The French Press

It just so happened that I was a little more eager than usual to make my coffee that morning. Although I’m not sure if I could tell you how much more eager, I’m usually pretty excited to make coffee when I get out of bed. Before you go pick up your picket signs, yes I know you’re not supposed to drink coffee first thing in the morning; all that crap about waiting until noon to have your coffee--they say it has to do something with your natural cortisol levels or what have you. Apparently you’re supposed to drink a whole bunch of water first to get your hormones in check, but if you ask me, I’d say there are way too many people out there with nothing better to do than to tell you when to drink your goddamn coffee.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a whole slew of reasons you’re not supposed to drink coffee in the first place, believe me, I’ve heard them all. I mean, hell, I would know, I’ve probably tried to kick the habit more times than anyone I know; practically every time I have a coffee I want to quit the stuff forever. I tried drinking tea a while ago (terrible idea by the way; people should have left those horrid leaves on their stems where they belong), then I tried energy drinks, caffeine pills and caffeine gum, but I always end up back on that black liquid in some way or another. It’s just too ingrained, too ritualistic to get away from. As soon as you’ve got a couple of pieces of caffeine gum under your tongue feeling confident for once, you turn a corner and there’s a 16-foot coffee bean mascot plastered on a billboard smiling you down from across the street. No--it’s impossible.

I even tried some of the serious stuff like straight caffeine powder from Amazon. I swear you really can get anything on Amazon nowadays; I’d be shocked if they didn’t start selling entire reams of acid for 20 bucks a pop in the next five years. Hell, it’s Amazon that got me into this freaking mess in the first place, I mean if they hadn’t tried to shove this ungodly Chinese French press for $6.99 down my throat on Cyber Monday then I wouldn’t be in the scenario I’m right now--but hold on, let me backtrack a bit, I’m getting too worked up already.

Right, so there I was, excited to start my morning with some god-awful coffee and an even worse newsfeed. I swear my phone ran out of interesting things to show me the day I got it. Always just more useless trash about some new celebrity marriage or a new COVID variant or some blasphemous permutation of the two--at this point my life has become a constant river of this garbage; I’m just led by the nose downstream to whatever piece of dreadful click-bait porn grabs my attention the fastest and can keep it the longest.

If it were better coffee at least, I would’ve taken my time making it. I don’t mind taking my time with these things. I used to buy pretty nice coffee actually, the type that comes in a fancy bag with gold lettering and what not. But after a year or so of spending half my paycheck each month on $16 bags of designer coffee, I figured I’d had enough. What’s with those fancy coffee brands anyway? They’ve always got some preppy name that makes it sound like their coffee hasn’t just been pulled out of the ground by an 11-year-old in Africa, I mean for god sake just call it what it is. But that’s another story.

Now that I buy the cheap stuff, it’s better just to get it over with; hold your nose, guzzle it down while no one’s looking, and pretend like you didn’t just consume enough caffeine to fuel a small jet engine.

But the point is that it wasn’t nice coffee, I was eager to get it out of the way, and I didn’t take my time. So after boiling some tap water in a pot that I’m sure still had bits of ramen noodle stuck to the sides and scooping the dusty excuse for ground coffee into the French press, I was ready to get it over with and move on with my day.

Lets talk about this French press for a second here--I ordered it on Tuesday morning at around 1:30 AM, praying desperately to whatever deity I believed in that it was still Cyber Monday somewhere in the States, and it arrived 18 hours later on my doorstep ready to use. I mean you have to hand it to them; they’re almost better than Dominoes at this point with the delivery times. But I only bought it because it was technically still Cyber Monday in Hawaii and my coffee machine practically exploded the day before when I tried to pour half-and-half directly into the damn thing. Thank God it was half-and-half and not creamer, otherwise I probably wouldn’t even have an address for the new one to get delivered to. But I mean come on, have you even ever heard of a $6.99 French Press before? I even had a 30-day warranty and guarantee of satisfaction--it’s like they gave it to me.

