Bean Inspired

The last dregs lay cooling in the bottom of the cup, their heat and appeal disappearing second by second. Harris traced his finger through the brown foam lining the sides above, creating a meandering wave around the edge. Angling the cup and slowly spinning it on its rim, he marvelled at the way the remaining coffee clung to the boundaries marked by the foam; rising and falling easily with the lines already made, but refusing to tread new ground of its own.

                The words always eluded him at home, but there was something about this place that just seemed to engage his mind. Sat in this chair, fabric worn thin on the arms, laptop resting on the rustic wooden table before him, oversized, white, ceramic mug of coffee next to it, all his thoughts seemed better, more worthy, more deserving of print than they did elsewhere. The atmosphere cultivated some kind of creative spirit in him, he couldn’t explain it; some kind of psychological thing, some idiosyncrasy on his part, something in the air, maybe something in the coffee, who knew? But there was a magic here that couldn’t be denied.

                Multiple television scripts sold to Hollywood and enough of a novel to get him a publishing contract had all been written from this very spot. Harris had long ago saved enough to move out of town, to find somewhere half-decent closer to the industry, but things seemed to be going just fine right where he was now.

                He hammered a few more words into his laptop, smiling all the while because he knew that they were the right ones. He drained the last of his cup before standing up and making his way to the bar.

                “Hey you,” Wendy the barista said as he approached.

                “Hey yourself.”

                “Good day?” she asked. “Good progress?” she set the grinder going as she spoke, they were long past his order needing to be spoken aloud.

                He glanced briefly over at his spot. “Always” he grinned.

                “Just had old Frank over here,” she said, nodding to the old man sat near the door. “He’s spent the last 20 minutes telling me all about his new shed design he just finished.” She mimed a yawn.

                Harris took a closer look and saw that there was drawing paper draped across an entire table and off each side, the edges trailing to the floor. Frank himself was sat back in his seat, trying to look at all of it at once, an expression of pure pride plastered across his face.

                “Apparently he does all of his new projects here, same as you.” She smiled devilishly. “That’ll be you one day if you don’t move your ass out of here.”

                “Hey, I don’t see anything wrong with that picture” he said. “I should be so lucky to still be creating at that age, even if it is only a shed.” He fixed her with his best gaze “Besides, I had no idea you were so keen to get rid of me.”

                “I’m not,” she met his gaze in kind. “I just think such a big shot shouldn’t stay cooped up here all his life.” The words big shot dripped with mockery.

                “Well I can hardly leave until you’re ready to come with me, can I?”

                Wendy laughed “Guess you are going to end up like Frank then. I’m not going anywhere.” She handed him his coffee.

                Harris accepted it and took a sip “Well I guess that makes two of us.”

                The light was fading below the window’s horizon, creating silhouettes out of the empty chairs that stood before it. There wasn’t really anyone but Harris left in the shop now, just Colton, the owner, cleaning up for the night. Harris had been on a roll all day, and was trying to squeeze every last drop out of the time he had left before closing.

                “You’re always the last one out of here, you know that?” Colton said as he drew closer and started cleaning one of the tables beside Harris.

                “What can I say? I want to use every possible second.”

                “Hey I’m not complaining,” Colton said. “You and your coffee addiction are practically keeping me in business. But you can just continue at home, can’t you?”

                Harris shook his head “It wouldn’t be the same,” he said. “This is where I write best. Everything I’ve ever sold has been written in this chair.”

                “Is that right?” Colton moved to another table, continuing his slow orbit around Harris, doing his best to prolong the removal of his final customer. “I can’t believe I never knew that.”

                “Yeah,” Harris continued. “Don’t accuse me of going too Hollywood, but there’s an energy here, you know? Something creative. I’m not the only one that knows it either. Apparently Frank, that old guy, plans all of his building projects here.”

                “Yeah,” Colton said. “Wendy was telling me about that today.”

                “I’m telling you, there’s something here.” Harris continued typing as he spoke. “It’s a good thing everyone doesn’t know about this, the place would be flooded.”

                “Call me crazy, but I fail to see the problem with that.” Having finished every other table in the shop, he now moved over to Harris, cloth and disinfectant in hand. “Okay, it’s time to finish up. I’ve got shit to do.”

                “Alright,” Harris closed up his laptop. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

                “I know you will.”

                It was around 11:00am, approximately five days later when Harris walked into the shop to find someone sitting in his spot, typing furiously into a laptop, smiling unabashedly at the screen as they went. All around, everything else was relatively normal. All the regulars sat in their usual places. Denise and Barbara were at the counter facing the window, waiting out the time until the bar across the street opened at midday. Patrice was holding her millionth meeting at the table over by the potted plant, trying and failing to get anyone at all to invest in her idea about a nightclub for dogs. Frank was sat by the door again, poring intently over his shed blueprints.

                Wendy stood behind the bar, slumped forward over the counter with her arms supporting her. She was staring into nothing, waiting for any work at all to come along and temporarily relieve her of her boredom.

                “Hey,” Harris said as he approached. “Who’s that guy sitting in my chair?”

                Wendy lurched lethargically towards the coffee grinder, almost robotically beginning to complete the motions. “I don’t know,” she said. “And that’s not your chair either, anyone’s allowed to sit there.”

                “Oh come on, I always sit there!” he complained. “Everyone knows that’s where I sit.”

                “This is a public place,” she smirked. “Anyone can sit there, it’s not like it has your name on it.”

                “Can I pay to make that happen?”

                Wendy laughed aloud. “Why is it you haven’t moved to Hollywood yet? You’d fit in so well.”

                “No, I’m actually serious!” he laughed back at her as he spoke.

                “So am I,” she said. “They love putting names on chairs out there.”

                “I need that space to work,” Harris moaned. “It’s important to my livelihood.”

                “Jesus, don’t let Colton hear you say that. He’ll start charging you royalties.” Wendy handed him his coffee, bowing ceremoniously as he took it from her hands, her bored-shitless expression still glued to her face. “Besides, this has to be the first time this has ever happened to you. Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

                “Fine,” Harris conceded. “But whilst it is happening, what do you expect me to do?”

                “Oh I don’t know, sit somewhere else maybe? Don’t tell me that none of our other chairs can do it for you?”

                “It’s not the same.”

                Wendy shook her head in exasperation. “Well it’s not like you’ve got much choice today, have you?”

                Harris stared out at the seating area and sighed miserably “…I guess.”

                “Oh my god!” Wendy was in disbelief. “You’re actually pathetic. Any sex appeal you ever had is just slipping right off you, I swear.”

                “I had sex appeal to begin with?”

                “Go and ask him to move if it bothers you that much!”

                Harris glanced over his shoulder at the guy sat in his chair “Don’t you think that’s a bit desperate?”

                “I think you’re past that question at this point, don’t you?”

                He looked at the chair again and let out another sigh “You’re right.” He steeled himself to walk over there, but as he made to leave, he turned back to Wendy for a second. “Seriously though, am I still sexy or…?”

                Wendy rolled her eyes “Go and get your chair back.”

                Harris felt infantile as he approached, like a child approaching a neighbour’s house to ask for their ball back. “Excuse me,” he began.

                The guy in front of him appeared not to have heard. He didn’t look up from his laptop, continuing to type at a blistering pace, his self-satisfied smile still stuck to his face.

                Harris tried again “Excuse me!” he said, louder this time.

                The guy snapped his head up, recognition instantly coming over him. “Oh my god, it’s you!” he said. “I mean, I knew this was the place, but I had no idea you’d actually be here!”

                Harris was confused “I’m sorry, what?”

“Dark Void!” the guy exclaimed. “You wrote the pilot, right?”

                “Oh!” Understanding washed over him. “Yeah, that was me.”

                “Oh man, I love that show!” the guy gushed. He looked only a couple of years younger than Harris, 24, 25 maybe. “I’m Mike, by the way.” He extended a hand.

                Harris shook it. “Well thanks Mike, it’s really cool to meet a fan.”

                “Oh man no, it’s so cool to meet you. I was excited just to write in the spot you wrote in, but this is even better!”

                “Well I don’t know about…” he trailed off as something occurred to him. “Wait, how do you know I write here?”

                “Oh I got one of these flyers, you know?” Mike rummaged through his pockets and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “I thought you knew about them…” he said when Harris failed to recognise what he had produced.

                Harris snatched it from his hands.

Are you a creative type looking for inspiration?

Check out Dark and Bitter, the cosy coffee shop on East Street with armchairs comfortable enough to work from all day, and strong espresso that’ll really get those creative juices flowing.

Harris Ryan, writer for Dark Void and Vested Interest swears by it. He says:

“There’s a magic to this place, everything I’ve ever sold was written here.”

Come by today and create the thing you were born to create.

                The next time Wendy looked up from studying her favourite spot on the counter, Harris was waiting for her.

                “This is an interesting line of promotion you’ve decided to go with,” he held out the flyer for her to see.

                “Hey don’t look at me,” she raised her hands in defence. “That was all Colton, I had nothing to do with it.

                “Right, and you just never thought to tell me?”

                Wendy smiled slyly “And why would I do that?”

                “Because…!” he was indignant. “This is like a distinct violation of my rights … or something.”

                “That…” she said, “…sounds like a matter that’s between you and the manager of Dark and Bitter, it’s not my place to talk about. I’m but a lowly drone in the corporate machine.”

