People I'm Next To

I am next to this svelte gentleman ordering at a coffee shop. He is very thin and has accepted this fact. He is dressed in fitted clothes that accentuate his overabundance of underabundance. His shirt is a white button-down, with the sleeves rolled crisply to mid-forearm. It is tucked into pants that are... problematic, more on this later. He has tan loafers on, and he has eschewed socks. He has a lanky confidence to his stance; leaning over the counter splaying his angles with a social comfort that I envy.  Moreover, he seems nice, chatting nonchalantly as he orders his coffee. No soy milk? Oh, no problem, I’ll just take it black, thanks for checking though. So, pants.  They are nice pants.  They are well fitted and cuffed to about mid-ankle. They complete his look, and despite this next sentence that look is a timeless cool dude sort of look. The pants are bright orange. Very bright, like poisonous toad bright. Like a freshly made traffic cone, ready to avert...

I am next to this man. He is tall and slender. He has on a white t-shirt, and some bright blue jeans, obviously new. He is wearing a floppy brimmed hat, which looks kinda weird and wraps around shades that also look kinda weird. Both articles of clothing could be considered practical, but both are for keeping the sun out of the eyes. It seems an odd choice, but it could be his sense of style, and that's cool. What's not cool is this whole puppy situation. Head's up dudes, I am not really a dog person. I respect the little land sharks, but I am always half-convinced they are going to eat me. What follows is not about that. In fact, if you bear with some bluntness you will see that today I have found myself a hound sympathizer. I'm going to lay down a premise: dogs are kinda dumb. I don't mean that as a putdown, I just mean that they aren't equipped to informed choices that humans arguably have the capacity to make. So assuming my premise is accepted, a logic...

I’m next to this guy. He is a bigger guy with unruly bright red hair, and what I believe is referred to as a neckbeard, also unruly. He has a blue Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned over a bright blue t-shirt with the Linux penguin on it. He has cargo shorts, high grey socks, and some worn out but comfy looking sneakers on. He is pale. Not a cool, mysterious, and possibly a child of the night pale, but a pasty, works too much, and definitely child of the neon office light pale. This guy looks annoying. I don’t like to be general while being pejorative, I prefer a pointed barb. But a wide shot is what’s going on today. He has some undefinable aura that oozes from him that almost physically pushes me back. Pure annoyance. But I persevere, surely this (probably) human repulsion dynamo will give me something, and he does. This man-thing is a criminal! “Fucking five-o, keep pulling me over.” While blithely ignoring how silly it sounds when he says ‘five-o’, he relates to some buddies that he...

I am next to this lady. She has on kelly green sneakers, bright white glasses, and a maroon hat. She is maybe in her early or mid-40s, and she has excellent posture. If I am being straight with you, I don’t really know what excellent posture looks like, but I do know how to eavesdrop. In this case my creepy listening skills have informed me that she has been a yoga instructor for around a decade, so I assume that the posture she is posturing is, in fact, good posture. It also informs me that there is trouble in yoga land. She is chatting with a former student, who mentions not seeing her class on some listing or other, and is curious about, “What’s up with that?” Our instructor relates that she had been working for this company for a while, and was informed that they were moving away from her brand of yoga. So, she won't be teaching there anymore. She is pretty chill about the whole affair, “Oh I’m doing fine, I found another place to teach, and all.” And that’s it. The two...

I'm next to this gentleman. He has a suit on, it's well fitted, showcasing a stocky, but not overweight form. His jacket is a grey herringbone, and his pants are charcoal that matches some of the detailing on the jacket. He has on a lavender shirt, and a pink and purple tie. The tie is undone. His hair has long since abandoned him, but he carries the baldness well. I'd place him anywhere between the late 50s and late 60s. Aside from being particularly fashionable, he would not have stood out to me, if it weren't for the rain. It's raining. It's one of those consistent sorts of downpours. I feel like it's pacing itself. This isn't a drizzle that might blow over, or a storm that will wear itself out in a burst, but a solid few hours’ worths of rain. This rain is here and isn't concerned with being anywhere else in a hurry. Our gentleman is loading things into his car from a store with the aid of a few underlings in raincoats. His helpers scurry ba...

I'm next to this guy. He is wearing a heathered maroon button down, and grey jeans. He has on these oxford shoes that have seen better days, and bright blue socks that peek out when he crosses his legs. He is sitting at a table in this coffee shop with an unwieldy looking laptop in front of him. While I have, on several occasions, tried to covertly glance at his screen, I can't quite figure out what he is doing. Aside from endangering us all. In some strange quirk of architecture the plug nearest Grey Jeans Guy is located some six feet up the wall. Rather than run his laptop plug directly up the wall, Grey Jeans Guy has, in some misguided attempt at politeness, plugged a power strip with a 3 foot cord into the plug, and then plugged in his own laptop. This results in a pendulum of electric danger lightly swaying above a strangely flammable business. I am hypnotized, not only by the back and forth motion of the strip, but also the tiny blue sparks that occasionally surge into ...

I'm next to this absolutely amazing guy. Our time near each other is short, too short. He is a little overweight and is wearing an baggy T-shirt with what I think is a Insane Clown Posse logo on it. His shirt is complimented, as ICP shirts often are, by gross and skimpy mustache. Based on his musical taste, and his facial hair I would put him around 16 or 17. He is enjoying a warm afternoon on his BMX bike, out for a ride with a 4 foot snake wrapped around his neck. In case I buried the lead too much here, let me rephrase: I JUST SAW A CHUBBY DUDE WITH A SHITTY MUSTACHE RIDE A BMX BIKE BY ME WITH A FUCKING SNAKE WRAPPED AROUND HIS NECK! I have little interest in herpetology so I can't identify the type of snake, except to say it was big, green, and currently not strangling this magical man child. Although I can only assume that it could have done so easily, especially wrapped so luxuriously around his ample throat meat. Mind you I'm not questioning this transcendent jug...