So staring at the little Ikea-esque instruction booklet it came with, I figured I should test it out first. But before pouring the water into the carafe, I put the top on, and twisted the lid a quarter-circle. I had never heard of a French press where you had twist the lid first, but hey, it must’ve been some of that new-wave foodie s**t.

Finally I pushed the plunger down until the knob was completely flush with the lid, and I think the sheer suction force of the closing seal pulled my hand right into the freaking main chamber. I mean I definitely pushed the knob a little too hard in retrospect, but who knew a whole freaking hand could fit in there? It didn’t seem physically possible at all--one moment I was pushing down on the plunger and the next, my hand was practically filling the entire carafe. I swear it was like something straight out of a cartoon; my hand was comically expanded to the size of a grapefruit inside that thing.

After a thirty minutes or so of some combination of twisting, pulling, and cursing for the life of me at this French press, it somehow found its way on even tighter--I mean at that point it looked like it was trying to eat my whole forearm. So I do what any sane person would do, and I start hitting my hand against the countertop trying to smash the damn thing off. But it turns out this thing must be made of solid crystal or something, because I actually start making dents in my countertop after a while.

The whole situation was pretty fantastic actually--there I am standing almost fully naked in my kitchen with water boiling over on the stovetop and my hand caught inside some kind of mutant French press; I would think it were pretty hilarious if it were anyone else but me.

But at this point my headache starts acting up and I can not be less amused by my current predicament; it’s almost ten and I haven’t even had my coffee yet this morning, plus I have to go pick up my laundry from the place across town. And coffee withdrawal headaches are the worst type of headaches. It’s like having a hangover without even getting the fun of drinking alcohol first. Instead what you get are the worst parts of feeling sick without any of the good parts: you don’t get any pity, and nobody feels bad for you. You did this to yourself; you’re on your own this time. I mean it’s practically karma taking on a physical form.

And oh boy was my karma was getting me back big time. I had managed to turn the boiler off, but there was no way of getting this thing off my wrist. And then as if things weren’t already bad enough, my phone starts going off in the middle of all of this, and at this point I’m ready to smash my phone to pieces, but before I can even get to throwing it across the room, I knock into the handle of the pot of water on the stove and it spills all over the table, completely soaking my phone in the process.

I mean things just can’t get any better today can they. With this phone, there’s no coming back from that--the thing’s practically an ancient relic. Trust me, I’m not the type to upgrade my phone every other year; it has definitely seen better days.

To be completely honest, I don’t see why you need to ever upgrade a phone; the thing is constantly downloading who knows what, collecting as much information as possible on you to sell to the highest bidder. If you ask me, it should be an all out war with your phone; it’s basically trying to kill you at all times--my phone and I are like enemies locked in mortal combat. Why would I ever want to help it? If that thing’s going to try and kill me, then I’m going to try and kill it first. The only reason I haven’t preemptively smashed it into a thousand pieces yet is that I actually like the thing sometimes.

I tried drying it and getting it to work, but it was long gone; wouldn’t even turn on. I guess it took an entire pot of boiling water to finally put an end to that murderous thing--better late than never I say.

But I had two other problems on my hands--my hand was still stuck with no sign of coming loose, and more importantly, I was nowhere near to getting a cup of coffee before noon today. I had pretty much already come to peace with this new glove situation, but no caffeine is a real problem for me. So after a while of frantically trying to get my old coffee machine back up and running, I figured it was time to cut my losses and just go pick up a coffee on my way across town.

The thing about buying coffee is that there are usually way too many choices at any given moment. I guess I mean to say that the thing about choices is that there are way too many of them--it’s borderline paralyzing. Twelve different sizes and an endless combination of flavorings, I mean, why would I ever want a small coffee? And what is a macchiato anyway? Sometimes I swear they make this stuff up on the fly to get you to buy more of it.

I like getting coffee from someplace that’ll make it plain without any of that useless extra stuff: gas stations, convenience stores, those kinds of places. Real unpretentious stuff. I don’t care what you do to it, I just need my caffeine in an at least semi-drinkable form; I can’t stand those places that try to make it a whole ordeal out of it--who cares what my name is, no I don’t want whipped cream in my coffee, no I don’t want to donate an extra dollar to feed homeless children in Algeria.