                “Well you know what else, lowly drone?” he said. “This flyer doesn’t say anything about where I sit in the room. Someone must have pointed out my exact seat when that guy came in this morning.” He glowered at her pointedly.

                She remained tight-lipped “Guess someone must have.”

                “You said you didn’t know why he was there.”

                “I lied.” She was the picture of glee.

                He took a breath to calm himself. “I need to talk to Colton,” he said.

                “He’s busy right now, can I take a message?”

                Harris sighed in exasperation, then just opened up the countertop and walked behind the bar.

                “Hey you can’t do that!” Wendy moved to block his path. “That’s cheating! It’s no fun when you cheat.”

                He brushed past her and barged through the door into the back room.

                Colton was sat at his desk, with an oversized jar of muffins that he had stolen from the bar countertop resting in his lap. At the sound of the door crashing open, he dropped the muffin he was holding, sending showers of crumbs cascading down the front of his shirt. “Wendy, what the hell?” he shouted before looking up and seeing that it was Harris. “Hey you can’t be here! Where’s Wendy?” he started calling for her whilst hastily brushing the crumbs of off his shirt and trying to set the jar of muffins down on the floor.

                “Colton what the hell is this?” Harris thrust the flyer forward.

                Wendy appeared at the door “I tried to stop him, but he got right past me.”

                “Christ, what do I pay you for?”

                “Oh I don’t know,” she replied. “Making coffee?”

                “Well go make some for me then!”

“Guys! Can I…” Harris began.

                “Shh!” Wendy and Colton silenced him in unison.

                “I’m not your servant, you know” she directed at Colton.

                “I pay you!” Colton was incredulous. “And if you want me to keep paying you, you’ll get me a damn coffee.”

                Wendy gaped as she struggled to come up with a rebuttal, but eventually she begrudgingly accepted defeat. “...Fine!” she said as she turned and stormed out of the room.

                Colton turned to Harris “Right,” he said. “Now that that’s taken care of, what is it I can help you with?”

                “The flyer!” Harris was turning red. “What the hell is this thing?”

                Outside the door, the grinder could be heard being yanked angrily into use. “That looks like it’s part of our new promotion strategy,” he said. “Why? What do you mean?”

                “I mean, when exactly was it that I became your official spokesperson?” Harris replied. “Apparently I must have missed the meeting.”

                “Would you like to be our official spokesperson?”

                “That depends,” Harris said. “Can I get free coffee for life?”

                Colton thought it over for a second “…No,” he decided. “I can give you one free muffin though, right here, right now.” He pulled up the jar and set it on the desk in front of him.

                Harris shook his head “Why are you doing this?”

                “Well you said you didn’t want anyone else to know about this place,” Colton said. “So I thought, Hey, more people should know about this place.”

                “Well … fine” Harris held up the flyer again. “But can’t you do it without using me?”

                “No worries,” Colton said. “Turns out you’re not that famous anyway. I’ve already got a new design that’s going to hit the streets tomorrow.”

                “Okay great,” Harris awkwardly straightened his shirt. “Glad that’s sorted then.” He made to leave the office but then he remembered something. “As a side note, could I like … buy the rights to my seat in the room, so that no one else can sit there but me?”

                Colton laughed. “For ten-thousand dollars, sure! I’ll draw up a contract right now.”

                Harris was defeated. “Never mind,” He turned and walked out the door, past Wendy who was now coming back in, holding a cup of coffee that had very obviously been spat in. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said as he left the office.

                “I know.” Colton replied.

                It was 6:52am the next morning when Harris rounded the corner of East Street, a full 8 minutes before the shop was due to open. Yesterday had been terrible, Harris had watched his word count limp along at a pitiful pace, all the while hearing the furious clicking of Mike’s keyboard from the other side of the room; a machine gun that never ran out of ammo, Harris’s productivity squarely in its crosshairs.

                He crossed the street and kept moving at a brisk pace, the shop was only a couple of blocks away now. In the distance, he could make out someone standing outside getting ready to open up the shop. Perfect, he thought, right on time. But to his dismay, as he got closer he realised that the person was not an employee, but in fact another customer.

                “Hey man!” said Mike. “Couldn’t wait to get started either, huh? Man, I had such a good day yesterday I just needed to get back here, you know?”

                Harris felt his heart drop into his stomach “…Yeah, totally.”

                “You really picked a good spot,” he continued. “The words were just flowing through me. I don’t think I’ve ever written that fast before.”

                “Yeah, it’s pretty great.” Harris was despondent.

                “Looks like we’re going to be racing for it every morning then, huh?” he gave Harris a playful nudge.

                “Looks like.”

 “Better luck tomorrow, I guess. Early bird catches the worm, right?”

                Wendy appeared from around a corner, fishing the keys out of her bag as she walked to the door. She stopped when she saw Harris “What are you doing here so early?”

                “Trying to catch a worm, apparently.”

                “…Right, well we don’t serve those,” she said. “We have muffins, if you’d like one.”

                “Only if you can promise me that Colton hasn’t run his hands all over them first.”

                “Well … we have coffee then.”

She unlocked the door and Mike immediately raced inside, nestling himself comfortably in Harris’s armchair, where he would remain for the rest of the day. She and Harris followed more slowly, heading straight to the bar to drown themselves in coffee.

                Harris’s strategy of arriving at 6:30am the next morning proved even more fruitless when he found himself face to face with not one, but five people already waiting outside, Mike standing proudly at the head of the pack.

                “Hey Harris!” he said. “Check this out. I was testing some new stuff at a reading last night, and all these people came up afterwards and told me how good it was. Now that has never happened before, I mean, like, ever. So I told them, it’s this place, right? Ever since I started coming here, it’s just been success after success. Now here they all are too.” He gestured to the other people with him. “Crazy right?”

                “You’ve been coming here for two days.”

                “I know!” He said. “It’s insane!”

                “It really, really is.” For once, Harris was in complete agreement.

                Wendy and Harris spent the day laying on the bar together, their heads next to each other whilst their feet stretched to opposite ends. Colton was too busy printing flyers to come in, so they were taking a few liberties.

                “Why did you have to tell him where I sit?” Harris moaned.

                “I don’t know this was going to happen, did I?” said Wendy. “He was gushing about you, it made me feel proud of you. I wanted to show you off, show him how well I knew you.”

                “You were proud of me?”

                “Well … yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

                “Will you still be proud of me when I miss the publishing deadline for my novel, and I never book another contract again?”

                “Oh god no,” she said. “Thankfully though, I know I don’t have to worry about that happening.”

                Someone cleared their throat and leant over into Wendy’s field of vision, it was Patrice. The door could be heard closing as Cloud K-9’s latest potential investor briskly exited the shop.

                “Could I get a muffin?” she asked.

                Wendy dragged the jar towards her with her feet, before reaching in and throwing a muffin in the air for Patrice to catch. Patrice pulled out a $5, but Wendy wasn’t even looking at her, so eventually she just slid it back into her purse. “Any chance of a coffee?” she said.

                “Oh you can just go back there and do it,” Wendy flung an arm at the workstation. “It’s not that hard to figure out.” She focused on Harris again. “I’m telling you you’re overthinking it. Frank doesn’t sit where you do, and he still draws sheds like nobody’s business.”

                “He always sits in his spot though, and he always orders the same thing, right?” Harris said. “Everyone’s got their own process, their own rituals, you know? And now mine’s being disrupted.”

Unfortunately, Harris had no idea yet what disruption really looked like. A couple of weeks later and he was struggling to get a seat in the shop at all, let alone reclaim his old one. The twin barrage of Colton’s sudden entrepreneurial ingenuity and Mike’s ferocious campaign to share Dark and Bitter with the world had rendered the place almost unrecognisable.

You never would have thought that so many writers could inhabit the same space at once, the room was constantly filled with the click-clack of keys enthusiastically being struck. More than that though, designers, artists, musicians, anyone looking for a little inspiration started trickling into the shop one day after another. The sleepy little joint propped up by a few loyal regulars disappeared, to be replaced by a menagerie of creatively unemployed twenty-somethings that just needed to get their dream out there.

There were too many customers for just one barista to handle anymore, so Colton had been making more hires, and even increasing opening hours to handle the extra traffic. Harris wasn’t taking well to the influx of new employees. Half the time when he went to the bar, despite his best efforts, he would find himself being served by someone other than Wendy.

By far the worst change though was new the VIP area. The section towards the back where all the armchairs were had been cordoned off with a velvet rope, and there was now a $5 charge on grabbing one of the limited seats inside.

“What the hell is this?” Harris had said to Colton when it first went up.

“You know, I think the magic of this place is finally rubbing off on me.” Colton laughed. “This may be the best idea I’ve had in years.”

“I don’t even know what to say to this.”

“Hey, paying for seats was your idea, I’m just adapting it a little.”

The worst part wasn’t even that it was working extraordinarily well, it was that every day Harris was one of the idiots vying for the chance to fork over his cash and sit there, though for the meagre dribble of words each day there was gaining him, he really wasn’t sure why he kept paying.

Every single day, that asshole Mike was the first customer in and the last one out, and every single day, he chose for his throne the seat that used to belong to Harris. He was the star of the joint, constantly holding conversations with large portions of the room, promising collaborations, and even organising talent nights where people got to show off what they had produced here.

