Yes, Yes, The Informal Formalities That Play Out in the Coffee House.

i enter the café, encouraged by its atmosphere that i might be able to work. within this space, this posited lounge of some other whom i will never quite know, i am a guest. i have not the instruments of procrastination that haunt me in my home. here i am freed from distraction, yet never alone—continually threatened by disturbance. why is it here, where i know not those who sit nearby, those who pass through with their awkward gestures, where i am curiously at ease? why not in my home, which i have been able to sculpt as i see fit?

upon entering i am confronted with a smile, a token or maybe not. i smile in return, and tentatively—for is one ever 100 per cent positive that their decision is the right one for that day?—order a coffee. the ballooning menu of hot beverages creates choices where really there are none; i make one and state it with a lingering doubt.

but, i am thrown! now is not the time, it's simply not the time!

'please take a seat and we'll have someone come over and take your order.'

you could not mistake the good will. the sincerity with which she spoke, the casual stretch of her arm towards the seating area. in here, so the story goes, you are to do nothing but relax—leave it to us, we'll take care of you.

an internal battle commences—it's against the nature of the humble western café dweller to drive such warm gestures into the corner of your mind which deals with doubt. here, once through the door, the contract has already begun: with the generous assumption that i have money, and will pay upon my departure, my contract includes not only coffee, but a service—i have an attendant. yet this gesture which apparently is for my benefit, constricts my ability to preside as is implied by my being posited aloft of the attendant, as the logic would suggest. am i really the one being waited on in this relationship? in my attempts to repress it, i find myself formulating a suspicion:

this café is teeming with bureaucrats.

having made the decision, my attempt to actualise the coffee had failed. i had wrongly attempted to subvert the order of things; i was put in my place, hurried through the door, towards the faces cast down examining salads, faces extracting narratives from words printed and bound, faces interlocked with more faces, smiles reflecting smiles, two dozen worlds hostile to invasion.

i weave. I sneak. i eschew eye contact. I try to ignore the perplexity arising like a mushroom cloud from the collective judgement of my audience. my sight becomes an instrument of dissection, cutting into available corners of space, measuring suitability, never hesitating in its mission, feeding information to my decision-making equipment which rejects, denounces, ridicules the offers to the bemusement of my audience, unable to continue until i have settled—'I NEED A POWER SOURCE!'

I did not scream these words out loud.

despondent, i resort to the guidance of the waiter, my attendant and friend, who tells me that 'there is a power source along the wall here. we oblige you to spend at least five pounds if you are to use it.'

the illusion of agency is threatened once again. the jovial way he slipped this new condition into the contract. my laptop has an nauseous battery, to which i sympathise; electricity is imperative. the waiter casually lists a few things on the menu, assuring me that this five pound lower limit will be surpassed naturally, in the general course of my stay. i need not even give it a thought.

yet, it was evidently necessary to bring this new stipulation to the fore.

there is something contradictory in the manner of the young gentleman. it seems, that is, it is assumed, that he is a person. he certainly looks like one. he claims to be my friend, in actions alone, defending me against the constraints imposed on my bill, whilst reinstating the need to conform to it. he is casual, yet formal; a man whom i can command, but to whom i am accountable.

i sit, amongst a medley of others, each here to achieve something, to appropriate this environment which is controlled spatially and temporally from above, where the coffee beans pile up and the cash register beeps; and, aware of the poised pencil and curious eyes, i am finally in a position to order.