All Things Considered

What the fuck is Autumnal? Fucking coffee shops are always pulling this gimmicky bullshit. Whether it’s helping kids with cancer or puppies with no home, busissnesses are always trying out some sort of gimmick to drum up business. So, it's no surprise to see the window chalk on this hipster coffee shop read “autumnal drinks". It’s always some sort of bullshit to get the half-brained liberals to flock and spend their money on everything from pumpkin spice this to pumpkin spice that. I’d like to show ‘em my middle finger and they can pumpkin spice that. It’s honestly, absurd. Every white girl in leggings and an oversized shirt will rush to this coffee shop to try out the new line of “autumnal drinks.” Shit fucking pisses me off.

That has to be a made up word. “Autumnal.” Just the air of pretension that surrounds that word pisses me off. If it is a word, and I highly doubt it is. It has to be one made up specifically by white girls to express their excitement for shitty pumpkin flavored bullshit. If I had paid my phone bill I’d google “autumnal” just prove those fuckers wrong. Inventing words for the sake of their gimmick. What has America become? What sort of sinister propaganda have we fallen for? What the hell is this? Doublethink? Groupthink? Seems like nonsense.

Look, I know this isn’t something most people care about, but since I’m a simple sociopath with simple sociopathic tendencies, I do care. I care deeply. That’s why I drink black coffee. People always think you’re strong and dignified drinking a black cup of coffee, like a cowboy in the early morning on some lonesome prairie. And in a place thats selling “a new line of autumnal drinks” I’m a regular old John Wayne when I sip my bean. Maybe even a bit of a Clint Eastwood. All things considered.

“Hi," the barista said to me. She had a soft porcelain white face to complete her soft voice. Strands of purple and blonde hair snuck out from beneath her sock cap. Her body was swallowed up by an oversized burnt orange sweater that looked to be two sizes too large. 

“Would you like to try one of our new autumnal drinks?” Her voice had the accent of a valley girl in the midwest. Horrible. She flashed me her perfect smile. I bet she thought I’d be impressed. Bitch. Her and her perfect smile and her perfect teeth. She probably had braces and a healthy childhood. Bitch. 

My eyes glance to the menu labeled “autumnal drinks” with various pumpkin spiced flavored nonsense in flowy hand writing. The simple thought of pumpkin spice infiltrating my palate disgusts me and fills me with rage. Let alone having that horrible scent in your face, nose raping you until all you smell is “autumnal.” 

“No thanks,” I swallow my pride and try to keep my cool. “Just a black coffee will be fine.”

That perfect porcelain face twisted up into a look of desperate pity. 

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “But we don’t carry ‘black coffee.’”

She said “black coffee” in a way that made it sound just as gimmicky as the pumpkin flavored bullshit she was peddling. I don’t say anything, I swallow my rage which forces my face into this half stupid confused look thinking I’m the butt of some boring joke. What coffee shop doesn’t have black coffee?

But she hasn’t said anything and a silence has set into a heavy awkwardness that makes me begin to think this isn’t a joke. 

“Are you sure you wouldn’t want to try one of our new autumnal drinks?” She asks. “They’re legitimately to die for.”

Now I'm looking at the menu picturing her dying for a pumpkin spice chai tea. I rub my pocket knife, but then remember what my therapist used to say before she cut me off due to nonpayment, “the strongest thing you can do in any moment is excessive restrain.” So, I leave the knife in my pocket. 

“Alright,”I say pounding the counter in a no-big-deal kinda way. “I’ll just take an Americano.” 

"Oh, I’m so sorry,” the girl says. “We don’t carry that either.”

Alright what the fuck? What the fuck is this? I don’t want to kill her as much as I want to burn down this whole fucking establishment. What kind of a fucking place is this?

“So, let me get this straight you don’t have espresso and steamed water.”

“No sir,” she says with a smile, god damn that smile. “But we do have a new line of autumnal drinks.”

“Are you saying audible?” I asked.

“No,” she says covering her mouth as she giggled. “It’s autumnal.”

"Yeah, I’d rather lick a boot than taste any of those bullshit flavors.” 

She hasn’t said anything in a second or two and I begin to realize that I have insulted the holy grail of white girloscity. 

“Sir I think you need to relax,” she tells me in a condescending way. 

“Look lady if you’re going to be so hip that you don’t serve actual coffee in a coffee shop than you should at least have the god damn common courtesy to admit when it’s a dumb idea!”

“Sir, I think it’s time for you to go.”

“This establishment shall rue the day it met Jonathon Delafonte Da Louise and didn’t serve him what he wanted,” I proclaim proudly despite my name being Jeff. “You can keep your bullshit autumnal drinks! They taste like shit and pumpkin spice smells like ass!”