I mean usually I can avoid all the hassle of even finding a place by just making my own coffee, but apparently I can’t even do that much today. Hell, I couldn’t even fit my arm through its sleeve with this bear trap attached to my hand. But by some small miracle I make my way out the front door and start on my way to the nearest place that will sell me coffee without having to take my blood type first.

It’s a shame I couldn’t get my shirt on all the way because as soon as I step outside I’m greeted with snowflakes practically as large as dinner plates falling on my bare chest and shoulder. And so naturally I find myself walking at a way faster pace than I usually do. I’m usually a pretty slow walker--to tell you the truth, most people walk too fast nowadays. What’s the rush? Where is everyone off to?

Walking down the street, you’d think that everyone’s got the most important date in the world to get to. At this point I’m practically afraid to walk on the sidewalk; it’s probably safer to walk opposite traffic then walk alongside some of these maniacs. They’d run you over without a second thought--no, I’ll take my chances walking on the shoulder thank you very much.

I like to take my time walking places; it’s the only way that you can savor all the small things. Things that you’d miss if you weren’t trying to see them. For example, if I were walking any faster, I wouldn’t have noticed the snow accumulating in those nice thin layers on the tops of cars and lamp posts. It was like a fresh coat of white paint, erasing all the usual grime and scuffmarks that cover everything in this city. Kind of like giving someone a fresh start--new beginnings, you know?

But this kind of early snowfall is the only nice part about winter in the city; after this, the snow starts building up everywhere, and before you know it, snowplows are shoveling massive quantities of black sludge onto the curb. It’s pretty disgusting. You’d never think about how much exhaust and dirt you’re breathing in on a daily basis, but when the stuff gets all caught up in the snow and is staring you right in the face at every street corner, it’s pretty hard to ignore.

But pedestrians will ignore practically everything nowadays--not a single thought is given to anything aside from their phone and the five feet of sidewalk directly in front of them. Not that people are listening to each other either, honestly I’d be surprised if people were able to hear their own thoughts the way they keep their headphones in all the time. Maybe it just bugs me about how plugged in everyone is--I mean it’s like if you can’t be seated at your computer and you absolutely have to go outside, you might as well have your eyes and ears plugged as you run to the nearest café to open your laptop back up.

But this was the one time I was actually glad no one was taking note of me as I walked along the curb; I must’ve looked like a real vagrant. Aside from the fact that all my clothing was soaked from the snow, there I was with my entire right torso bare-naked, both shoes half-untied, and a French press attached to my entire hand and wrist, still halfway full of dry ground coffee. I mean I’m surprised I wasn’t stopped by a police officer at that point; I had almost broken into a light jog too by the time I reached the nearest gas station for some coffee.

Maybe it was the lack of caffeine in me at this point giving me the shakes, maybe it was my shivering, or maybe it was the fact that I still had this contraption stuck on my hand, but walking down the isles looking for the coffee machine, I must’ve knocked over at least four or five boxes and jars off the shelves. It wasn’t like I was trying to knock the s**t over, I guess your brain just gets used to a certain amount of space that your hand takes up; when it suddenly takes up around five times the space it’s a little bit hard for the brain to readjust.

I really didn’t feel all that bad about knocking some of this stuff over--a lot of this stuff really deserves to be on the ground. I mean honestly, who goes to a gas station looking to buy a box of cotton-candy-flavored cake mix? If you stop for gas and decide to buy some of this stuff while you’re at it, listen, I get it. Everyone’s got their tastes. But I swear people come in here just for the stuff like this--I’d be surprised if they even owned cars in the first place.

So there I am knocking into piles of month-old oranges and arrangements of canned cream-of-mushroom soup left and right when someone finally decides to stop me. I mean it’s about time someone took note of me; I’ve been trouncing around this store for fifteen minutes and not a single person has stopped to ask themselves if it’s normal for a fully-grown man to walk around half-naked with a French press stuck around his wrist. I swear some people just lack common sense nowadays.

