickly as possible in the opposite direction.”
“And become an online sex pest,” finished Jo, whose hand shot immediately to her mouth. I seriously thought she hadn’t intended to say that out loud. Micky’s facial reaction was very easily readable as ‘Did she really just say that?’, although any other response was delayed while he tried, in his head, to determine the degree of truth in the accusation.
“I’m actually looking at it from both sides, not just my own,” Misha said in an attempt to defend himself at the same time as diverting attention from the speechless Micky, although I have no doubt the former reason was of primary concern. “I mean, if someone can’t give you what you want as part of a monogamous relationship, is it OK to find the missing stuff with someone else, or should you just take the not so good with the good and be partially unsatisfied?”
“For better, for worse,” recited Jo, whose own stories of long-term monogamous relationships were reputedly sufficiently wordy to fill the back of a postage stamp. She gave the matter some further thought whilst savouring another sip of kombucha. “The fact is that one man is just about impossible to live with, not that I would really know, obviously, and I presume the same is also true of a woman. However, this doesn’t mean you can share yourself around willy-nilly and just take the best from each of your ‘acquaintances’ and leave someone else to pick up the pieces. Don’t you really think your girlfriends, for want of a better word, deserve better?”
“I had this friend once,” Misha countered, without bothering to answer a pretty direct question. Jo and I exchanged looks with a shared understanding that the identity of said friend wasn’t that much of a secret. “He married a Japanese girl,” he continued, as Jo and I exchanged further looks which admitted we had been wrong, “had a kid and was then limited to special-occasion sex, which left him rather frustrated and ultimately he felt forced to look elsewhere.”
Jo seemed about to protest at the final clause, but Micky was more focused on preceding ones.
“Special occasion is better than never,” he said, with feeling. “Online sex pest?” He had obviously been dwelling on this phrase. “That sounds really, like, weird, as though I’m grooming under-age girls online.” I think he had been consulting Google for the meaning.
“I didn’t mean that!” Jo was quick to deny the counter charge and I could tell this was genuine. “I only meant you conduct your, erm, love life entirely online and perhaps make a nuisance of yourself by discussing what would happen if you ever met when you never actually do.”
“It is a bit sad, isn’t it?” Misha, for once, seemed glad to shift the focus of the discussion away from himself. “Face-to-face, hands-on relationships are much better.”
“Your hands are better off, frankly,” Jo muttered, perfectly audibly and shifting the focus straight back onto the romantic miscreant.
“I can’t help being naturally tactile!” Misha defended himself. “It’s nice and affectionate, or at least that’s what it’s intended to be.”
“So long as it’s wanted by both parties,” Jo countered. “The problems arise when it isn’t, but I will grant you it isn’t always easy to tell when this is the case.”
“Another problem I’ve been having,” Misha continued as if in a confessional, “is that some kind of negative reputation precedes me – I have no idea why.” Jo seemed about to enlighten him but rather than allow this potential embarrassment to develop, the holder of the dodgy reputation decided to expand upon the issue himself. “Some female acquaintances get warned off me by, usually, their male friends, and this is long before anything has happened. Maybe it’s out of jealousy,” he finished with some high level of conceit.
Jo was briefly speechless but, as is her custom, this didn’t last long. She looked at them both as if trying to choose her words carefully, not that tact could ever be considered a strong point. “I’m just trying to imagine blending you two into one.” She considered this at some length, while Micky and Misha weighed each other up, wondering what the result of such a hypothetical scientific experiment might be. “If we mixed your good halves, it might have really positive results. If, on the other hand, the bad halves blended, ‘lock up your daughters’ would only be the first of many public warnings.”
“Well, thanks for that analysis,” said Misha, after a minute’s silence, which he probably felt was required after such a character assassination.
“I think I’ll stay online; it’s safer.” Not for the first time did Micky attempt to bring an end to a conversation he didn’t like by pressing the green WhatsApp symbol on his smartphone and snuggling down on the cushions.
“It was only a joke!” Jo protested, although this seemed to be one of those occasions when heavy-handed attempts at humour had gone a little too far. I returned to Cape Town wondering if it was indeed humour or just humour being used as a cover for genuine criticism. Sometimes, it is rather hard to discern.
So, the grass is always greener somewhere, is it? Maybe surveying the wide-open spaces and snow-topped mountains of central Lebanon en route to The Cedars, dare I suggest?
2018: 34: Hebden Bridge: The Book Behind the Cover
Not many of my customers are bar-butterflies, so it was something of a surprise to find Jimez relocating from Budapest to Hebden Bridge, and slightly more mortifying to find him sharing a leather settee with John-Jeffrey. This did not bode well in the cheerfulness stakes as one sofa-occupant, having overcome some well-documented personal issues, was able to produce valid sperm but unable to develop product of the offspring kind, while the other was able to produce ideas but unable to develop product of the artistic kind. To make matters even more concerning, the milking stool I had bought from one of the many local charity shops earlier that day had been pulled up to face them both and on it was seated Anna, an overly sincere middle-aged lady who nodded sagely and called herself a good listener but rarely delivered oral product of the useful kind. These were not the ingredients best suited to a happy, productive evening.
Jimez ordered a Tempranillo, increasingly his drink of choice, especially following his latest Jen-motivated experiment with a hosszú kávé tejjel, which hadn’t gone down at all well, while Anna deliberated long and hard before requesting a Chinese Pu-erh tea (I still love the name and smile whimsically whenever anybody orders one).