“Get out you ugly man!” She screamed. 

“You will rue this day! This isn’t a coffee shop,” I shout. “It’s a cover up for a Marxist coup! This day will be your downfall. So when you fall you will have no one to blame, but yourself and your hipster ways for this gross insubordination of coffee shop etiquette! Damn you commies and your Marxist revolution! Damn you all! Go back to Vietnam!”

“Sir! If you don’t leave I’m going to call the police.”

“Do it lady! I don’t give a damn. Three meals and a cot seems better than the streets and I bet they have black coffee!” 

She picked up the phone like she had dominion over me. 

“I’m leaving. Don’t wanna spend my hard earned money here anyway.”

“You probably don’t even have any money you disgusting man!” 

“Hey lady!” I defend myself. “I got a job. I sit on the corner like everyone else!” 

“Leave!” 

So, I left, but on my own accord. As I walked I began to wonder. At first my mind was painted with the images of the coffee shop engulfed with flames and smoke pouring out of it. The girl on her hands and knees screaming, “Why, God? Why?”

Then I remembered that those were real people and real people have a means of a living that provides them with insurance. If I burned it down the insurance would have it back up in a month.

I’d find another way. But all I wanted was a cup of joe to even out my morning high. 

Oh, yeah, I guess that’s another thing I forgot to mention, I’m not just a sociopath. I’m a junky too, in all my grey skin and wonder. I’m a junky, but I didn’t use to be. I used to be a coal miner, that’s how I fucked up my back and got on pain meds. And then well, when the work went, I lost my insurance and my supply. That’s when I started using. It wasn’t all at once I guess, but if you keep chasing the dragon you’ll eventually end up with a monkey on your back. Now here I am, more of less, trying to save up to take a shower at a gym for a job interview. But how does anyone expect me to get anything done when I shoot up this early and don’t have a cup of joe to even me out? God damn hipsters will ruin everything if you let them. 

I’d turned down an alley not far from the coffee shop. I was looking for a dumpster to shoot my junk behind when I saw it. It was a pink guitar with only two strings. This would work dandy. 

Now I’ve got an idea. I pick up the pink guitar and strum its two out of tune strings. It sounds terrible, it’s perfect. I’m gonna make those hipsters wish they’d never crossed me. Just as soon as I melt my breakfast into a spoon. 

Now I can articulate what I want to say, but I guess I passed out. I woke up in a puddle of grease in the back alley by a KFC and it was the next day. What was I doing? I’d lost a whole day.

I rubbed my eyes and saw the pink two string and remembered the coffee shop. The commie stronghold, I had a patriotic obligation to my fellow citizens and nothing would get in the way of that. Except maybe heroine. 

I approached a bench outside the coffee shop that I had seen a hipster playing guitar on once.

I sat down on the bench with my two string guitar only thing was I didn’t have a pick. But, I found a rock and thought that it would produce the sound I was looking for. So then, I picked up my out of tune two string and began wailing on it with the small rock. I guess I could’ve tuned the guitar, but it sounds better this way. 

And to be honest, I didn’t sound half bad. You know I didn’t sound like a choir of angels or even a flock of geese, but I thought I sounded alright. All things considered. As it turns out, my coffee shop audience didn’t recognize my true artistic genius and took their business elsewhere. God damn yuppies never appreciate real art. 

I guess it got dark cause I couldn’t see and to be honest I wasn’t as high as I would’ve liked to have been. The coffee shop was closed anyway, so I stumbled down an alley with my two-string to shoot up one more time. I passed out in heaven next to a dumpster and a stack of ratty blankets. 

This was my routine for a few weeks. Sure people would say to leave, but Im on a public bench what could they do? Everyone left me alone and ended up leaving the coffee shop before I drove out their sanity. I was getting pretty good at playing. You know all things considered. 

Then after I dont know how many days I guess someone had enough. 

“Mister No!” A voice shouted from the coffee shop. “We can’t take that racket no more! You’re killing us! Our business! And our love of music!”

With a junky’s twinkle in my eye I looked up from my guitar to him. It looked like the owner of the coffee shop. I dont know why, he just seemed like he thought he was important. He wore black rimmed glasses, suspenders and short pants. He was the head hipster huncho no doubt about it. 

“I haven’t had a customer in two weeks!” He shouted over my guitar. 

Finally, I tell him, “maybe it’s because you don’t have black cofffee.” 

“Maybe it’s because I have a bum sitting outside my coffee shop and making the worst noise since a cat covered Bob Dylan.”

I stop playing, “Hey man, don’t go blaming me for your shit business model.”

“My business model?! You can’t even stand on your own two feet! Let alone play a power chord!”

