…I suppose that beats a cup-less bottom!  We still have stories to post from our contest, The Coffee Shop Chronicles.  Thank goodness I put out a call for those who have submitted but not seen their story on line to give a shout.  We have had so many responses that I have not been able to fully track them all, and I apologize right here and now if we miss anybody.  A number of you who would have inadvertently been lost in the shuffle have come forward, making it easier to find your stories and get them on line.  Please remember, if your story appears as one of the final entries, that is in no way indicative of your standing in the competition.

Kyle McLean gave me the heads up that I may have missed him, which would have been a terrible dis-service to all of us, because he’s got a great story here.  On of the pleasures of a story is that it takes us out of ourselves, to another place, another country.  It helps us day dream.  Kyle, who is also a very fine poet, by the way, has offered this remembering (I decided this word works as a noun-and what they heck, I’m the editor!) as his entry into The Coffee Shop Chronicles.

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Rico Suave and Pixie, $5 Friday at Katipo Cafe

I’m not a great photographer but one time I took a picture I’m proud of.

I’d traveled to New Zealand with Noel and Seth where on the plainest wall of the plainest street in Wellington we found an arrow with the word Katipo written underneath.  The arrow led to warm, bold coffee on the 2^nd floor of an eroding building, the walls plastered in communist red and spindly tables littered about with four to eight mug capacities, plates would be over the weight limits.  Black and white fliers for a show on Friday night were splotched here and there and rampant in the bathroom.  We thought at $5 NZ why not.

On Friday we were packed in all together with the local kids like kindergarteners, the three of us cross-legged against the wall and curious.  A girl from the cafe carried a bowler around for a collection plate, careful to collect from everyone though were weren’t in even rows and she had to step into small pockets of space.  She stepped on my foot but she had a ridiculously cute hat like an over-sized button and the kiwi accent wrapping over her “so sorry.”  I smiled and paid the fee as the lights were dimmed.

First up was Pixy, singing songs by Jeff Buckley and wielding his acoustic.  His hair was curly-wild and blonde and he had that pretend-shy, hunched shoulders and cupped hands posture, one that suggested he was unsure but pleading to be looked at.  His renditions were average.  Later another group calling themselves Rico Suave came out to play in the middle of the floor, their most telling moment when they covered the goodnight song from the Smashing Pumpkins ultra-famous Melon Collie album. The young girl in the band was pleased she got to close it out on the piano, smiling even and wide but the notes weren’t crisp and it wasn’t as big a moment as she thought.  I felt guilty inside for the way my mind was downplaying her joy.

Their performances had failed but they’d inspired something else.

During the show I kept feeling a turning over feeling I get in my guts sometimes when I can’t focus.  We were three kids from across the ocean in this tiny red room full of New Zealanders and like some sort of youth magnet or stupid luck we’d ended up in what as far as I could tell was their little music and adolescent to young adult culture scene.  I kept turning that fact over and over, pondering its significance, while I looked at Seth who was paying attention but with this very stoic look attached to his face, like maybe the notes were dancing in the air and he couldn’t look away but he’d seen it all before and it wasn’t all that big a deal.  I snapped a picture of him at this moment, including the view through the window behind him, where the streets of Wellington were physically empty but burdened with my preconceptions that culture was some kind of mystery on the other side of the world.  I wondered if all kids were the same after all, New Zealanders playing American songs and locked in their wannabe cafes like Americans back home.  Days later I’d find a little music store with some authentic New Zealand music to offer but even then I don’t know.

I’m not sure where that picture is now or if it ever made it back on the digital camera.  Still, I have the image burned clearly in my mind as a reminder that westernized kids are just westernized kids, that on the other side of the world nothing will change, these guts are just going to be my guts and I can be lonely and happy here or lonely and happy anywhere else.

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Kyle–no need to be lonely anywhere–just happy.  Be happy here with us at A Word with You Press.  You are among kindred spirits.