But before the shop attendant can get a word out, I decide all of a sudden that I really don’t care what he has to say to me--I came in here for coffee, and goddammit I’m going to get it before some lowlife feels entitled to comment on the unfortunate nature of my current predicament. Normally I would’ve waited for him to talk too, I really would’ve, but I mean this guy was standing there absolutely dumbfounded. And I gave the guy ample time to say something too; when he was still standing there two minutes later staring me up and down, I had no other choice but to cut him off--we could’ve been there all day, and I had a long list of things to do today other than get stared at like some sideshow freak. “Excuse me sir, do you know where the coffee is?”

“Umm, sure. So you want like... ready-made coffee? Or ground coffee?” He waved his hands in some nondescript motion, pointing to somewhere near the front of the store. This was proving to be even more useless than I had thought; at this point I was better off finding it by myself. People need to be way more concise--I had asked the man a very simple question. Actually, as far as questions go, it was about as simple as they get.

You can’t ask someone something nowadays without getting two or three questions fired right back at you like it were some game show or something. Most of the time they’re not even relevant questions either. I mean the guy could’ve asked me a million reasonable, valid questions I would’ve been more than happy to answer: Why in God’s name are you wearing a French press on your hand? Why the hell are you knocking down every other item on our shelves?

See, if he asked me something of substance like that, I would’ve simply explained to him how I had rushed making coffee this morning and accidentally got my hand sucked into this French press, or that my brain was no longer accustomed to the size of the newly acquired appendage at the end of my right arm.

But I had no time for questions like his right now. Why would someone with their hand quite visibly trapped in a French press be asking for ground coffee? I mean was this guy blind? And couldn’t he tell from the size of my pupils and my noticeable shakiness that I was obviously exhibiting all the telltale signs of caffeine withdrawal--of course I want ready-made coffee. If I were him, I would be terrified. You can never tell what a coffee addict will do next. Very unpredictable bunch of people.

To add insult to injury, the guy managed to drag out what should have been a very simple three-word answer into a dreary pile of garbage--why does every person on earth feel the need to stick ‘umm’ and ‘like’ between every other word? It’s like they can’t say something without giving you the entire set of mental processes that led them there--I mean the words coming out of their mouths are barely, and I mean just barely, keeping ahead of their thoughts. If you’d ask me, I’d say we should all wear shock collars that go off if you start to blurt out an ‘umm’ or ‘like.’ That’d teach everyone to think a little before they say something.

Despite how much I would’ve liked to, I figured there was no way I was getting a shock collar on this guy right there and then, so I just ignored him altogether. Instead I went out to find some of this ‘ready-made’ coffee he wouldn’t shut up about.

But my brief conversation with the shop clerk must’ve been louder than I had thought, because as I walked to the front of the store I started attracting a lot more stares than I had before. Luckily, I saw the coffee machine on the counter by one of the check out counters. I hadn’t given it much thought until now, but I could already tell it was going to be a scene. If I couldn’t make myself coffee this morning with two hands, what made me think I could somehow make coffee with one? And the stares from half the store weren’t helping either--I don’t work well under pressure.

It should’ve been easy. All I had to do was put a cup under the spigot and press the lever down; a toddler should’ve been able to do it. I mean I don’t know why a toddler would be pouring itself coffee at a gas station at three in the afternoon on a Tuesday, let alone why a toddler would be drinking coffee in the first place. You know what, scrap the metaphor--it was easy enough to make myself coffee.

The problem is that I was never one of those ambidextrous-types. I mean I’m not just better with my right hand, the thing is that I’m actually bad at using my left hand. If ambidextrousness were a scale, then I would be all the way at the one-or- the-other side. Never really was any good at using my left hand for just about anything, it’s why I never picked up any instruments. I don’t get those real artsy types that can write with both hands or play the piano real well; some people are just born a little luckier than others I guess.

So for most people, having their right hand stuck wouldn’t be much of an issue, but for me, it’s practically a death sentence. Me using my left hand to do something is basically like using my foot--have you ever tried pouring boiling coffee with your foot before? I didn’t think so.

