Therapy night

April 1997

On Thursday nights I like to go down to the Biltmore Fashion Park to meet some friends of mine. The Biltmore Fashion Park is this lah-dee-dah type of outdoors mall where you can find all sorts of expesive crap you'll never be able to afford. For instance, there is plenty of stores with really expensive dresses that don't even have a price tag on them. I guess you just have to be surprised at the counter when you decide to buy it.

Anyhoo, my friends Richard and Steve and I can care less about all that. We rendezvous (sheesh, I just used a French word) at the Coffee Plantation there, which we dub the Coffee Damnation. We call it "Therapy Night." We hang out there and get to see all sorts of interesting weirdos who are deluding themselves into thinking that they are unique. You know, all these angst-ridden people who usually hang out at coffee houses.

But, that's not the point of going there. We just go there to have all sorts of fun and to act strangely. I guess in that respect it's therapeutic: to behave bizarrely without caring what people think about us. If we have a pen, we get a bunch of napkins and draw. We draw pictures of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, and all sorts of other naughty Communist dorks. We also draw pictures of people we don't like, and we attempt to draw My Neighbor Totoro. I usually buy my lemonade for the night (which has become expected) and Richard gets these weird sounding teas, like Cherry Splash. Sounds kinda gay, I think. Makes me kinda limp in the wrist when I drink it. The one downside to the Coffee Damnation on Thursday nights is that there is usually the same entertainer there each time we go. He's a sniveling little specimen with a guitar who whines and squeals when he sings. We can get sick of him fairly fast.

After we've tired ourselves of the Coffee Damnation, we wander over to Borders Books and Music. We can entertain ourselves for hours in there by finding all sorts of amusing books. Although I must admit that Richard and Steve are better at finding the truly weird books than I am. Eventually, we start to get way too goofy and we remove ourselves from the store so as not to offend too many people. We wander to the parking lot where we indulge ourselves in uninhibited goofballity until it starts to get too late and we need to go home.

Aren't coffee houses kinda spiffy? Even though I hate coffee, I like to go to coffee houses because I enjoy the atmosphere. There's a little place at the corner where I live called Java the Hutt. I just like the place because of its name. Sometimes I meet other friends there and spend time with them there. And there's usually better music being played there.

If you aren't into coffee houses, then that's perfectly understandable. There are some patrons that can be rather irritating to even look at. But, that's usually not the case. I've found that the best places to go are the smaller places. The big places like The Coffee Plantation and Starbucks are kinda trendy and can attract a lot of dumb people. But the smaller ones are a bit more cozy and are more of a friendly atmosphere.

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"Everyone's a secret nerd, everyone's a closet geek."--The Ramones
mail: greg -atsign- stevethefish -dot- net