mela

Everyone else in the café is drinking coffee and working on normal projects, or being young and giggling over high school puppy love secrets. I'm the one in the back, eating a sandwich, shedding breadcrumbs, and looking up monologues for middle schoolers on my 6-year-old, beat-up Macbook. While eavesdropping on the giggling high schoolers.

I'm aware that I'm not part of the fashionable crowd that is normally found haunting the wood-panelled corners and the polished tables of this place. The music is hurting my head--not in the sense that I don't like it, but that I do, I like Mumford and Florence and The Black Keys, it's all good, but I wouldn't be the first to admit it, because it's popular, and in realizing this, also realize that some of the younger patrons are probably subtly rolling their eyes at "Lover of the Light." The contrast between us may be that while they scoff at the establishment's attempt to be hip, when Mumford is "so 2012" and Foster the People is "way too mainstream, now," I consent that yes, these songs are overplayed, and my current music obsessions probably wouldn't be played over the speakers, but I can still enjoy these tunes. I'm a shy hipster, a Hipster Lite--big on taste, but with actual substance, you might say.

Yes, my skinny jeans still match the dark red of the paint on the walls, and my shirt is actually vintage (it was my mother's), but my taste is pretty damn cheap.

I'm not slick in real life. I'm the person who can't wear a smile on her face when I walk through the mall (seriously), but who cannot fidget with her purse, which is not stylish at all, by the way (what? I'm not a purse girl. I'm not a lot of gender-norm-qualifying-things girl), in an adroit manner. I'm not classy. I'm not sleek. I'm no tall drink of water (emphasis being on the height factor, there), if I'm a drink of anything. I'm not a complete drain on society, no, but in no way do I make it look good, by its definition, at least.

But for the first time in my life, I'm okay with this, because, with the exception of dealing with people at my job, I don't give a fuck what people think. Fuck gender norms. Fuck double standards, on everything. And as such, I am, for the most part, pretty joyful--I can take stock in what I feel are the truly important things in my life, and work towards being a better me, and vis-à-vis, a contributor to the betterment of humankind.

And so, my self-righteousness given a little boost, I continue to peruse Amazon for "Ten Plays for Middle School Performers," whilst inwardly scoffing at the teenage guy holding both his teenage girlfriend's hands over their iced coffees (they do that here? God, please don't turn into Starbucks), and I think, I'm not better than them, but I'm okay with myself, so psh. I don't know what point I was trying to make there.

Dear Society: I'm still here. I'm partially your fault. You're welcome.