So with half the store staring daggers at me, you can see why I was getting a little bit of stage freight. And that says a lot actually; I’m usually pretty good under pressure. You can tell a lot about a person based on how they operate under pressure. You’ve got to have a rock solid disposition nowadays--there’s no room in this world for softies anymore. I for one am always prepared; anything and everything can and will happen if you turn your back for a single second. But most people aren’t like me; they expect everything to happen by the books. Life should unfold exactly according to the plan; the moment anything deviates in the slightest, all hell breaks loose.

Me, I thrive in those kinds of situations. Problem is that I’ve usually got two hands to deal with. So you can say that I was a little out of my league, I’ll give you that much. But if you think that I was going to let some freakishly hungry French press get in my way, you’d be mistaken. I always love a good challenge, and this time it would have to be one hell of a tour de force.

So I gave the machine a good once-over first; you can never tell with these things if they’re almost empty or practically ready to explode. Luckily it seemed around half-full, and we were all ready to go. Pulling a cup from the stack however, seemed to be a bigger challenge than I had expected--I just don’t know why they have to stack the cups so close together all the damn time; it’s like they come out of the machine all stuck together in one big column.

It didn’t help that the entire store was watching me fumble with this stack of cups, I mean with the amount of sweat that was coming out of my fingertips I’m surprised I could even get a grip on anything, let alone the lip of one of these cups. And given the amount I was shaking from caffeine withdrawal at this point, there was almost no chance I was getting a cup out.

After about five minutes of this torture I just decided to get out of there and cut my losses. Quit while you’re ahead, I always say. Not that I was really ahead in anything, but it could’ve gotten a lot worse from there. I figure I’d just save myself the embarrassment. I mean I was about to start using my teeth, and while I was pretty certain it would’ve worked too, I wasn’t about to fall face-first into the counter in front of half a dozen people just to prove a point.

And usually I don’t get so frustrated at moments like this, but for some reason this whole place was just starting to tick me off. I mean I wouldn’t have been so angry if a single person had offered to help me--how hard is it to ask if someone needs a hand? I swear people these days would rather stare and watch you get mugged at knifepoint in the street than do anything about it.

I left feeling about ten times then worse as when I walked in. At this point, the snow was really picking up--you know fall is well and gone when the snow starts sticking to the asphalt in the street. That’s a sure sign of fully blown winter. The point of no return. And it didn’t help either that winter is my least favorite season. But the worst part was, I wasn’t at all closer to getting a cup of coffee. Thank God I was reaching a bit of a plateau on my withdrawal symptoms; at least the headache wasn’t getting any worse than it already was. I swear these symptoms usually get exponentially worse. The first hour or two without coffee isn’t so terrible, but four, five hours out, it’s a whole other ballgame. Palpitations, sweats, the whole deal.

I was just about ready to skip out on the coffee altogether when I thought better of it. It’s a risky game skipping the coffee altogether you know. Anything could happen--you feel fine one moment and can practically drop dead the next, and I wasn’t ready to take that risk just yet. So I figured I’d start in the direction of the Laundromat and just buy a cup of coffee from one of those street carts on the way there to avoid another situation like before.

It’s a rule that I never eat at those street carts though. I’ve heard some pretty bad horror stories about them; you never really know what they’re putting in that stuff. It’s safer just to avoid them altogether. But hey, if that’s the only way I’m going to get coffee today, I’ll take my chances.

That’s another problem I’ve got with people--they don’t take chances anymore. When was the last time you saw someone taking a real risk? You know, someone risking it all; putting it all on the line. Not that getting coffee at a halal cart is putting it all on the line, but you get the gist. I think most people are playing it way too safe these days; they play it way too close to the chest. And I’m not talking about risk-taking just for the point of risk-taking here; something like going to Vegas and putting it all on red. No, there’s no point to risks like that. I’m talking big, grand gestures--the kind of stuff you only see nowadays in movies and old novels: following someone across the country for love, using all your savings to go travel the world, quitting a dead-end job to follow a true passion, you know, things of that nature.

