You Can't Go Home Again

As you read this I'm sitting in a coffee shop in my hometown.  Actually, as you read this I'm probably someplace else, possibly a strip club in my hometown.  But probably not.  Hell, I could be anywhere.  That's not the point.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop in my hometown.  When I was in college and this place was new it was to coffeehouses what "Friends" was to Must See TV.  It was plush and full of couches and sweater vests.  It was Central Perk West- although not as much as the place down the street that was a two-story house of java actually called "Friends" and used mugs you could bathe in.

No, this place was more loungy.

Today it is well-lit and the couches are gone.  There isn't any music playing and it is full of conversation and tables made for two- a person and a laptop.

The only thing that is the same is the abundance of really attractive coeds.  Which is nice.

If I were feeling a metaphor right now I would build it around this, the coffeehouse, not the girls, and then I would say things like change is a coffee ground and to break it up I would throw in a simile and say it was also like the filter that holds it, but since I'm wearing a t-shirt that says "similes are like metaphors" that would make me some sort of pompous ass and I don't need that right now- although, admittedly, it's hard to shake.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop in my hometown and the place has changed and the area around it has changed and the tour I've led my boys on is full of shadows and ghosts.

So no one told me life was going to be this way. My job's a joke, I am broke, and my love life's DOA.  It's like I'm always stuck in second gear.

This is where my friends clap.

This town is a coffee ground and also like the filter that holds it.