One night, Mike was able to convince Colton to hold a reading in the shop after hours. Although truth be told, there hadn’t been much convincing involved. Mike had suggested a $5 entry fee, and the rest was history.

Again, it wasn’t just the writers that showed. Plenty of the other new regulars all showed up for support too. In fact, by the time the event began, the place was full of pretty much everyone that would be there during the daytime.

Harris forced himself to go, to listen to what everyone else was creating and remind himself that he was perfectly capable of feats just as impressive, perhaps more so even. He just needed something to get himself out of this funk first.

The beginning of the night started pleasantly enough, there was some good stuff being read, not really a dud in the bunch, which was really impressive considering how amateur the vast majority of the participants were. Everyone in the room was supportive and appreciative of everyone else, but really they were all waiting for the headline act, the new hero of Dark and Bitter himself, Mike Schwarz.

He read three separate pieces back to back, each of them longer than the last, totalling to over an hour on stage. But that wasn’t even the real evil.

“Okay, so that’s me done, finally.” He winked knowingly at the audience. “I’m glad everyone came out tonight to support this and to support each other, and I’m sure we all know Colton back there is glad of the profits.” He laughed, as did his audience. “No, but seriously give the man a big round of applause, not only for agreeing to host this tonight, but for building this place for us all, where we can all come together and foster our creativity every day. Give it up!”

Behind the bar, Colton raised his hand to graciously accept praise, looking for all the world as if he actually gave a damn about fostering anything other than his own bank account.

“Whilst we’re all here, I’d like to take this opportunity to let everyone know that I just secured a publishing contract,” said Mike.

Congratulatory cheers went up from the audience.

“Thanks, thanks everyone. It means a lot, but I like to think this was a group effort, between all of us, you know? Special thanks of course to Colton, and also to someone else that comes here every day, but I don’t think a lot of you know him, and that’s a real shame because he’s one of the big reasons we’re all here. Harris, I know you didn’t have anything planned to read tonight, but if anyone knows how to harness the creative energy here to its maximum potential, it’s you. How about you get up here and show us all what a professional looks like?”

The crowd followed Mike’s gaze right to Harris, enveloping him in a blanket of expectant glares in a single instant.

“Come on,” Mike gestured towards the stage. “Come on up.”

Harris gingerly stood up from his seat “Uh…” he began. “I don’t have anything prepared.”

“You must have something,” Mike said. “You’re working on a novel, right? Why don’t you do something from that?”

“It’s not ready yet.”

“Oh come on, we’re all friends here,” Mike smiled enthusiastically. “We’ll be the judge of that.”

“No.” Harris was staunch in his reply.

“Oh come on man, don’t be such a spoilsport.”

“I said no.” Harris stood up straight, now returning the glares of the audience in kind. “I said I don’t have anything right now and I fucking meant it, you juvenile shit. Now if you’ll excuse me.” He made his best attempt at storming off, but was hampered by the process of having to pick his way through the rows tightly packed seating in order to go anywhere.

He almost left there and then, but a better thought came to him. Instead of walking to the door, he marched right up to the bar and stared down Colton. “I’d like to buy my chair back now.”

The next day, Harris walked in at gone 11:00am, but when he walked over to grab a place to sit, his old chair was waiting just for him. When he got to the velvet rope, the bouncer opened it up with no charge.

“Right this way sir,” the man said, leading him in to a chair that hadn’t stood unoccupied this late in the day for several weeks now. Harris sank into his old familiar spot and he was instantly at home. He ordered a coffee from the VIP waiter, opened up his laptop, and unleashed a flurry of words, at a velocity that visibly shook the dust out from under his keys. Mike sat somewhere in the corner, shooting him jealous looks all day, and each one only made Harris write faster. He was back.

“You’re such an idiot, I swear to god.” Wendy scolded him as she set the grinder going.

“What?” he said, shrugging nonchalantly.

“Ten-thousand dollars?!” she spluttered. “Are you fucking serious?”

“I’ve got my advance from the book,” Harris said. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Right, that’s why you adamantly refused to pay it to begin with.” She began making the latte art in his coffee, but instead of the usual delicate, flower shape, she carefully started pouring out what looked to be a middle finger into his drink. “You let that little wannabe get to your head, and now you’ve gone and been a fucking idiot and you know it.” She shoved the cup of coffee at him. “Here.”

Harris looked down at what had to be the first cup of coffee that had ever flipped someone off. “I don’t see it that way,” he said as he took the cup. “This is an investment in my future, and it’s already producing effective results.” He smiled sweetly at her. “Besides, a permanent seat right by my favourite girl? I’d give a lot more for that if I had to.”

Wendy faltered for a second, cheeks flushing, before mumbling. “If that’s the kind of sentimental bullshit you’re coming up with now, they’re going to drop your contract so fast you won’t know what happened.” The words were still venomous, but her eyes fell upon him more kindly. “Go and get writing then,” she said. “Let’s see that investment pay off.”

Harris may have been back to normal now, but the rest of the shop certainly was not. More people poured in every day, desperately searching for that inspiration that was now so famous among the town’s residents. Lines started forming outside at all hours of the day, and the journey to the door was slow progress. Nonetheless, the shop started to see ever weirder groups of people coming through its doors.

One day a group of people started rehearsing their play in the middle of the room.

“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” A girl cried. “Deny thy father and refuse thy name; or if thou wilt not, but be sworn…”

“Excuse me,” Harris interrupted. “What exactly are you doing?” He got up from his chair and walked over to the troupe.

“We’re rehearsing our play,” said Juliet. “We’re doing Shakespeare.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Harris said. “What I mean is, why are you doing it in a coffee shop?”

“This is where people come, right?” she said, now uncertain in herself. “When they want to do something creative?”

“It … it doesn’t really work like that. It’s more about, like, finding inspiration, you know? I’m not sure what you’re doing really fits.”

Juliet looked distinctly upset.

“Hey,” he said, trying to rescue things. “I love the theatre, I’m sure your show will be great. But surely there are better places to practice than a coffee shop. There are people working here.”

“I like them, Harris,” said a voice from the back.

Harris turned to see Mike sneering at him.

“I think they should stay,” Mike continued.

“Yeah Harris,” another voice called from somewhere. “Why have you always got to be such a downer?”

“Hey,” he raised his hands defensively. “I’m just trying to offer suggestions here, I’m not…” he withered under the weight of the angry looks he was getting. People were obviously not over him ruining their kumbaya shit at the reading that time. “Wendy?” he called, looking for someone to save him.

Wendy had in recent weeks been promoted to Head Barista as a result of all the new employees, and amidst training staff, was now granted the responsibility of making decisions such as this. “Hey, I need some entertainment,” she said. “They can stay as far as I’m concerned.”

So for the foreseeable future, the people at Dark and Bitter did their work whilst listening to the sweet sound of Romeo and Juliet’s eternal, forbidden love playing out around them.

But that’s not the worst it got. The decision opened the floodgates to hosts of people all trying their hand at endless lists of far-flung projects. Anyone that had ever wanted to try something creative but had been too afraid to was suddenly flocking to the place with new-found courage in their hearts, finally ready to share their secret passions with the world. Watercolourists set up easels, musicians sang, actors soliloquised, performers juggled, drumming circles formed, and dog show trainers even trained dogs. The shop threatened to burst under the stress of the traffic, so much so that Colton started securing plans for an extension to the premises. Now there were builders in the shop too.

Harris ploughed on through it all, he wasn’t going to let anything stop him again. He didn’t just have his inspiration back, he had a determination as well; a determination that could perhaps only come from desperately trying to prove to yourself that spending $10000 on a chair was a good idea. He had a deadline for his next 100 pages, and despite his low period, he ended up finishing way early.

On deadline day, as he was sending off the necessary emails, somewhere amidst the din of Shakespeare, and power tools, and dogs barking, and somebody covering Wonderwall for the millionth time, a shout went up that punctured through it all.

“No you listen to me!” an enraged, hostile voice cried.

One of the baristas was talking to the woman responsible for the noise. “Ma’am if you would just calm down, everything would…”

“I was FIRED, you hear me?!” The woman screamed. “My boss said all my designs were terrible, every single one I’ve done for WEEKS! Those are designs I’ve been working on in YOUR shop! Your MAGIC coffee shop!”

The room fell silent as all eyes turned on the heretic.

“Isn’t everything anyone does here supposed to be fucking PERFECT? Isn’t it supposed to be…”

Wendy walked over to her. “Hey I’m sorry about your job, but you cannot disturb the customers like this.” She softly grabbed the woman by the arms and began to lead her to the door.

“You’re all idiots!” she began to cry as she was led away. “Places can’t just make you good at something. They can’t just…”

“Get her out of here!” someone yelled.

The crowd started booing and yelling at the woman, and they didn’t stop until she was long gone.

Harris didn’t write much the next few days whilst he waited for word back from his publisher, he mostly just hung around the shop, talking to Wendy, listening to the musicians and watching the actors.

“Haven’t enough people done Shakespeare now, don’t you think?” Harris said as he watched Juliet stab herself over Romeo’s dead body for the third time that day. “It’s like that infinite monkeys thing, right? That was Shakespeare. Surely every possible version of this play has already been performed. What’s left to explore?”

“So you’re saying it’s like your writing then?” Wendy replied. “Just the same shit over and over again?”

