This morning, in the pretendy-cafe that used to be a locker room at the State Library, a young man with mop hair half-smiled at me as he took my order.
Young Man With Mop Hair is somewhat superior in the pretendy-cafe hierarchy. I've seen him giving orders before and telling people to go and clean up table four please and looking harried while reading rosters on clipboards and so forth. Young Man With Mop Hair is not nearly as lovely as the Cute Young Thangs who used to serve me coffee and complain about their hangovers and then go missing when the RMIT design course started back up again. He seems nice, Mop, but he's not exactly engaging. You kind of get the feeling he might be thinking he's heaps better than you.
Now, I know from experience that when you think someone thinks they're better than you, they're usually deeply self-critical and later, at the work Christmas party or whatever, you turn out to be best friends and they've liked you all along and it reveals only one thing: how shallow and stupid and self-obsessed you must have been to have taken offence at their entirely innocent and sometimes even affectionate gaze in the first place.
Having said that, Mop Hair is clearly Captain Cool. Now, usually, when I go to work or go out in the evening or whatever, I wear normal clothes. Nice clothes. Not, you know, fashionable clothes exactly, but I look okay. When I come to the library, and hence the pretendy-cafe, I wear tracksuit pants and a hooded jumper. I want to be comfortable while I work. Also, as I have stated many times, I would be happy to wear one of those stud-buttoned full body suits that babies wear if I didn't think it would embarrass my loved ones and bring shame upon my family. HOWEVER, I do not wear these things, and I only wear tracksuit pants and hooded tops when I'm writing or going to gym.
Last night, I was going to gym. A guy rode past on a bike. I kind of wasn't concentrating but was looking at Guy On Bike because I wanted to cross the road and had to wait for Guy On Bike to ride past. At the last second, Guy On Bike pretendy-smiled at me and I realised: Guy On Bike was Captain Cool Mop Hair Guy from the Pretendy-Cafe! For a few seconds I felt like a pillock for wearing tracksuit pants and a hooded top in the street as well as in the library and hoped vainly that he didn't think it was some kind of uniform, and then I wondered whether he thought I'd been staring at him on the bike, and then I realised I was an idiot for even purporting to care.
This morning, in the pretendy cafe, I deliberately went up to the other guy, who smiles a lot, and waited in line for him to serve me.
Suddenly, out of nowhere:
NEXT PLEASE!
It was Captain Mop.
Hello, he said. (Did I detect a bit of a tone of "I saw you last night in a different context - what an interesting development in our arms-length coffee-based social ritual"?)
Hello, I said.
What's your name? He asked.
I told him.
What's yours? I asked.
He told me, with a half-smile. If we weren't right in the midst of becoming friends, I would have sworn that smile was slightly mocking.
He gave me my change. I thanked him.
There being a big queue, he shouted NEXT PLEASE again and on he went.
The next customer ordered a coffee.
What's your name? He asked.
She told him.
He wrote it on a cup and handed it to smiley guy. Smiley guy called out my name. My coffee was ready. It's how they determine who gets what coffee, you see. Makes a lot of sense, actually.
I am, it is now painfully clear, a massive loser. Captain Mop has won.
Still, and I know I have a vested interest in this, regardless of how much sense it makes, it does somewhat devalue the experience of ordinary discourse, don't you think? What's your name? It's kind of a personal question, too. It's revealing. It establishes a new connection. A new level of intimacy. In certain contexts, it means a great deal.
You're in a cop car. "What's your name?"
You're chatting to someone who seems rather nice. "What's your name?"
You're sure you've seen this person before but you can't quite figure it out. "What's your name?"
They can't take What's Your Name. Can they? Can they do that?
It started with Huge Icey Juice in A Bucket With A Straw shops. That was okay, I could see there was (as we say in theatre) a fourth wall there - a kind of commercial buffer that made the question less intimate. But in real life? In a pretendy cafe? With a grumpy dude who thinks you live in a tracksuit? I don't know. I feel conversationally violated.
The big test will be if he remembers it tomorrow. Yes, I know, I know. I shouldn't go back. But hell, for a pretentious grumpy pants, he makes a good coffee.