Song and Dance

700 hours:

I walked downtown to Starbucks. I looked like a bag of ass, having just rolled out of bed. My eyes were half open with crusty morning goobers rolling like boulders from the moist corners. Not completely awake, confusion set in as I stood at the ordering counter. The woman behind the register was absolutely high on mocha. She seemed comfortable with her surroundings; the out of focus type all over the walls, the pink and avocado striped pillows resting on the “brew” colored sofa chairs, the cylindrical alter shaped shelves filled with jazz CD‘s, basket sized coffee mugs, and stainless steal thermoses shaped like ancient fertility gods. Am I dreaming?

A chalk board hanging from the menu board announced the special of the day: cinnamon bun latte. A hieroglyph of a cup with steam swirling and curling out of it convinced me that indeed, the special would be good for me. As if I needed further convincing, the words accompanying the picture, written in a cheerfully famine flowing script font, with tiny bubbles for serifs, read: “Pamper yourself“. My mind wandered to a field where the soil was warm pink clouds and stalks of cinnamon grew tall and danced and sang African folk tunes. There was a crop circle in the cinnamon field and in that, a Victorian style iron bathtub filled with bubbles. Candles sticks fluttered above the tub with fairy wings and soft flame for hair. I stripped naked, my cream skin exfoliated by the sugary warm breeze, and dipped my big toe into the bath then my whole leg, finally submerging my whole body in the hot latte bubble bath. I drank in the steamed milk then spit it out in a thin stream. Time stopped then, and I was a fountain, a cherubim statue made of white chocolate, melting slowly from the bottom up--evaporating into a java nirvana. The sky above me parted and the face of a goddess appeared. She was a giant soap bubble shimmering in all the colors of the rainbow. She spoke:

“What can I get for you, sir?”

I felt myself rocking and a soft whisper--the African folk tune--leaking out of my crusted lips.

“Sir? Sir!”

“Uh, oh, um, hmmm…I want to pamper myself this morning.” I said.

“You bet sir!”

I hadn’t noticed before but the back wall was actually a curtain and was parting slowly revealing an assembly line of industrial age gears and rotors and steam whistles. Working the line was a crew of munchkin women dressed as show girls in leotards of bright primary colors. Red, Yellow, Blue. The neon light reflected off the sequins sewed all over their outfits. They sang and danced and seemed to perform for only me and that made me happy and I clapped and danced and slobbered and the whole café danced with me.