At the Late-nite Café

It was an ungodly hour. In place of the constant buzzing and honking of city traffic, you could now only hear the occasional roar of a revving engine that almost always evolved into that jarring screech of hyper-spun tires on pavement. The diverse clientele at the late-nite coffee bar would hurl unheard insults at these phantom drivers suffering from what most likely was a case of intoxicated bravado behind the wheel.

“Woo-whee hon!” shouted a heavily pierced woman leaning against the cafe’s red brick wall. She was nursing a dark glass of iced coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “You’re such a big man now!” A couple that looked like they had recently escaped from a nightclub, well dressed but covered in drying perspiration, seemed to appreciate the remark. She turned back to her friends, expertly exhaling a burst of smoke, firstly from her noses and then from her mouth. It lingered around her lips for a bit before dissolving into the night sky. “But anyways,” she said, trying to transition back into the conversation, “you have to admit, we are going to leave a pretty fucked up mark on the world—y’know?”

At least one of her friends clearly didn’t follow. He took a sip of his brightly colored energy drink and narrowed his eyes at hers. “What do you mean, exactly?”

“Well, look.” She started. “Just, like, for example, consider your drink. I’m not trying to sound like one of those organic-hippie-nazi-types, but do you know what gives that stuff its coloring?”

“Uhh, that food-dye stuff, I’ll wager. My mom always had ‘em in the kitchen. Comes in those little plastic bottles? One drop’ll turn, like, a gallon of water into that color.”

“Yeah, kinda.” She agreed. “But a lot of the stuff used to color food stuff is called Carminic Acid, which is harvested off of the bodies of dead South American Bugs.”

“Well that’s pretty sexy.” It was all he could say. He killed off the last bit of his drink and threw it into the nearby recycling bin.

She was clearly enjoying herself. She tugged at the ring around her lip, unconsciously smirking. “So basically, a metric shit-ton of those critters were harvested in order to give that beverage of yours the illusion that it’s flavored with berries. Or at least berry-esque.” She paused. “Makes you wonder how much else is in life is illusionary, y’know?”

“Hold that thought,” he said with a half smile. “I have to go piss out some bug juice.” He stepped inside the café. Punk music was pumping from some unseen old-school stereo. You could tell it was old because the all the high-frequency notes were accompanied with those curious popping noises.



He went into the unisex bathroom. The mirror was beyond cracked and there were no paper towels, but it was reasonably clean. After checking his flow of piss to make sure it wasn’t a radioactive berry color, his eyes gazed towards the lightly tan colored wall. Customers certainly weren’t afraid to leave their marks at this late nite café, and petty vandalism even seemed to be encouraged. Sharpie sprawlings and knife etches covered all four sides of the wall. It served as a sort of timeline of sardonic bathroom humor that highlighted the various historical events that took place during the joint’s existence. Within reaching distance from the toilet, he saw the Reagan-era commentary. A happy, red-eyed smiley face argued that it just couldn’t say “no.” A bit to the right, somebody carved out “I hope the fetus that you save is GAY!” Further still, a then-topical Bill Clinton fellatio joke.

Semi-serious statements or feigned displays of offense were ruthlessly mocked. Underneath a long winded diatribe entailing the virtues of anarchy, a prankster simply wrote “I can rip apart the system AND take a shit? Now that’s convenient!” Blasphemy followed blasphemy. There was a drawing of two towers, and a crudely drawn stick figure atop of it. It was saying “Look! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! OH SHIT! It IS a plane!” An offended outsider wrote “You sick bastard.” The response was another joke, of questionable taste. “Hey, sorry about that. Here’s a joke to cheer you up: knock knock? Who’s there? 911. 911 who? YOU SAID YOU’D NEVER FORGET.”

As he rejoined his friend, he commented that if the ingredients label was written by bathroom wall vandals, they’d at least have the decency to write “CRUSHED BUG SHIT” in place of Carmic-acid-or-whatever.

She laughed. “If bathroom vandals ran society, what mark do you think they’d leave?” He just shrugged and listened to another car peel out in the distance.