The setting is The Java Hut. 128th Street. It’s 19 degrees in Surrey today and I need to cool off while I wait for car repairs. Naturally, I wander in looking for hot water poured over crushed beans, add a little sugar because I’m not as tough as I once was. I reason that I’ll cool off in the shade and I’ll need the bean juice to warm up. The man at the counter says: looking for something cool?

I consider the response: no thanks, I’m cool enough. But I decide not to waste it here, not in Surrey, not on him. He’s not cute enough for my bad jokes. “Hot coffee.” I say defiantly.

He looks at me with a slight tilt of his head. “Whoa, hot coffee it is.”

We both let me think I’m dangerous and badass for just a minute. Then he breaks my moment of glory with: what size? He throws his hand out like this is wheel of fortune. Such grace and elegance. He’s been at this a long time.

“Medium,” I say. “It’s too hot for a large.”

He doesn’t even smile. I’m not sure if I would or not. But it’s worth a try. I should have used the cool joke, I tell myself.

It’s a nice place. Cozy. Smells how coffee joints usually smell. It’s quiet and empty. The only sound is the hum of a machine and some jazz playing over the speakers. I order my coloured and sweetened water and sit down with a book. For the younger generations, those are little, sometimes big, things you hold in your hands and flip pages as you read. They’re pre-digital. I feel old.

I open up Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley, and pick up where I left off. It’s the perfect atmosphere for the book, second only to a smoke-filled room with a dame playing a piano in the middle, but who reads books in those joints? Easy Rawlins is now in over his head and a dangerous doll may or may not have killed someone else and it’s time to split. It’s not safe for a Black man to be around dead white men in LA, it wasn’t back then and it isn’t now. The times may be a-changin’ but not everything changes with the time. Sometimes it’s just ticking sounds and nothing else.

A slow, drawn out slurp comes from beside me. A tiny man, half well-dressed, with a haircut to hide his receding line has ordered and sat right next to me. I look at him and try not to laugh. The room is still empty, of course he needs to sit right beside me. Where else?

He’s eating soup. I didn’t catch the special of the day. It’s either chicken noodle or some hearty vegetable number that’s full of vegetables that are good for you and enough salt that will kill you.

I consider offering advice: sir, you can blow on it, or put an ice cube in it, let it cool down so you don’t slurp like a maniac. But it’s not a big deal. He’s almost done. It’s only a cup, I tell myself, only a cup and not a bowl. Perhaps a god somewhere is smiling down on me, teasing me a little but not getting carried away about it.

Then the man at the till brings out a sandwich. It’s ok, I reassure myself. Nobody slurps a sandwich.

Wrong.

I’ve never been so wrong in my life. He sloppily sucks the mayo and butter and mustard with each bite. As vegetables and stringy bits of lettuce and sprouts and chunks of meat hang from his mouth, he either leans over his plate and lets it slowly drop or slurps it up with joy.

It’s disgusting. Who taught you how to eat? Or, more accurately, who didn’t teach you?

I suffer another ten minutes of this man’s slow sucking up of his sandwich. He’s ruined the nice music that was on when I came in. The coffee still tastes good but now I’m self-conscious. Am I too quiet while I drink this? Should I suck it up and smack my lips together and make guttural noises with each sip? Should I too become a Lynchian body horror masterpiece like the cretin beside me?

Oh look, he left. I can finish my coffee now.