overhearing idle conversation can cure even the most hopeless of feelings
overheard at the Bourgeois Pig
On Friday I hustled out the door into the brisk early November air and down Lincoln to the Bourgeois Pig in the early hours of the morning, — this was on the first day of November and I wrote a shitty poem to commemorate the moment and to commemorate my being out of coffee in my apartment, a poem which I will not be sharing here, thank you very much.
I posted up by the window with my XL cup of black coffee, a copy of Bachelard, a pen, all that. Gradual idle chatter drifted in. Two very indie looking guys sat at the table next to me and began to catch up and I was too wired on caffeine to continue reading so I just looked at the pages.
There’s something about overhearing other people talk.
You know how it goes. You sit in a public space alone and you can hear the chatter all around you, beautiful human humdrum, but then the conversations separate out and your hearing locks onto one conversation. There’s something about it. Something about hearing platonic love, handfuls of understanding handed back and forth by people you don’t know.
Anyways, here’s the conversation I overheard:
The guy with a small mustache, wearing a trucker’s hat, said, “the woman in front of me, she had her seat all the way back, - which was like whatever. Like it was as far back as it could go or… But the space was so small on the airplane that the tray table also went back like into my chest and I kept putting my coke zero on it and kept grabbing it back in this never ending loop.”
“No cup holders?” Asked the other, in aviator glasses with a mullet.
“Well I found one…”
Across the room the barista announced a name I didn’t quite hear, from the espresso machine. The guy in the trucker hat popped up from his seat and returned with a cup of matcha.
“There’s lids over there. Are you a lid guy?” The other said.
“I don’t know… gonna venture out today,” the first said with a small smile.
“How’s Vanessa?”
“Great. Um.”
“What’s her major again?”
“Um. She’s a double major, communications, journalism, with a minor in dance and multimedia art.”
“Wow.”
“It’s cool but I had like, a very visceral reaction to dance,” he said, laughing. “But it is so much cooler than communications so there’s that.”
“This might be a stupid question, but… with communications… what do you do? What do you like, learn?”
“It’s mainly like… I have no idea. Well she also… see, we have to be mindful that everyone else in the normal world goes to normal people school so she’s taking like latin american studies…“
“Oo.”
“…but because she has to. Not that it doesn’t have anything to do with journalism or whatever. But we don’t have to do that. We don’t have to take whatever classes so my point is that she doesn’t do anything, like, hardcore communications. It’s a mix of stuff. And like yeah she’s taking some comms classes and I don’t know, - she’s doing it.”
“Yeah I kinda get that because I’m technically in art education and have to start doing the prereqs soon.”
“Really? I’m an art education minor.”
“Huh.”
“But minors don’t count like majors do. Like, we don’t matter. But it’s okay,” he said, swirling his coffee around counterclockwise. “I talked with my roommate last night and he was saying ‘I wish I went to a university and got like the college experience,’ but I was like, this is ten times better than the classic college experience. Yeah, like Vanessa gave me a tour of what her campus was like, and like yours, — I have to imagine you have like a couple buildings spread out amongst the city? —”
“Right downtown, yeah, a couple buildings are SAIC.”
“But it’s like built into the city.”
“It’s not like a proper campus, yeah.”
“—Right, yeah. Like, I think if I wasn’t doing music I would like that, but because I am doing music I think… Kind of… I don’t think I would appreciate that. Like everyone’s doing something else. Like I can walk around my campus and everyone’s doing something similar to me to a certain degree. But I get that… like having the variety…”
“And also as, like an urban campus, I can talk to like normal people who don’t go to school every day for art. Reminds me of reality.”
“Yeah. Well. Berklee’s pretty… pretty goshdarned downtown.”
“Yeah?”
“We only have like… not a ton of people… Like my main day-to-day I only go to like one, two, three, four, five buildings.”
“In one day?”
“Well no. Well sometimes. With my schedule. But there’s only like half a dozen buildings and they’re all within a mile of each other.”
“Pretty walkable?”
“Oh yeah. It’s pretty walkable in general. It’s really walkable. Very optimal for scooters. Did I send you-?”
The SAIC student laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “You did.”
“Okay good,” the Berklee student laughs.
“I laughed! It’s not funny, but it is kinda funny.”
“It wasn’t funny in the moment but it is now.”
“It was funny, but thank god you’re okay, like…”
“Yeah but no it’s very walkable but not in the same way that Belleville was walkable. In Belleville, I was downtown, like I lived in an area where I could walk to other walkable parts, but now I’m like so far away from Campus, where I’m living in Boston right now, like forty-five minutes by train which kind of sucks.”
“That does kinda suck. How’s your housing? Is it like a dorm? Or like?”
“It’s—I bought an apartment.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Or I rented one.”
“Moneybags.”
The Berklee student laughs. “No, no. Significantly cheaper than the dorms.”
“Oh really?”
“Signiiificantly.”
“That’s like how it is around here. Like I was at the dorms on campus when I toured way back in… but like no, I’m not paying that.”
“Right, yeah.”
“I think a full two semesters in the dorms, plus the food plan, is like... When you do the math it comes out to around seventeen hundred a month.”
“For like a studio apartment, basically.”
“Right, like I guess you’re paying for a studio apartment. And seventeen hundred for a studio in downtown Chicago seems… not unreasonable… but the fact that it’s two people living in one studio and you’re both paying the whole cost of the studio.”
“Like that’s not fair at all,” said the Berklee student.
The SAIC student laughed. “No, not at all.”