“What?!” I yell. Here I am playing my heart out for the two string blues and this guy wants to insult me.

So I says to him, “Listen here you little communist, this is America! This is capitalism! Don’t you go blaming your financial woes on the rest of the world. It’s a free market! Ya win some, ya lose some!”

“I’m calling the police.”

“Do it!” I say. “Please I have some hipster that won’t stop harassing me.”

“Me?! Harassing you?! Go to hell!” He shouts.

“Already there! Better call the cops before your autumnal drinks expire and all you’re left with is a shitty bill and a bad idea.”

“I’m calling the police.”

“Yeah you mentioned that,” I start playing again. 

“I hope you rot in prison!” He shouts as he walks to the entrance of the coffee shop.

“Me too!” I shout. “I paid my taxes in 2016! I deserve a meal and a place to sleep like everyone else.”

He vanished into the coffee shop, the door slamming behind him. Soon enough the berries and cherries would flash against the glass of the store front windows. When I heard the siren wail I knew the police wouldn’t be far behind. Kudos to the coffee shop commie, I didn’t think he'd have it in him. 

I guess I could leave before the cops show, but that sort of seems like an admission of guilt. The only thing I’m guilty of is being homeless. 

When the police show I’m playing Roxanne on my two-string with the rock. Sounding pretty damn good, you know, all things considered. I was about to tell Roxanne she didn’t have to turn on that red light when the cops walked into the coffee shop. Then they were back with the hipster.

“That’s him! That’s him, officers! That’s the derelict that’s been running off my customers,” He’s yelling and pointing.

“Woah don’t shoot,” I say raising my hands and laughing. 

“Alright now,” begins one of the officers. “What’s the problem?”

“That man is robbing me blind!” He shouts.

“Well, a lot I have to show for it,” I interject. 

“This man is robbing me blind,” he starts up again. “Driving off all my customers! I haven’t seen a customer in weeks and its all because of that racket he makes. He’s the junky spawn of Satan, he’s the manifestation of my bad karma for the last twenty years. He’s taken everything from me! He’s a criminal mastermind! He’ll rob you blind and steal the last of your sanity. He’s full of bad vibes. Not all the healing stones in the world would ward off the evil spirits inside him. He’s A plague on society! And he can’t play a lick! He’s got two-strings and no talent!”

“Hey mister! I’m not that bad, I mean all things considered.”

“He’s a cretin,” he’s still going on. “A greasy slime ball that isn’t worth the junk in his veins. He’s taken everything from me.”

Now the mans crying. Jesus Christ, I hate hipsters. 

“Look, I’m just playing the guitar!,” I say holding up my guitar. 

“You move like that again and I’ll excercise my right to use force,” warns the cop with his hand on his gun. 

I lower my hands, but I start to think not everyone is equal in the eyes of the law. 

“Officers,” the coffee shop coup leader begins. “He’s doing it all on purpose, he’s a strategical genius. With the loss in sales, I’ll never come back. I’m ruined! And why? Because I don’t have black coffee.”

I’d be lying right now if I said I wasn’t proud of the work I do. A stronger business model probably would’ve survived. 

“Well, what do you have?” Asks one of the officers. 

“A new list of autumnal drinks."

“Sounds delicious, who wouldn’t want one?” Says the other cop. 

The coffee shop commie points to me. The cops turn to me, their demeanor has changed and I think I maybe going to jail. 

“Alright son you’d better come downtown with us,” says the cop grabbing my arm. 

I yell all sorts of provocative things like, “I’m a protester and this is my fundamental right! What about the constitution?! What about Free speech?!”

Then when they put the cuffs on I start shouting, “It’s not a word! It’s a gimmick! Fuck autumnal drinks! Fuck pumpkin spice!”

That’s when the officer leaned into the squad car and told me,” If you say one more bad thing about pumpkin spice going to prison will be the least of your problems.”

Then he yelled back, “how about two pumpkin spice lattes for the road.”

So much for a fair and impartial justice system. 

“So you see doc, it’s not my fault. What other choices did I have? The world's against me. I lost coal mining, I lost my wife, I lost my kids, my dog, my truck and my home. Then on top of all that I lost my therapist and my pills. Doc what choice did I have? That’s why I got arrested, that’s why I’m in the pen talking to you. The world took everything I had until all that’s left was heroine and time. I wanted the only bit of comfort I had left in this world the sobering warmth of black coffee. And Doc when I lost that what did I have to lose?”

“So,” begins the prison therapist. “You destroyed a man’s livelihood because he didn’t make black coffee?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “And the world destroyed mine because I didn’t make green energy. You know all things considered, I guess its a fair trade.”