When I was about 23 I was working at Starbucks #954,276,391--- paying my way through school, toiling in the death grip of frappuccinos but revealing in the glory that is brought only by having a Banana Slug as your University mascot. Really, you'll never know. If you have to ask, you wouldn't understand.
And there was this girl, Emily, who worked there. Emily was Really Cool. Emily was Really Cool in the way that only people who Came From Seattle are cool when it's still 1998. She just was, you know? She was all effortlessly hip and totally listening to Modest Mouse when I was still stuck on Toad the Wet Sprocket. For fuckssake.
It goes without saying that Cool Emily from Seattle had an ever cooler (I KNOW) boyfriend, who everyone wanted to go steady with, but couldn't, you know, because she already was. And we all kind of wanted to go steady with her, too but couldn't (see above). So I settled for being her Starbucks BFF. Which is something.
And one day we were in the back, restocking plastic lids or incurring herniated lumbar vertebrae in the milk fridge, and she was sitting on a plastic crate wearing this head thing that was one part head band one part banana (head-dana?) and I was TOTALLY wishing I had the kind of short spikey quirky cute hair that one could just "put back" with a head-dana or leotard or some panty hose or what the F ever but instead know from painful experience that any attempts at hair shorter than my shoulders results in irrevocable mullet status and no, I'm not talking about the fashion mullet. I'm talking Leonard Skinnard and Kenny G. I want to die just thinking of it.
And I was trying, emphatically, seriously (had I known, I would have used the Power of Powerful Power Point Presentations: Powerful Stuff!!) to tell her how I really felt that I was kind of a little bit black. On the inside. Since clearly I'm not, you know, black on the outside. Because I was REALLY FEELING IT. I was really feeling Cisco back then, you know, so I figured it must have meant something. Like maybe I want to change my name to Shaniqua. Because it's THAT REAL inside.
And she just sat there, calmly stirring her pot of Mocha Mix, staring into the deep morass that is desiccated chocolate, contemplating if, after what I just said, she could still speak to me and avoid years of therapy afterward.
"That is a common affliction that many people, I'm afraid, suffer from. Not only you".
And I'm thinking about this statement now, ten years later, as I sit at my table watching the sun set behind the wall of red brick in front of me, stuck in this interior life, paging through the glossy lives of the Patagonia catalogue, dying on the inside.
Much like Cisco and Lil Troy, this is something I've really been feeling a lot lately. That there is a wide open and Extreme (extreme!! exclamation points!!) life out there and I'm definitely not living it. I am, for the record and in case there was any confusion about this matter, not scaling a vertical sandstone wall in Patagonia Stretch Cotton, pulling my canoe up after me, as I ascend to a crevice about the size of my cat, where I will sleep for the night. At least, as we speak. Nor am I running through a field of wildflowers, along the cliffs or in the Mojave Dessert. I am also not paddling out at to Teahupoo, which should surprise no one since this past Christmas I paddled out to Halewia Beach Park in barreling 3-5' sets and realized that, quite possibly, maybe I die now. However, every time Andy and I talk about our fantasy surf trip to Indonesia, in my mind, I'm totally shredding Rifles and NOT AT ALL DYING.
Because, in my mind, I'm all tough and athletic and I totally rock everything. Because, in my mind, I'm pretty unwilling to accept that I'm stuck in a city with no place to run to except a bridge and the most extreme part of my day is walking through the ghetto. Because in my mind I'm TOTALLY that chic climbing up a rock wall, dragging my canoe behind me. (I'm looking at you, Stella).