“Ouch,” he said, clutching his chest. “That one actually hurt. No but seriously, why do you let them practice here? They’re scaring people away. Them and every other weirdo here.” Harris eyed a cocker spaniel that was intently sniffing his chair between its trainer’s attempts to make it walk on its hind legs.

“The place looks full to me.”

“Okay maybe,” he said. “But what about all the regulars we used to have? None of them come here anymore. I haven’t seen Frank in weeks!”

“Oh god,” Wendy raised her hand to mouth. “You didn’t hear?”

“What?” He asked. “Hear what?”

“Frank is in the hospital,” she said. “His new shed collapsed with him inside it.”

“Oh my god. How is that even possible?”

“I know, right?”

“He designed that shed here, how could it go wrong?” Harris said in disbelief.

Wendy’s look turned to one of incredulity. “Are you an insane person?”

“What?”

Before Wendy could answer, the two of them found themselves spontaneously swallowed in a hug from Patrice, who had sprinted over from her usual spot in the room.

“I just got an investor for Cloud K-9!” she squealed.

“…Oh,” the pair of them said in unison, shooting each other concerned looks over her head. “…Congratulations.”

“I just knew I could do it!” she said, before grabbing a muffin from the jar and frantically running off to tell someone else.

“Someone was stupid enough to invest in that?” Wendy whispered once Patrice was far enough away.

Harris shook his head “What is going on here?”

Unusually, there was no line outside the building the next day when Harris came through the door, but this time he was way too preoccupied to notice.

“They hate it,” he said, the second he got up to the counter.

“I tried to stop it, but…” Wendy began. “Oh,” she said after a second. “Who hates what?” she started making him a coffee.

“The publishers,” Harris said, anger twisting his face. “They hate what I sent them. Drastic revision needed were their exact words I believe.”

“Oh honey I’m sorry.” Wendy reached across the bar and gave his hand a squeeze. “You’ll make it better, I know you will.”

“I don’t understand,” he continued. “I felt so good writing it all, like this was what I was made to write. I just don’t get what went wrong.”

“Well you were out of sorts for a while, right?”

“No, but most of what I sent was from after that. This was all after I paid for the chair.” He turned to look at his spot and contemplate his failings, but when he did he saw that the chair was no longer there. Instead there was just a blank space, a cavernous hollow in the room.

“…Yeah, about that.” Wendy said. “One of those dogs … the ones that do the tricks, you know…”

Harris sighed darkly. “The cocker spaniel.”

“Yeah … it kind of shit all over your chair this morning.”

“Why did you have to let dogs in here?” his voice was quiet and bitter.

“It’s already been taken to the cleaners,” she continued quickly, trying to make him feel better. “But it’s pretty bad, I won’t lie. We might need to get you a new one.”

“A new one?” Harris could barely comprehend the words. “No, I need the old one back! They’re threatening to pull my advance, I need to save my contract!”

“Just write somewhere else,” she suggested. “Surely it can’t be that hard.”

“Do you think if I could do that, I would have paid ten-thousand dollars for a chair that you just let get ruined?” he shouted.

“Okay, hold on.” Wendy had had enough. “First of all, I told you that was a stupid idea when you did it, and did you listen? No of course you fucking didn’t. Secondly, don’t dare start blaming me for this when it’s clearly your fault for being such a shitty writer in the first place.”

Harris flinched at the words, visibly hurt. “You know what? Fuck this. Fuck all of this.” He gestured around the room. “This place has been a disaster for months.”

“Why the fuck did you stick around then?” she glared at him.

 “I…” Harris trailed off when he met her gaze and failed to see a trace of the warmth he usually found there. “I have no idea.”

Harris felt lost, he couldn’t remember the last time he went somewhere that wasn’t Dark and Bitter or his bed. He just wandered the streets for a while after he left the shop, unsure of what to do or where to go. The sense of purposelessness was intoxicating; it was almost too tempting to just stay like this forever, no deadline, no pressure. Losing his advance was another matter though, especially considering that he almost definitely wasn’t getting the money for the chair back now. So reluctantly, he had begun searching for a new place to work.

The new place he found wasn’t as cosy as the last. There were no armchairs, just hard, wooden ones, all uniform too rather the mismatched, cobbled together patterns he was used to. The floor wasn’t carpet, but a kind of rustic-looking concrete with a smooth finish on top, the kind that would make it easy to mop up a spillage if one occurred. The bar served all kinds of waffles and fancy cakes, with glass panels under the bar displaying the dazzling array of treats ready to be gorged on, but they didn’t have any muffins, Harris had checked.

The blank page stared at him with the full weight of two months of worthless work behind it, daring him to screw it up all over again. Harris stared back, and he kept staring, and he kept staring until he finished his coffee and went to get another.

It took a lot of time, and a lot of coffee, but eventually he managed to make the first strike. Then after that, slowly, miraculously, that tiny chip in the wall turned into a crack, then a trickle, and then finally a stream. Not a flurry, not the hectic, furious pace his $10000 seat had instilled into him, but something calmer, something more measured, more stable. He thought carefully as he wrote, making sure to give each word the weight that it deserved.

By the time the day had rounded out, not only had he written way more than he thought he ever could have done at somewhere other than his old spot, but he had written something that for the first time in quite a while, he really knew he wanted to say. Harris figured maybe this place wasn’t so bad after all.

It was a longer walk to the new shop from his house, but the next morning Harris took every step happily. The sun was bright and there was a freshness to the air, an invigorating force that propelled him to his destination, filling him with a natural energy that willed him to get started as fast as possible.

It took all of a second when he walked through the doors for that energy to disappear. The place was different to how it had been the day before. There were at least twice as many people, and this time a lot of them were armed with laptops. In fact, Harris recognised more than a few people as Dark and Bitter regulars, some that hadn’t been as frequent lately.

Worse still, was a velvet rope cordoning off the back corner of the room, the corner he had sat in the day before. A sign had been thrown up at its entrance.

Creative Corner

Come and find your inspiration here

$5 entry

 Suddenly Harris needed a coffee. Sighing deeply, he walked over to the velvet rope, paid his entry fee, and sat down in yesterday’s seat. It was time to get to work.

American Journal: The Pancake House

With Thanksgiving rapidly approaching, and the week of solitude whilst all my friends went home to their families approaching with it, I looked around to try and find myself something to do in the meantime. I had wanted to do some travelling whilst I was here, so this week provided me with the perfect opportunity to finally get out and see some of the country that I’m living in.

Somewhere in the fistfuls of leaflets I had been given during Quad Day, I had found something advertising a bunch of volunteering trips, and before long I managed to get myself booked on a trip to visit Nashville for a few days. More specifically, with the volunteering bent of the society, I was going to do maintenance work on a park in Nashville for a few days, with the promise of visiting the city itself at some point buried in there too. But hey, it was better than nothing.

As it was taking place during Thanksgiving, almost all of the people going were international students like me, looking to kill some time whilst everyone they knew went home for a while. Altogether the group consisted of me, 6 other international students, and one American who was probably only there because she was on the board of the organisation. Together, we filled up a minivan with barely any room to spare.

The drive down to Nashville would take 6 hours, and when I told that to the Americans I knew here, they responded completely un-ironically with “Oh, that’s not bad then”.

Well, it turns out that they were right; by the end of the day I would have killed for 6 hours. But between waiting for everyone to arrive, the car not initially coming with enough seats and us having to go back to the rental place, stops for food and petrol, and whatever else ended up slowing us down, the journey, if not the drive, took much longer than that.

Upon arrival, the first thing we had to do was buy food for the next 3 days. Having been on group expeditions like this before, I knew that this is actually a much harder task than it initially seems. Trying to find group meals to please multiple people, all whilst on a tight budget takes lots of corralling and organisation, and most importantly, a strong leader that’s willing to make decisions that aren’t always going to please everyone.

Our group had two “Trip facilitators” who were in charge of organising the trip and making the decisions. We had actually all been asked when we initially signed up if we wanted to be trip facilitators; the position came with a mildly reduced cost and a weekly prep meeting to make sure the trip got organised properly. Unfortunately however, it became rapidly apparent during the course of our supermarket excursion that the two girls who had volunteered to lead the group had done so purely because of the reduced price, rather than any actual desire to tell people what to do.

The going ended up being so slow that we started getting calls from the woman meeting us at our accommodation, saying that she didn’t have much time to wait around for us any longer and that we needed to hurry up. We ended up having to leave the American girl behind to do our shopping alone whilst the rest of us went to collect the keys to where we were staying.

The accommodation in question was a church on the campus of the local university. The word church I think probably brings the wrong image to your mind though, there was not a single stone or stained-glass window to be found anywhere. The whole place looked a lot more like some kind of modern youth hostel, albeit one with bibles and crucifixes littered sporadically throughout the premises.

We set up in on the Sunday school room, laying our sleeping bags out between educational toys and stacks of bibles. Children’s drawings and interpretations of bible stories plastered the walls, as did map after map of Israel during various points throughout history. I don’t know if I missed a memo or something, but I hadn’t previously been made aware that we would be sleeping on the floor, so my pillow for the next 4 nights ended up being hastily constructed by stacking my coat and my jacket atop one another and hoping for the best. At least I could learn plenty about Israel whilst I was lying awake all night.

