By. Sara Rowe

Sometimes, you find things you’re not looking for and it turns into your whole life.  So, it was my birthday. I’m alone, at this coffee shop.  Had bought a bunch of gifts for myself which is still causing me to tear up when I check my bank account.

I start asking the barista about my stupid lost phone.  And the Army Grave Digger who returned it.  She says he hasn’t been back since.  I say, no shit.  He used to be a regular and now he knows better than to show his thieving face.​

Only one guy was sitting at the bar.  About 15 conventioneers swarmed the other side of the bar.  The guy later explains how we met.  He  said, “​ ​I​ ordered a Jameson neat and you made googley eyes at me​.​​.​.real recognizes real, and you moved stools quickly.”  The bartender’s birthday was in a week, and the guy at the bar says his coming up soon too.  We all agreed, people get freaky in the fall.  Our parents did.

I put all my baggage onto the corner stool between us, he’s on one side of the corner and I’m facing the bar, or swiveling in circles or leaning in to bitch about the yuppies.  Can you become instant friends with someone?  I say sure, why not.  Yet, I abhor having to think, “I’m not going to leave your room until i get a written STI letter of recommendation from your doctor.”

Later on, on Sunday, I met Betty.  She was 86 years old and asked me for a dollar.  I showed her some bruises on my arms from falling around drunk over the weekend.  ​He tried to steady me.  He’s always stronger than me.  He said, “You don’t gotta be so tough..but I wanna fuck you anyway.”

After we exchanged pleasantries, I asked Betty where she was from.  Betty says, “New Orleans.”  I could hear the port-city lingering in her speech.  Then Betty says, and goes on to repeat, “Be careful.  Of men.”  She told another woman the same thing in the past.  Betty’s friend was sent to jail because she got tangled up with some criminal.

I told Betty I’d be back because I had to fix my phone.  I never did walk back there.

Inevitably,  we have these exchanges with human beings in a city that’s like a small town.  I meet new people when I feel like it.  Usually it’s when I’m venerable.  Most of my buddies are across the country, not immediately next to me.

Heraclitus said, “the only constant is change.”  I had to google that one, it just makes sense and I’ve repeated it in my head quite a bit.  The town I’m from changed.  I changed.  Things don’t fit together chronologically to me sometimes, and the streets that once looked familiar can turn into a circus of revolving lobbyists or immigrants or whomever.  Making out with him on the church steps made my week.