That’s what really matters in this crazy world at the end of the day--you’d never know you’re really living until you take a risk like that. Otherwise you’re just standing around twiddling your thumbs, waiting for something to happen to you. The problem is it never will. I mean, do people even realize that they’re living such terrible, boring lives? Things don’t just happen to people out of nowhere; you’ve got to take some initiative if you want to make it in this world.

Here, I’ve got a good example. I had this friend who wanted to be a professional golfer for the longest time. Personally, I can’t stand the sight of golf, I think it’s boring as all hell, but the guy was practically a prodigy--I don’t think he ever batted sub-par or however the terminology goes. But anyway the guy figured he couldn’t make any money, and now he’s an accountant. I don’t even know if he plays golf anymore--probably just gave it all up to collect watches or ties or something like that. But that’s not the point I’m trying to make here; if that’s what he really wants to do, then I’m sure he’s happy. But I know the guy, or at least I used to know him. He always hated math. You’ve got to make a living somehow, but isn’t there anything worth taking a risk for these days?

Or take my other friend for example. The guy fell madly in love with this girl in college: they met one night at some party or other and started dating right off the bat; if you believe in it, it was clearly love at first sight. They did everything together, basically inseparable for four years. I mean they were made for each other. And it’s not like they kept it a secret either, everyone knew he was going to propose any day; we were all waiting for it. Personally, I would’ve bet my entire life savings I was so sure of it.

But graduation comes and goes and he never does: she moves back to California or Utah or wherever she was from, and he gets some cushy job in New Jersey selling natural gas futures or something useless like that. I don’t think they ever saw each other again, and not because anything bad ever happened between them either, it was just how it happened to play out. I don’t even think he’s married these days; he probably couldn’t stop thinking about her. If you’d ask me, I think the guy just let his whole life slip through his fingers. And it’s really a shame too; you don’t come across people like that every day.

But to be honest I don’t blame the guy--people always talk about once-in-a- lifetime experiences, but how do you really know something won’t just happen again tomorrow? How did my friend know that he wouldn’t meet someone just as perfect for him? There’s got to be some kind of sixth sense for that kind of stuff. But if that were true then I definitely wouldn’t have it--frankly speaking, I’m pretty bad at reading people and situations. For me, it’s always a guessing game with other people. I know you’re supposed to pick up on body language and vocal cues and all that, but I think I must’ve missed that lesson in kindergarten. I can barely tell the difference between a person coming in for a hug and someone ready to sock me square in the face.

Walking back along the sidewalk, now also having to trudge through two and a half inches of snow, I was feeling particularly bad about my lack of social skill. I mean that was a pretty embarrassing showing at the gas station; I felt like I read everyone completely wrong. What was wrong with me? Couldn’t I just have one normal interaction with someone today? I looked down at the French press still on my wrist, rubbing it slightly with my free hand. It was because of this damn thing I had to go in that store in the first place. I mean if I had just been able to make coffee correctly this morning, I’d have my phone, my clothes on straight, and most importantly, I would’ve had around three cups of coffee in me right about now.

Instead, there I was drenched to the bone, trudging through now three inches of snow half-naked with no phone, no ability to use my right hand, and no coffee. To make matters worse, I had just made a complete fool of myself in front of about half a dozen people. And not that I usually care about these things, but with everything that’d happened today, I must’ve been extra sensitive to these kinds of things.

I was just about done feeling sorry for myself when I noticed my headache start to get worse again. I mean it was really starting to get worse, too. I used to get migraines pretty bad when I was younger, and it felt a little bit like one of those. You ever had a migraine? Feels like someone’s coming at your head with a chopping axe and a sledgehammer rolled into one. Luckily it wasn’t that bad just yet, I figured I probably had at least an hour or so before it got too unbearable.

It always takes some kind of tragedy to realize you’ve got a problem on your hands. Addiction, illness, family issues, those kinds of things. People like to let their problems simmer under the surface. You ever see an alcoholic stop himself on his third drink of the day and wonder if he’s an alcoholic? It’s always takes until the tenth or twelfth when he’s wandering the streets naked screaming at cops until he starts thinking he may have an issue. And once he realizes he’s got a problem, he just chalks it up to coincidence or bad luck or something like that; the drinking is the last thing that could’ve caused it. I think it’s called the sloth fallacy or something like that, go look it up.