“Yeah, so…”, said the Berklee student, swirling his matcha around in its cup again.
“Oh,” said the SAIC student, suddenly remembering. “And Connor, when he graduates, he’s planning on moving down to Chicago.”
“Ohh hmm.”
“So we’re gonna collaborate on… on an apartment. Um. Yeah. I don’t know how that’s going to go.”
The Berklee student laughed. “Why?”
“Because, like, he’s supposed to be looking for jobs… and he’s not really doing that…”
“Hm. In Chicago?”
“Yeah.”
“Is he still… Yeah, of course he’s still in school right now… My internal clock for when he’s supposed to be done is all messed up because of Sarah.”
“Why? Is she done?”
“…well…”
The SAIC student sat back, laughed coyly. “I don’t know. What?”
“I haven’t talked to you… I guess we haven’t talked really since last year at the beginning of the summer when I got back from Spain.”
“Yeah.”
“…”
“Yep. What?”
“She’s… Hm…”
“What happened?”
“…up and down.”
“What?”
“She… hm… failed most of her classes in Japan.”
“What? Why?”
“I just,— like, whatever mental health stuff hit her and… I don’t know, it is what it is, and it’s been crisis after crisis and mmm mmm mmm mmm.”
“Right…”
“And so when she got back for the summer my mom was like, okay well first of all you’re grounded for the rest of the summer, and, — and that didn’t come to fruition of course, — she was like, you’re going to work for me and get a second job somewhere else, you’re going to go to SWIC and you’re going to take classes and stuff.”
“That’s fair.”
“So she worked for my mom, she worked at Buon Riposo and she took some,- She actually took the same class I took with Cromwell, um, music appreciation. It’s funny that she took the same class. Um… Anyways… Then she opted to take a year off but that was the summer and it was too late to make a decision. Oh and also, she had an offer at Jersey but she did so badly that they rescinded the offer. And so it was like… Okay, she has to go back and finish out a semester in Japan and like, that’s such a big… Um…”
“Thing…”
“Where she just was, yeah…”
“Wasn’t she in graphic design?”
“No, she was in, um, ancient history.”
“Oh. Huh.”
“That’s what I said! And so did my parents. And it made my music major look a lot better. They were like, ‘we like your major now,’” the Berklee student said and sat back.
“Like if we’re talking about fake degrees.”
The Berklee student laughed. He shook his head and said, “I don’t know.”
“Well…”
“I always say, I win over anybody ‘cause when I graduate I will officially, in the state of Massachussets, I will be the only one, of anyone we know, to have a BM,… a bowel movement.”
“That’s crazy.”
“And my grandma has a BM too. I didn’t know that. She has a Bachelors of Music too.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah! She went to an, um, religious music school in Minnesota. I toured only one school and it was that religious music school in Minnesota.”
“Was it St. Olaf?”
“Yeah!”
“Yeah.”
The SAIC student scratched his forehead and sipped his coffee. “I remember in middle school I was thinking I’m going to go to St. Olaf! Like it was the only school I could get into.”
The Berklee student laughed.
“Yeah,” said the SAIC student. “When I was discovering what, like, college was way back when I was twelve, I immediately had art school on my radar and being so close to Chicago, — like you know, we would always go on family trips to the city, — and I was thinking about how amazing it was: you can go to school for art? And I think, ever since, I’ve always been like, I’m going to SAIC. And I did.
“Yeah. But anyways my point with Emma is now she’s taking a semester at SIAE, just like getting big into sculpture and she can transfer her credits over thankfully, so it won’t be as expensive as… a full semester at a private school, because… dang. But it’s all a kick in the shorts and I think she’s going to be a semester behind, graduating-wise, but at least it’s something.”
“Well I’m glad she’s got something figured out.”
“Yeah. I think so. I hope so. Genuinely I hope so. She’s still at Buon Riposo while she’s dealing with her issues. When I started working there, she was a host,-”
"You worked at Buon Riposo?”
“Yeah man,” the Berklee student laughed. “I was a waiter at Buon Riposo.”
“What?”
“I didn’t like it.”
“No heheh.”
“But when I started working there, she was a host and then she graduated and she was a server for a little bit and now she’s almost… I don’t know if she officially is yet… but she was training to be a bartender.”
“Okayy.”
“Yeah. Yeah that’s like a confirmed lot of money. That’s a good one.”
“Pretty solid. Pretty fun. I considered bartending for a bit. But I also considered being a mailman… and a firefighter… and a,-”
“And a gigolo.”
“What?”
“Huh?”
“WHat?” The SAIC student began to crack up.
The Berklee student looked around. “Who said that?”
The SAIC student started laughing.
“Not me,” said the Berklee student.
“I mean,-”
“That was a dream I had the other day. Or… the thing I thought about the other day in the afternoon… being a jiggalo…”
They’re both laughing now. “Oh man,” said the SAIC student. “Yeahh,” said the Berklee student. They continued laughing but at this point the coffee grinder began four feet from where I sat and now distracted from being all voyueristic here with my overhearing, I suddenly felt bad and turned to look out the window, and now I’m writing all of this to you so that you feel bad for listening into their conversation too.
etc. etc. (linksssss)
this election made me feel like a tickle-me elmo hooked up to a 30 volt battery
coming across this meme was wild with it being the basic plot of the novel I wrote in college and all.
Man having a mental health crisis in Japan sounds harsh, sending hugs to Sarah.
Gleefully read this whole thing like I was there myself. Eavesdropping in a coffee shop remains one of life’s simple joys.