Diary of a people watcher, pt. 2
Someone called this series "literary street photography". Here's another one, on friends and lovers:
1. Morning. Coffee shop, Downtown. Young couple.
Jane Austen once said something like, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jewish man working in tech must be in want of an educated Chinese wife.” His laptop is covered in startup logo stickers. Across from him sits the obligatory Asian girlfriend, poking at the melting ice in her glass while staring so closely at her nails that her eyes slightly cross.
He’s declaring a project timeline to someone on the other side of a neverending phone call, occasionally ejaculating a ‘canyouhearme’ in-between phrases involving a strategy and an engineer, and it all sounds like furniture to her—bulky, beige, blocking the light. Boredom hunches her back like a cooked shrimp. They both smell strongly, she of lavender and he of ambition. A copy of Barbarians at the Gate sits between them. She listens passively while switching between scrolling Instagram and zoning out at a fake plant in the corner. They make brief eye contact for one…long…beat. Neither reaching, neither retreating. The moment is held still in a suspension shaped more by inertia than desire—two people who still meet to sit together, long after the point where it means anything.
2. Late night. Underground bar. Table of friends all ages 60s+.
The clandestine bar is fox-den cozy, once a speakeasy during Prohibition, now dressed in female nude sketches and vintage posters from the eras of Uncle Sam, President Reagan, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The second-youngest person in the room is likely twice my age. The table behind me talks about Trump, the acquisition of a Birkin for under ten thousand dollars, and an encounter with Helen Keller. The party is made up of three couples who seem to be old friends. Over rosé, they reminisce: when Peter could still run marathons, when Kelly lived across the country—and many of these had to be repeated, the second time, louder, so Kelly’s husband could hear.
They are served by the manager herself, a very energetic blonde with very wide-open eyes who looks like she’s very experienced dealing with celebrities. Her speech is peppered with “love”, “darling”, and “dear” to a degree found only in posh Brits, passive-aggressive Southerners, theatrical gay men, and impatient TSA agents.
The sextet talk over one another with ease, interrupting and resuming with the rhythm of people who have survived one another’s divorces, disappearances, triumphs, and small daily vanities. The lamp softly illuminates their faces, and they glow with the stories of so many decades all at once.
3. Dinner. Dimly lit restaurant. First date.
They sit very close for people who’ve just met. You know it’s a first date because their conversation references things they already know about each other from Hinge, but also because they talk like they’re auditioning for the part they already want to give each other.
She’s wearing a blue dress that’s creased behind the knees from sitting too long. Its neckline is modest enough to be proper, like she chose it to deny the clichés of seduction while preserving its tools.
He, for his part, is dressed in the manner of men who have read at least one article about Italian tailoring and thereafter adopted its principles not from pleasure but from duty. His shoes, though expensive-looking, carry the impersonal shine of newness, making them say more about how much he cares what others think of him than about his actual style.
He stares at her like a scientist encountering an animal whose presence on Earth is being witnessed for the very first time. She stares at him as if it were his face that was holding the universe together, and that as long as she didn’t look away, nothing would go wrong.
4. Evening. In an elevator. Four girls on their way to a concert/rave/party.