Or have you ever read those accounts of people who’ve attempted suicide? Now those are scary--they only realize they may’ve fucked up after they’ve jumped off the bridge. The moment their feet leave the railing they regret it all. I mean you can’t blame them, most people have their blinders on all the time--it’s just human nature I guess.

In my case, this headache was making me resent my coffee addiction and just about everything else that had led me into this crazy situation in the first place. I looked down at my right arm. It was all this thing’s fault. I just had to buy a French press off of Amazon, didn’t I? I couldn’t at least have just drunk instant coffee until my old machine started working again? No, instead I had to get swindled into buying a French press for $6.99 just because some billionaire somewhere made up a holiday just to get idiots like me to buy their useless junk from China. If it weren’t for them then I would’ve had a perfectly normal day starting with a perfectly good cup of coffee this morning.

I rubbed the side of the glass instinctively and thought about ways that I could get this thing off of my hand. I can get pretty creative in a pinch you know. I thought of just about every way to pull, break, melt or freeze this thing off. At some point I actually started having fun thinking about different ways I could approach it. In retrospect, I bet a big vat of hydrofluoric acid would’ve done the trick--that stuff will dissolve pretty much anything. Glass would’ve been light work. But you’re probably thinking, why didn’t I just go to the hospital; I’m sure someone there could’ve easily gotten it off for you. But believe me, the last thing on my mind was walking into a hospital. I mean I wanted the thing off badly, but nowhere near that badly.

Have you ever even been in a hospital? The place is practically a breeding ground for disease. It’s pretty gross. Especially nowadays, these hospitals are like test tubes for new viral strains. Hundreds of rooms filled with half-brain-dead zombies ready to infect you with every disease you can imagine. You go in there with one problem and no doubt walk out of there with two-dozen more.

And that’s if you can even walk out of there alive. Half of the time people go in with some small problem and they end up dead less than 36 hours later. The doctors start running all kinds of tests on you, CT scans, MRI scans, X-ray scans, I mean these guys will blast you with every type of radioactive particle there is just to make a quick buck. And I don’t even know what they charge for something like that, but I’m sure it’s a lot. So of course after running every test in the book, they finally find something wrong with you that of course isn’t what you came in for, and all of a sudden you end up being treated for brain cancer when you came in for a toothache.

Not to mention how confusing they make those places. I swear they purposefully build hospitals to be like labyrinths--the longer they can keep you trapped in there, the more money they can squeeze out of your insurer. One wrong turn from the entrance and suddenly you’re trapped in the pediatric oncology suite where some nurse grabs you from the hall and strings you up to a bunch of chemotherapy drugs while you’re still wondering where the bathroom is.

If you don’t come out of the hospital with half a dozen new diagnoses, or you don’t die in the process, you’ll end up absolutely bat-s**t insane. And I don’t blame people for losing it in there either--I mean between the maze of hallways and cocktail of psychoactive drugs they’re probably pumping you with, there’s also just no windows in there. You can’t ever tell what time of day it is. After a couple of days, your circadian rhythm gets all out of whack, you lose all sense of time, and the next thing you know, you’re stuck in there for life. It’s like something straight out of a nightmare; I don’t know how someone in their right mind would willingly walk into one of those places.

So going into a hospital for something as straightforward as this was definitely a no. But at this point I was pretty desperate to get this thing off of my arm. Just looking at it made me sick. And since this morning it had seemed to move slowly up my arm, steadily engulfing more and more of my wrist and forearm, so I was eager to get it off as soon as possible. At any rate I was sure this thing would grow a head and start talking to me.

I was so distracted by it walking down the street that I almost completely crashed into a homeless man sitting on the side of the curb. To be fair, he was almost half-buried in a thick coat of snow; even if I was paying attention, I’m not sure if I would’ve noticed him. I was looking pretty bad as it was, but I mean this guy made me look like I was a million bucks. He was wearing some sorry excuse for a shirt, nothing more than a couple of badly shredded rags really, a pair of badly worn pants, and he didn’t have any shoes or gloves on either.