It had been snowing for the first time that year when we left Champaign the day before, and I had hoped as our journey was mostly southbound, that things would be considerably warmer in Nashville. But as we made our way, at a sunless 6:30am, from our car to the base of the hill where we would be helping coordinate a marathon that day, a raw wind tearing down it to meet us from above, it became clear that although there was no snow here, my desires had not been fulfilled in any meaningful way.

Almost immediately though, we were told by the race organisers that they didn’t actually need us to do anything just yet. We would be setting up the refreshments for when the runners were finished, so most of the work for us would only begin once the race was underway. They told us we could sit in our car for half an hour and then come back, but once we did there was still nothing to do. Half an hour turned to an hour, and then longer still after that. The woman that our leaders had been talking with kept trying to give us things to do, but every time she sent us to a new person to give them help, they brusquely brushed us off and told us they already had everything under control.

Our volunteering was organised with Warner Park themselves, but no work is done on the park on Sundays, so they had gotten us in contact with this group that does an unofficial marathon in the park every year instead. But now after spending the last 3 hours having any attempt to help anybody completely shut down, it was clear they didn’t really need or want us there. Eventually we made our polite excuses and slipped away, hoping to get a bit longer that day to explore the city.

Despite the hours we had spent doing absolutely nothing, the morning hadn’t been a total loss. The woman we had originally coordinated with spent some time telling us where we should go and what we should do in the city. She told us the best places to visit downtown, a place we could park really close to the centre, and a good restaurant to eat at for lunch.

The restaurant was on the other side of the city, but we had been assured it was worth the drive. Now I had been noticing it in bits and pieces for a while, a missed turn here, a drift towards the wrong lane there, but this was the drive that fully confirmed it for me. Our driver couldn’t drive to save her life, or ours for that matter.

It hadn’t been so bad on the drive from Champaign because we were just on the interstate the whole time; straight line, the entire way. But moving into the network of freeways around Nashville, suddenly there were a lot more turns to take and a lot more interacting with other traffic to be done, and this is where things started to get dicey. Normally I wouldn’t feel the need to make fun of someone else’s driving, but it’s not like I’m talking about a couple of stupid mistakes here. I’m talking about us actually almost dying, lots and lots of times. When I say the words “I’m surprised I’m not dead”, please understand exactly how little hyperbole is meant here.

I really don’t know if it was a lack of understanding of the American system, or whether she would be just as terrible if driving in her own country, but either way we were still stuck with her. We were driving a rental, and in the USA you need to be at least 21 to do that, so she was the only one legally allowed to drive the car. According to the law, she was the only one out of all of us that was considered road-safe.

It mostly stemmed from being bad with directions. She would take a wrong turn and then upon realising that, just try to undo it and take the right one, regardless of what traffic might be in the way at the time. There were horns, there was screeching, there really should have been crashing.

Once, after a particularly close call on the freeway, we found ourselves passing under an electronic road-info sign. In typically southern fashion, it cheerily displayed the message “Buckle up y’all! It’s the law!”. I didn’t need to be told twice.

The restaurant was out on the far side of the city. A long driveway led up to a grand, old house that stood alone against a vast backdrop of fields stretching into the distance. Four impressive columns stood supporting the front of the house, shining white sentinels silently observing all that passed between them. The décor inside was just as opulent; long, varnished tables bedecked the open space, with ornate chairs lining their sides. Delicate, crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and art and restaurant commendations hung proudly from the walls; no doubt to the owners, the two were one and the same.

The restaurant was what’s called “Family Style”, which means that the tables are all designed to accommodate multiple groups at once, with all of you sitting together with other people you don’t know. Furthermore, there isn’t a menu, instead all of the available food is brought to the table at once, and everyone passes it around to each other. That meant that there was just one set price for eating, $22 a head; not insane, but a lot more expensive than the sandwich from a gas station I think most of the group had planned for.

Even so, everyone had agreed to come here anyway, or at least they had all stayed equably silent when the suggestion was put to them. We must have mentioned the price a few times in fact, and no one ever said a word. Of course, it was only once we had driven all the way there and gotten inside the restaurant that one of the girls finally worked up the courage to say it was too expensive for her. At that point though, we decided that maybe making her sit there and watch us all eat might teach her a lesson on the importance of speaking up at the proper moment.

Of course, in keeping with the style of the restaurant, it wasn’t just us she would have to watch. Being a group of 8, we did take up a considerable chunk of one of the tables, but sadly not enough of one for us to be granted the privilege of eating in peace. Not long after we all sat down, another group was lead to our table to fill the spaces that were left over.

They were a group of 3, a couple and their friend, all old enough to be retired. The waiters were very polite and accommodating as they lead the group to the table, talking and making conversation with the group the entire time as they got them seated. The two women in the group seemed normal enough, but the man stood out in an instant.

His hair was completely white, but there was still plenty of it, and not just on his head either; a full moustache and goatee, cartoonish in their perfection, stood brilliantly to attention as well. He was kind of reminiscent of Colonel Sanders actually, of course made ever more perfect by the fact that this was a southern dining restaurant. He wore a full suit and tie too, and not just a regular suit either, but one too formal and too pristine for even the décor surrounding him. He exuded a kind of authority in him that I think would have been evident even if it weren’t for the way that the staff were treating him. The way, for instance, he positioned himself so deliberately at the head of our table, his two womenfolk flanking either side of him. The way his body language was so laid back, so comfortable, but with that hard edge glinting at us just underneath the surface; demanding respect from everyone, but never saying it in so many words. The way what little conversation we had been having completely dried up at this point, as we all stopped to take note of the spectacle before us.

All of that paled though, before what was, to my view, the crown jewel of his aesthetic. Pinned to his lapel was a giant blue badge the size of a hockey puck, displaying on it in big, bold, white letters the words “Trust Jesus, Jesus ONLY!”.

From the opposite end of the table I could still read it clear as day, and it nearly broke me on the spot. The way it goes from just a little preachy, but good-natured and compassionate, to so authoritarian and suspicious of one’s fellow man in the space of just four words is, to my mind, unparalleled in how succinctly it sums up that kind of conservative Christianity.

I felt like I was in Uncanny Valley, like I was living in a fever dream of my own most stereotypical imaginings of what the American South was like. Eating fried chicken and pecan pie in what was most likely an old plantation, across the table from a fanatically religious version of Colonel Sanders, who was now taking an undoubtedly creepy interest in all of the college-age girls he was sharing a table with. All that was missing from the picture was a Confederate flag hanging proudly behind the man.

Not only did he want to know all about us and what we were doing here, but he was also weirdly obsessed with making sure we were enjoying the food, asking everybody if they had tried this or that yet and immediately getting things passed to someone if they said they hadn’t. “Oh you haven’t had the pork yet? You! Yes you, hand her the pork, she needs to try it.”

This of course meant that he took a special interest in Mandy, our member who had elected to sit the meal out. “Why aren’t you eating anything?” he demanded, trying to seem confused but instead just coming off as annoyed. “You’re missing out!” He said the same thing every five minutes, never satisfied with the meek shrugging and murmuring she gave in response. Every time he said it, I half expected him to add something about it being “Finger-lickin’ good” in there, but he never did.

Multiple people came over to him during the course of the meal to make sure that he was enjoying himself sufficiently, including the manager himself, who sat down and had a conversation with him for a good few minutes too. Everyone laughed at his jokes, agreed politely with whatever he said, and fetched whatever he wanted immediately. The waitress even pretended to like it when he openly started flirting with her directly in front of his wife.

I don't know what sway he had with the establishment in order to be treated that way, but it was clear that this was well beyond the limits of southern hospitality. Afforded no such treatment ourselves, we got out of there at our earliest convenience.

The city itself, was fortunately able to counter the morning’s events with the much more pleasant side of the south I had been interested in seeing. We illegally parked in the football stadium parking lot, and crossed the bridge over the river from there directly into the heart of downtown. From the bridge we had a great view of the city’s skyline, a modest yet proud display of towers and buildings stood at once against the blue behind them and reflected back in the blue beneath.

Descending the other side of the bridge, already we could hear music coming from below us. A medley of strings, some whispering softly as gentle fingers brushed over them, some ringing with an impassioned twang, some shouting rapid and thick as the vocals they accompanied soared to a crescendo. Every bar, every restaurant, every street corner housed a different person playing a guitar.

Hopefuls plugging away, trying to get noticed by someone, anyone who might be able to help them become the star they dreamt every night of being. Guys struggling to get by, trying to make money the only way they knew how, the only way that made sense here. Lovers, displaying their broken hearts for all to see, hoping that some solace, for them or for anyone listening, might be uncovered somewhere in the depths of their misery. People playing for no reason at all, other than the simple joy of bringing music into the world.

At various points on the street stood these metal boxes, initially I thought they were electrical transformers, but as we got closer, they could clearly be heard playing the classics of Nashville to world at large; funnelling music into the rare spot here or there where none could be heard naturally. Walking around, the same message could be seen every few feet. Signs, buildings, buses, all proudly displayed the motto “Nashville: City of Music”.

We spent the afternoon walking the streets with no real plan in mind, just taking in the feel of the city. My ideal evening would have been spent relaxing in a bar, listening to people playing music, and drinking a beer. But aside from the obvious roadblock there, the idea of corralling the group into doing something more organised than aimless wandering was more than I could handle after the morning’s events. We managed to get a few more things in, like seeing the state capitol building, but eventually it was time to head back for the night. The music dwindled behind us as we crossed the bridge back over the river, the individual songs and artists slowly blurring together again until no sound was distinct from any other, all of it just a faintly melodic buzz in the background, one that was fading further and further with every step. Somehow our car hadn’t been towed when we got back.