“A double-shot cappuccino, please,” said John-Jeffrey, who had politely waited his turn and kept his impatient sighs appropriately muted, even though he had not been well-mannered enough to offer to sit in Anna’s place on the milking stool.
“You’ll be glad to know all this establishment’s cappuccinos are made with a double shot of espresso unless specifically requested, sir.” John-Jeffrey started a little at my unexpected formality, which I immediately dispelled with a playful wink.
When I returned, bearing my trayful of liquid delights, the room was, shall we say, sombre, not for any particular reason I initially believed, other than the fact no one was talking and there was an excessive interest in hands folded in laps. I wasn’t even sure how well the three of them knew each other; I presumed, as they were sitting together, they had, at least, met before. I put on some mine-host cheeriness to ‘get the party started’ and soon wished I hadn’t, as the silence was rather more upbeat than what followed.
It soon became clear that John-Jeffrey and Anna probably knew each other quite well, as they were very open with each other. The usually reticent Jimez sat there with his basset-hound face displaying some confusion as to how it and its owner had landed in the wrong room – my café wasn’t the easiest of places to lose your way in, after all.
It appeared the silence I had interrupted had not been long-lasting but was instead a slightly awkward silence following John-Jeffrey’s latest update on his rejuvenated sexual prowess brought about by a combination of alcohol-abstention and Viagra. I, of course, could have told them this, although it was certainly not my place to do so.
Once she had recovered from the shock of the revelation, Anna decided she ought to share something personal as well. It began to feel like an AA meeting with a difference.
“Drugs can be both a wonderful thing and something destructive,” she observed, presumably referring back to John-Jeffrey’s Viagra saviour. “I’ve, erm, had to take pills since I was twenty-five. Sometimes I wonder if ‘had to’ or ‘have to’ is the correct choice of verb. How much is necessary and how much is habit?”
“What was, or is, the problem?” John-Jeffrey was used to discussing personal issues and had no awkwardness in asking such questions.
“Stress-related,” replied Anna, looking at the rug under her feet with the interest of a professional weaver. “Maybe I had a nervous breakdown, I don’t know for sure. My doctor didn’t seem keen on using that term.”
“How did it affect you?”
“I can’t really remember how it started,” Anna continued, without raising her eyes at all. “I was doing a job which I found very boring at the time, which may have been a factor. And my mother had a long history of stress-related problems, some of which had been really bad. Anyway, it seemed quite sudden, but one day, I just found I couldn’t face doing anything and was put on these tablets.”
“And did they work?”
“Within a month, I felt completely back to normal.” There was a pause while Anna traced the pattern on the rug with her left foot. “And then I took the unilateral decision to stop taking the tablets. The following day was like falling into a very deep black hole.”
“Stopping suddenly can be bad, I know,” said John-Jeffrey sympathetically. Jimez was nursing his wine without really drinking it; he still seemed to be wondering why he was there and, perhaps, how not to be.
“So, I was back on them in a flash and stayed on them for a very long time. In fact, I’ve never really been fully off them. I went on to Xanax for a while, not knowing until later they were called ‘happy pills’, although actually, they did have a really positive short-term effect. They were quite addictive – I had a lot of trouble getting off those. And then three years ago, triggered by an event which led to depression, another doctor told me I had a chemical imbalance in my brain, which was causing excessive mood swings, so I’ve been taking another set of tablets ever since to help redress it. It’s never-ending once you start.”
“Did you ever go for therapy?” This was the sort of question I would find difficult to ask the closest of friends, but John-Jeffrey apparently had no such qualms.
“Relaxation therapy at the hospital in my twenties and then, rather bizarrely, on the phone three years ago.”
“Any success?”
“The phone one, not at all, hardly surprisingly, but the one-to-one in person helped a bit.”
“How do you feel,” began John-Jeffrey, a little tentatively, although now it did start to sound like group therapy, “about the sessions in retrospect and having to take the drugs over so many years?”
Anna considered this question carefully, whilst tracing a different pattern on the rug with her right foot. “Weird. It’s like I feel completely normal, as normal as I imagine anyone can do most of the time, but basically, I’ve been kept under control by prescribed drugs for almost half my life. And it’s only recently that I feel I’ve been able to tell people even a little bit about it; I’ve kept it secret for a long time.”
“Why is that?” John-Jeffrey was quite used to talking about any issues he had, so I presumed this was a genuine question rather than a potentially intrusive one.
“Having a nervous breakdown at twenty-five? Having stress-related problems for twenty years? Suffering from anxiety, panic and depression?” Anna’s rising intonation implied these were all questions deserving of answers, not merely statements of fact. “Even now, too many people would label you a nutjob if you admitted to all, or even some of that. But at least these days there is more acknowledgement and acceptance of what are increasingly known as issues with mental health, frightening though that term may be. Unfortunately, this isn’t as widespread as it should be.” I poured Anna some Pu-erh and handed it to her, for which she seemed quite grateful, sipping at it a little before putting it on the table. “People see you differently when you tell them such things. Some regard you suspiciously, as if you’re not to be trusted. It’s quite hurtful.” Anna took out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes before finally making visual contact with John-Jeffrey to gauge how her story had gone down.