The next couple of days were less eventful, but maybe that was a good thing. We went to the park, we worked on the park all day, and then we went home. On the first day we were tasked with clearing the trails in the park and making sure they wouldn’t flood when it rains. We were all given rakes and spent the day raking leaves off the pathways, digging small runoff trenches so water will flow off the paths, and pulling up honeysuckle wherever we found it to stop it taking over the forest. It wasn’t complicated, but I enjoyed it. Every time one of the people using the trail passed us all working on it, they thanked us for helping to maintain it. You wouldn’t think that that could be so rewarding, but contributing to society even in such a small way was a really nice feeling.

The day after that, we cleared out this area that children play in when they visit the park. It wasn’t a traditional play area with swings and slides and all that though. It was an enclosure full of earth and rocks, and the children spend their time in there building structures and digging trenches out of the earth; it’s all about encouraging creativity and teamwork and all that other good stuff. The only problem was that all the digging had allowed the area to get really waterlogged and muddy to the point where it was basically unusable. Our job was to fill in all the trenches, remove all the accumulated debris, and somehow drain all the water out of everything.

It was a long day, and I spent most of it with a spade in my hands. Nonetheless, I still found myself really enjoying the work, which is more than can be said for some of the people that were with me. It was becoming clear at this point that some people had only come on this trip so that they wouldn’t have to spend the week alone whilst all their friends went back home, rather than having any actual interest in the volunteer side of things; I watched one of our members dig maybe 3 shovels-full of dirt across the entire day.

Somehow though, progress did get made one way or another, and I found that even looking at the small amount we had accomplished during a single day was enough for me to feel a certain pride. As we left, I was surprised by how sad I was to be going, how sad it was knowing I wouldn’t be getting up and doing the same thing again the next day.

                The next morning, we stopped by this famous pancake place as we made our way out of town. We were on a deadline to get the car back to the rental place, but none of us could resist spending just a little bit more time in the city before we left, even if the queue to get in the door was half an hour long.

                Whilst we ate, I thought of how much I had enjoyed being here, in spite of, or maybe even because of some of the crazier aspects of the place, and decided that I would really like to come back if I got the chance. Next time maybe I could finally spend an evening in bar drinking a beer, and watching a musician perform, like I had wanted to.

                We finished our pancakes and headed back to the car to go home. As we began our drive, I buckled up y’all, because it was the law.

 Until next time.

American Journal: The Homecoming Game

  I don’t really like watching sports most of the time. I tried football for a while when I was 10; my dad and I would watch Liverpool games back when they were good. But aside from spending time with my dad, I quickly realised I didn’t enjoy it all that much.

  In the past couple of years though, largely in part to the Superbowl screenings hosted at the union bar at UEA, I’ve discovered that I really do enjoy watching American Football. So when people were talking seeing the opening game that our college team was playing, I was definitely interested in going. Of course, college sports are actually a big deal here, it’s not anything like going to see a sports match between university students back home. Rather than standing of the side lines of one of the many courts in your university’s gymnasium, you’re going to a giant stadium that will be accommodating not only you and people from your college, but regular people from all over the state too.

  Sports are religions in America, and for whatever reason, none inspires more devotion than American Football. People travel hours for it, plan their schedules around it, fight over it, and create rituals and ceremonies surrounding it.

  On our approach to the stadium, even a good half mile before we were at the gates, we could see throngs of people lining the streets, all deeply engaged in the pre-game worship ritual known as tailgating. This activity, borne from trying to drink before the game to avoid paying stadium prices for beer, has since turned into an animal of its own. The basic idea is to pick a few square feet of land somewhere outside the stadium, and then claim it as yours; setting up barbeques and lawn chairs, blankets, maybe even small tents, and of course, crates upon crates of beer.

  It goes deeper than that though. To pass the time people play all those old style games you might have found at a school fair or something, like horseshoes, beanbags etc. People even bring their children, in fact it’s pretty common actually. These events end up being a family day out, a binge drinking session, and a sports match all rolled into one. In some circles in fact, the tailgate is more important than the game itself, with some people never even setting foot inside the stadium, but continuing to tailgate throughout the match.

  We saw our first tailgaters whilst we were still a good half mile from the stadium, and it wasn’t long after that until the horizon became a haze of barbeques, pick-up trucks, and fold-up lawn chairs. This mass prayer circle served as sort of yellow-brick road to the stadium for us, albeit one draped in the school colours of orange and blue.

  We arrived at the stadium just as the day was starting to lose its light. The sky, now tinged with the beginnings of darkness, was adding a hint of the dramatic to the mood as we made our approach. The stadium itself stood tall over the masses of people beneath it; the fans rushing to get inside, the vendors selling snow cones and hot dogs from their vans, the ticket collectors, the local band playing to them all, and of course, the tents full of tailgaters in the background, all found themselves clothed in its shadow as the sun disappeared behind it.

  This was on a scale I wasn’t prepared for, you could fit my local football stadium into here multiple times over, and the amount of people that turn up for the games there into here many more than that. I’m not from a place in England where something this size is even possible; there aren’t many where it would be, truth be told. But the crazy thing is this, this isn’t a crazy thing here. This is normal, this is how it is everywhere here. Hell, Illinois aren’t even that good of a team, but this is still what happens when they play a game, people flock here by the thousands so that they may fall on their knees and worship.

  The opening game had been big, but it wasn’t until a few weeks later that I witnessed this phenomenon at its fullest. Homecoming weekend is when all the Alumni come back to visit their Alma Mater. Former frat and sorority members get hosted in their old homes, parties are thrown in their honour and celebrations last all weekend. But the crown jewel of the proceedings is the football game held that weekend. The stadium gets filled, roads are closed, the marching band parades through the streets, people adorn themselves in orange and blue, and most importantly, everyone gets very, very drunk.

  The game was at 2:30pm in the afternoon, so we started "preparing ourselves" considerably before that. As none of us, insufferably, are legal drinkers, we had to first, earlier in the week, get people’s brothers and the like to get our alcohol for us. Then when we did start drinking, we had to do it covertly; behind closed doors in someone’s room, trying our best to keep the noise down as we continued to get drunker and drunker. When we actually headed out to the game too, we each took bottles of Gatorade with us that were also, in large part, filled with vodka.

  I don’t really know if the alcohol helped us cope when we started losing, or whether it just made it that much worse, but I definitely know it spurred our decision to leave early and get food once we realised Illinois weren’t going to win. I’ve always valued the part of the night where everyone gets food quite highly, and at this point, I’ve been thoroughly convinced that America does it better than the UK. This is simply because, as with everything here, if you want to go extreme with it, you really can.

  There’s a place on campus called Fat Sandwich, a name that possibly does more to paint a picture of it for you than I ever could. The gist is, all the drunk food you could ever think of, shoved into a sandwich all at once. I mean, cheesesteak, bacon, eggs, fried chicken, mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, fries, and all manner of other deep fried items, all stuffed between two pieces of bread. I’ve only been once so far, but it may be the most glorious, heart-clogging, disgusting, delicious, monstrosity I’ve ever eaten in my life. It is America in a sandwich, and it beats a Donner Kebab to a bloody pulp.

  On the occasion in question though, we went to a Mexican place that was also excellent, and got back to our dorms and passed out before dark. I woke up at 10:00pm with a hangover, but despite that, would still have to call the event a huge success. Definitely better than a frat party, for sure.

  As for school itself, the semester was now properly underway. Introductions were over and it was time to start getting into the meat of things. After reaching the end of the first week and receiving my first round of homework, the differences in the approach to education between here and the UK made themselves immediately apparent. Unlike in the UK, where I get 10 pieces that actually count towards my grade a semester, all of which will challenge my understanding of what I’ve learnt significantly, here the system doesn’t differ a ton from the way it worked in high school; homework in every class every week, all of which is more a test of comprehension rather than an actual challenge. To balance all this out though, the kicker is that they expect you to get a much higher percentage of it all correct; 93% is the minimum for an A, for example. With adjusting to life here, continuing to get to know people, and now all this, I quickly found myself very busy all at once.

  In fact, before I even knew what was happening to me, I soon found myself working around 12 hours a day, every day. There were homework assignments, readings, and even essays to be done, which as a math student, was not something I was prepared to deal with at all. One course forced me to write a full page on my opinions about straight lines; I was not impressed.

  That aside, it became rapidly obvious that even with the different approach here, this amount of work was not normal; no one I knew was in the same situation as me. At the time I attributed it to me being in final year and them being freshman, but it wasn’t until a few days later, when I went to go get my schedule signed off on for study abroad purposes, that I was informed of the truth.

  "This schedule looks insane!" said the math advisor as I sat down.

  I was confused, I was taking roughly the same amount of hours as everyone else I knew. "How so?" I enquired.

  "You’re taking 4 top level math courses right now, most math majors only take 2 a semester" she said. "The courses are quite intensive for you to be taking this much at once."

  "…Oh." I replied. Suddenly things were becoming a lot clearer than they had been previously.

  "I can’t believe no one told you you’re not supposed to do this!"

  Neither could I. Not a single person I had talked to so far during the academic side of the process so far had said anything about this, so I had just assumed it was normal to take that much. This was yet another example I had encountered of no one in study abroad really knowing anything about anything at all. Now safe in the knowledge that it was okay to do so, I dropped the course that had dared make me write an essay without another second’s thought.

Dropping a class was excellent news as far as my wallet was concerned too, as that meant I had one less textbook to buy from the bookstore. Unlike at UEA, where lecture notes are put up online after classes, universities over here just make you buy textbooks for everything instead. These books can cost anywhere upwards of $100, and so a lot of classes can mean a lot of expenses too. In fact, to help soften the financial blow, you can actually rent some textbooks for a lower price than outright buying them. I tried to do this with some of the stuff I needed, but the woman at the kiosk told me I had to show my state ID first. As I explained to her the exact reason that I didn’t have one, I discovered that she was actually surprised to find that I wasn’t American, my voice apparently hadn’t given me away.

  As the weeks have gone on, I’ve found this experience to be considerably more common than you might initially imagine. An overwhelming majority of people when I first meet them either don’t realise I’m not American, or at the very least don’t realise I’m British. I think my voice is different enough from the British accents people have in films, that they don’t always place it for a few minutes.

  Either way it always catches people off-guard, even if they don’t always realise I’m from somewhere else, it doesn’t stop me from having trouble being understood when I first meet someone. Talking to people working retail is always a challenge; I’m never loud enough for them, for starters. As well as accent troubles, I’ve discovered there’s also a difference in volume between our two cultures that’s very hard for me to break through.

  My name gets messed up a lot in particular; after the fourth or fifth time of having someone at a fast food place shout “Selmen” or “Salmon” or something like that to notify me of my food being ready, I’ve since started telling them that my name is Frank. No matter what accent you say it in, nobody’s going to get Frank wrong.

  Even amongst the people that I live with, I sometimes see things getting lost in translation. I’ve had to change some of my speech patterns and phrases since being here. I talk a little bit slower now, I enunciate a bit more than I would at home, and I cut out what little British slang I did use. Even stuff like saying “High school” instead of “Secondary school” for example, just saves a 30 second detour from the conversation where I have to explain the difference between the two. Sometimes it can feel a little bit galling doing stuff like that, like I’m casting off the place that I came from in a way, but it’s the difference between an easy conversation and one where I have to double back on myself and explain my meaning every few seconds.

  Even ignoring cultural differences though, it can be hard to feel like I belong here sometimes (Not to go too depressive here, but I don’t want to shy away from anything this year entails.). The temporal nature of this year makes me kind of an outsider by definition. The people I’m with are going to continue getting to know each other for another four years, but I’ll be nothing but a memory to them soon. Sometimes I feel more like an extended visitor than someone that actually lives here. Who knows? Maybe that’s what I am.

  Understandably, I think about home a lot. Obviously I like where I am now, but sometimes I think about the year I could have had with the friends I already knew, and mourn its loss. Once, someone back home sent me pictures of my old flat together for someone’s birthday. It was a nice thought to include me, but ultimately it just made me sad that I wasn’t there with them, that I had chosen to abandon them in favour of adding yet more strangers to my life.

  I never used to think I’d get homesick, because I didn’t really used to in Norwich. But I also never accounted for the isolation you can feel when there’s just nobody around you that has quite the same reference points as you. I miss knowing people with the same views as me, I miss knowing people with the same upbringing as me, I miss simply knowing that I’ll be understood when I say something.

  Maybe I should have just made friends with international people, that’s what most other internationals do. That way, you’re not the only one that doesn’t always fit in; you all don’t fit in together. My view on that in the beginning though was that it was cheating; I wanted the real American experience. Now though, more and more I’m discovering that maybe not all those doors are open to me.

  Overall though, I find I’m still more than happy with my decisions. The people I know here are great, despite our differences, and my old life will be there in a few months; it’s not going anywhere. Meanwhile, my time here is limited, and there’s still so much more to do. In fact, I should probably get doing it.

  Until next time.
  Simon Flower

American Journal: The Afterparty

The next big event on the list was Quad Day. The main quad, which is huge by the way, was filled with booths advertising all the societies, clubs, and fraternities that the university had to offer.

  My first priority was to find something math related; I’d never really made any math friends back at UEA, almost everyone I knew was someone I’d lived with, so I wanted to see if I could change that this time around, especially as the people taking my courses would likely be old enough to buy me beer.

  Pushing through the throngs of people was hard going; it turns out a school with 50,000 people has its disadvantages from time to time. I reckon it must have taken me a good 10 minutes to get about 30 metres in, although I did keep lingering to try and read what each booth was advertising as I was going by. When I did eventually find the math club though, I discovered that it wasn’t exactly the kind of group I had originally been hoping for.

  The club meets once a week, during which rather than doing traditionally social activities together, they challenge each other to complete difficult math problems that they have spent their free time researching and/or creating in the week between their last meeting. Now obviously I like math, don’t get me wrong, but after a full week of math classes and math homework, the last thing want to do for fun is break out yet another equation. I had been expecting them to put on pizza nights and stuff, social opportunities, not this. I felt betrayed. Maybe there might have been some cool people waiting for me in that club, but the workload attached to meeting them sounded less like fun to me and more like cruel and unusual punishment.

  It took me over 2 hours to get all the way around the quad, during which time I collected a plethora of leaflets form such diverse groups as filmmaking club, African drumming club, concert production club, adventure club, chess club, Shakespeare club and many more. I was fairly sure this was more leaflets than I’d ever held in my life before, although a good half of them were from booths I decided I wasn’t interested in, but had taken anyway so I could get out conversations without it being too awkward. After a good look through all of the various things I had collected during my travels, I got rid of close to half of it on the spot. Even then, based on my previous experience with this stuff in the UK, I suspected it might actually be a miracle if I kept up with even one of the activities on the leaflets I had left.

  There was supposed to be this party thing outside of our accommodation later that day, though I think party was a bit of a misnomer really; in reality, they had just closed the dining hall and thrown a bunch of food stalls up right outside of the building instead. Basically if you wanted to eat that night without travelling for it, you had to go; so less of a party and more like a dining hall without chairs, or air conditioning for that matter.

  Forced or not though, I still didn’t have many friends to my name, so I thought it might be a good idea to turn up; plus, you know, I also wanted to eat that night. I asked Nick (who since discovering this blog has asked if he can henceforth be referred to within these pages as Handsome and Sexy Nick) if he was going, but sadly Handsome and Sexy (and delusional) Nick had other plans that night.

  Just as I was about to head down on my own however, Victor, the guy I had walked to the stadium with the previous day, put his head round my door on his way out and asked if I was going to the party. I didn’t know if this was just the American culture at work, but I was beginning to feel like the universe was beginning to take pity on my inability to initiate relationships with people. I quickly said that I was just about to head down if he was going, and a few minutes after that, we found ourselves in the queue to get food.

  Victor had been out with a few people on our floor the previous night, and he was telling me all about the experience. I did my best to use the opportunity to find out as much as I could about how to secure alcohol whilst I was here. Victor was quick to draft his friends over to help explain things to me, but this quickly devolved into them reminiscing to each other about the previous night’s adventures to each other. I stayed and listened for a while, but had nothing to contribute, so I eventually invented some food-related excuse to leave.

  Later though, whilst on a trip to the bathroom, I saw some of those guys sat down at the other end of the corridor, just hanging out and talking to each other. I wanted to join them but I just didn’t know if I was welcome or not, so naturally I did my best to avoid eye contact and stepped into the toilets without coming close to them. It turns out that those guys would be there a long time though, and somewhere around the third or fourth time this happened that night, one of them beckoned me over to say hi.

 I'm not the biggest talker at the best of times and this was no different, but on top of that a lot of the conversations, like talking about their ACT scores, or the football season this year, were on topics that I just couldn’t be a part of. It was still very interesting to listen to it all though, if not participate a huge amount. Although I knew I had lectures the next morning, I stayed sat in that corridor for way too long that night, trying to understand more so that I wouldn't always feel like such an alien.

  The next day was the beginning of class, and unlike in the UK, all of my lectures here start at 9:00am or 9:30am. I’m not a morning person by any stretch, and not getting the earliest night hadn’t helped the situation at all. Despite living on campus again this year, this place is so big that the walk to my first class was about as long as it would have been from my house in Norwich to UEA anyway. So as a consequence of my lack of preparation, I ended up being a little bit late to my first class.

  I would like to be able to blame my difficulty understanding anything that went on subsequently in that class on not being there for the beginning, but the reality was that it was just really hard. On top of that, I was not at all prepared for some of the differences in both teaching and mathematical notation between here and back home. I had been expecting a nice introductory lecture to help ease me into things, but this professor apparently had no such concern for my desire for an easy cultural and educational transition. I was immediately worried I was taking the wrong courses; so far it had been mathematical gibberish from start to finish.

  Fortunately though, I was soon offered a sharp contrast in the form of my intro-level German class a couple of hours later. I studied German for 6 years during secondary school, one of those years being at A-Level, but it’s been a while since then, and my A-Level year did not go incredibly, so I wasn’t really sure what level class would line up the best with my abilities. I decided to put myself in at the lowest level they had available, so that I would at least have the option to move up if I found things too easy, rather than picking a high level class and having to go the other way.

  So basically, I went in not knowing what to expect, and ended up spending the whole hour learning how to ask people their name. For those wondering, you say “Wie Heiβen Sie?” (Pronounced Vee hy-sen zee). There you go, you just learnt what we spent an entire hour doing. I just had gone from a lecture that had moved at a hundred miles an hour, to one that was moving at less than zero. Honestly, I was kind of loving it.

  That night, everyone was hanging out in the corridor again. I went to join them and discovered that they were talking about whether anyone had somehow already managed to miss a class so far. I laughed at the idea with everyone else for a few seconds, before it slowly began to dawn on me that I in fact actually had.

  Unlike my UK schedule which changed pattern wildly day by day, my US schedule is fairly uniform, beginning at around 9:00am and ending at around 2:00pm, except for this one class, which bizarrely began at 8:00pm every Monday. I had been done with classes for hours at this point, and the fact that this thing even existed completely slipped my mind. One day in and I was already doing spectacularly.

  I had picked all of my classes online; I hadn’t been given any specific requirements on what I had to take, other than I had to take at least 12 credit hours, and at least half of my total hours had to be maths classes. There hadn’t been a tonne of choice left by the time I got to the selection process though, so I had just ended up filing it with whatever available courses I could find. After a couple of days and having experienced all of my classes at least once, I decided to go and talk to a maths advisor to see if they would recommend me changing anything or not.

  The advisor I met with said I pretty much had free reign to study what I liked, and he recommended me trying to take some things I wouldn’t be able to find back home. I told him I had liked the sound of the Linear Programming course, but it had already been full by the time I tried to select it. The advisor however, immediately laughed off such trivial ideas like regulations, or classroom space, and granted me access to the course anyway.

  In return though, I needed to give up one of the other courses I was already taking to avoid going over the maximum hour limit of 18. Turns out it wasn’t a particularly hard decision; goodbye Mondays at 8:00pm, I’ll never need to forget to attend you again.

  With my courses now pretty much the way that I wanted them, classes went swimmingly for a good couple of days there, especially in German. I knew every answer to every question, I could pronounce everything correctly as soon as I heard it, and I never had trouble remembering anything I’d been taught. I had, of course, been taught it all before; nonetheless, the teacher seemed impressed with my ability and I felt like a genius every time I walked into the room. I knew really that I should ask to move up to a more difficult class, but it was such an easy way to kill 4 credit hours, and even easier GPA that I didn’t want to say anything.

  Sadly having it all wasn’t to last; about three classes in, the teacher handed everyone a form asking people why they had taken this class, what they hoped to get out of it, and how much experience they had had in German previously.

  I almost considered lying, but instead found myself being swiftly called in for a placement test. It was discovered that I should be in the next class up, but in a twist of fate, I couldn’t actually make my schedule work to take it, so they grudgingly allowed me to stay where I was.

  I kept getting to know the guys I’d met in the corridor better over the course of the week, and when Friday night finally rolled around, I was invited to go out drinking with them.

  Since knowing I was coming here, I had wondered how exactly the system works here for college students going out drinking. It turns out that things are not quite as glamourous as they are in the movies, or rather, even when they are, what they don’t show you is the enormous amount of distinctly non-glamourous prep-work that goes into getting there first.

  The basic idea behind going to a party here is to head out in a group with everyone on their phones texting everyone they know to see if during that person’s texting everyone they know, they managed to text someone who was texting someone who might know someone in a frat where a party is happening. It’s basically like playing Six Degrees of Frat Guy.

  During our trip, Victor got wind of a party via someone he used to go to elementary school with and we started heading over to where we thought it was. After we’d gotten about half-way into the suburbs, not only did we discover that we were in the wrong place, but the party wasn’t starting until 2:00am in the morning. We set back to walking again, and after another maybe half an hour, we managed to get a hold of someone in one of the group members' classes who was apparently at a party. But when we reached him and his friends, they were sat down on a street corner, for whatever reason not at the party they had previously spoken about. They slunk off to search a different corner of the earth after a few minutes, and we were left on our own again.

  Eventually we managed to get word that someone on our floor had a cousin in a frat that was throwing an apartment party, so we started to head over to the complex. To further complicate things, people were worried that they might not let in a group of 8 of us all at once, so we had to split the group up a little bit first. I don’t know why, but a guy called Jaime and I ended up being the frontrunners for the rest of the group. When we got to the right complex, we saw a group of people walking into an apartment with music playing and joined the back of them. We stepped in tentatively, trying to find any sign to either confirm or rebuke the idea that we were in the right place. But it was only once we got right into the centre of the room and saw that every single person in there besides us was of Asian descent, that we knew we definitely weren’t. Jaime and I, being respectively very Mexican and very British, were soon spotted by the organisers and asked exactly how we’d ended up here. We tried our best to explain the situation to them, and they seemed understanding enough whilst they were talking to us, but the slamming of the door once we were safely outside suggested otherwise.

  Once we figured out the party was actually 3 floors above the place we’d just been into, the rest of the group had all caught up again. At this point we just kind of abandoned the splitting up thing and all headed up together. After the previous incident I was weary, and tried to hang back a little; letting someone else go first should events repeat themselves, but this time my worries proved to be for nothing. We soon found the people we knew from our floor and before long we were headed to get drinks.

  As can probably be expected in a situation like this, the choice of alcohol was a bit more limited than it would be in a situation where you can just buy your own. As in, a lot more limited. As in, there were two choices. As in, you could have punch, which they bizarrely call Jungle Juice here, or light beer. Both were horrible, but that’s the price of it being free I guess.

  Nonetheless, we all tried our best to make the most of it, and some of us really did. Everyone I know here is in their first year, and so far I hadn’t really noticed any huge differences because of it, but I definitely did now. Just how drunk some people were managing to get off of the meagre contents of their red cups was quite surprising. Whilst waiting for the toilet, a random guy who was clearly gone starting talking to me and the guy next to me in the queue; saying how he loved it here so much and how he was definitely going to join the frat. I smiled and nodded my way through it all, and when he came and reintroduced himself to me about 20 minutes later, I did exactly the same.

  Despite the relative low tolerance in the room however, the alcohol still ran out way too quickly. I was left way more sober than I had intended to be. All was not lost though, as the afterparty that Victor had heard about at the beginning of our evening was finally close to beginning. It was all the way on the other side of campus however, which, as has been mentioned ad nauseam at this point, is huge.

  After walking for a few minutes, we stopped at a fast food place to take a quick break and renew our dedication to the cause. This turned out to be a mistake though, as by the time we actually got to the second party, they had already largely run out of alcohol too. Not that that would turn out to matter though, because after about 5 minutes of awkwardly standing around lamenting our own relative sobriety, suddenly there was a huge rush of people pushing frantically towards the exits. For a moment I had no idea what was going on, but as people went by, I heard urgent whispers passing from person to person, all with one word in common. “Cops.”

  I was instantly terrified. I had gathered this kind of thing was way more serious over here than it was back home. I had no idea what would happen to me if I was caught. I didn’t know what the terms on my visa were in instances like this either. I started scrambling for an exit as desperately as the rest of them.

  My friends had all disappeared; the currents within the crowd had scattered us, ripping apart all notions of solidarity with them. All I was trying to do was follow the people in front of me. I wasn’t sure if they had a plan of any kind, but it had to be better than the complete blank my utter lack of experience here was giving me.

  As we passed a door to the back garden, flashlights leered at us through the gaps in the fences and disembodied voices shouted commands. Now over the threshold of the house, the group in front broke right, away from the main way out where the cops were, and headed for a chain-link fence to scale and slip out unseen. I quickly followed suit, but after the first couple of guys made it over, I found myself waiting in a queue to escape as a couple of girls got very hopelessly stuck on the fence, and people had to start helping them over. Meanwhile, I was getting all the more impatient; I could see it wouldn’t be long before this spectacle attracted attention.

  As if on cue, a flashlight cast its beam over my shoulder and onto the fence. I looked for a place to turn but found none. As the cop approached I tried to think of something to say, an explanation of some kind, but I had nothing for what he said next.

  “You know you can just walk out the front gate like everyone else right? You don’t need to injure yourself climbing this thing.”

  It was the last thing I was expecting. No deportation, no arrest, not even a stern talking to about the dangers of alcohol. All the stories, all the panic and frantic rushing that had just occurred; it was all for nothing. All the cops were there to do was shut the party down. I was so stunned by this complete anti-climax that I nearly voiced my confusion out loud, but I couldn’t find the right words to do so.

  It took a few minutes, but by the time I had made it out and regrouped with my friends, a slow smile had started spreading across my face. A smile for one at how American that experience had just been. But more so, a smile at how stupid we all were, and how far we’d overreacted.

  There had been so much chaos and so much panic, but in the end, everything had turned out to be a lot less scary than it had originally seemed.

  I turned and looked at my friends, at everyone bonding over our shared experience. Whilst I did so

I thought about all the fears I had held prior to and even during coming here, and about all of the crazy horror stories and hardships people had warned me about, and realised the vast majority of it had proven to be unfounded. My life had gotten more interesting since being here, sure; but my worries about dropping out, or being all alone, or being culturally maligned had just been brought into perspective as the overreactions they truly were.

 I re-joined the others in conversation, and together we made our way back to a place that was beginning to feel a lot more like home.

  Until next time.