I would’ve felt bad for him too if I wasn’t already used to seeing a homeless person on every other street corner. If you ask me, you can only feel bad for so many people at once. I’ve got a limited amount of empathy I can use at any given moment, and to spend it on every homeless person I pass by on the street would be impossible. It’s a real shame, but it’s the truth.

I mean most people won’t even touch the homeless with a forty-foot pole. They’d rather cross the street than even make eye contact with one. I think that’s another reason people are so glued to their phones. If you’ve got a screen to look at, then it’s easy to walk straight by and pretend like you don’t see them at all. I bet homeless people hate smartphones. But if you don’t have one, then the only thing to do is pretend like you’re deaf and you don’t hear them, or worse, tell them you don’t have any money, which is obviously also a lie.

I try to do my part, I really do. I give money to homeless people that ask me, but after passing a certain number of beggars per day, there has to be a point where I stop giving and just start passing them by. Otherwise I’d be flat broke. But how are you supposed to decide which homeless people to give to and which to ignore? Are some just better than asking for money than others? Do some homeless people look more homeless than others? I don’t know who gets to decide those things, but sometimes it keeps me up at night.

But anyway, when I say I almost completely crashed into this guy, I mean I did actually crash into him. By the time I noticed him sitting there it was already way too late--I was mid stride, head down, hands swinging full speed; a head-on collision was unavoidable. Brace for impact. And it was really head-on; usually these guys sit along a building or somewhere perpendicular to the street, but this guy was sitting cross-legged directly facing the direction of traffic. Luckily, after I stepped and tripped on the guy’s legs, I flew straight over his head, somehow managing to not knee him in the face on my way. I don’t know how fast I was walking at that point, but it must’ve been pretty fast, because by the time I landed I was a couple of feet away from him, plus a fair amount of skidding on the sidewalk once I hit the ground.

It reminded me of when kids kneel behind someone to topple them over, except it way less cute. It was a miracle I didn’t kill the guy. I mean I was already thinking about how the city would have to hire me a public defense lawyer for my trial, and I couldn’t help but think how s****y those guys usually were. I’d been there before too--you’d think that the best lawyers would be able to work for free in this country, trying to save the little guy, but somehow people like me always get stuck with some kind of burnt-out piece of garbage that couldn’t care less about your defense. So by the time my face hit the ground, I was just hoping they didn’t stick me in a cell for the rest of my life for killing this guy.

But thankfully I think the snow must have provided some kind of cushioning, because when I turned around to look at the guy, he looked about ten times better than I did. I mean my face was all bloodied-up, I had scratches all over my arms and shoulders, and my shirt had completely ripped off. I’m pretty sure I had broken a bone somewhere in my body too. But he was still sitting there as still as a monk or something. I had to give it to this guy; he was cool. Honestly, the more I stared at him, the more he actually started to look like one of those ancient rabbis you see all over the posters in Brooklyn.

I mean that’s what this guy reminded me of. He had short white hair and a long beard that practically stretched down to his lap. But what was really weird was that the guy’s eyes were closed like he were sleeping or something. As I got closer I noticed he wasn’t even shivering. For a second I actually thought I had killed him, and as I stood there for a second debating on whether or not to run, I noticed the slow rise and fall of his chest--I was safe.

“Are you okay?” I asked the guy to no response. I asked him again, even gently shaking his shoulders to try and get something out of him. After a bit of this I figured he wasn’t going anywhere, so I took a moment to dust myself off, and that’s when I noticed the French press on my hand was gone! My hand was bruised and bloody, but it was finally free. The cold air was a relief. It had never felt so good to move my fingers around.

I must’ve been too focused on this guy when I got up to notice that the glass had completely shattered on impact. Only the cap was left around my wrist like a bracelet. Limping back to the spot where I hit the sidewalk, I scanned the ground for a second and there it was: an ugly pile of jagged glass pieces and ground coffee dust. I wriggled the cap from off my wrist and walked back to the homeless man still sitting cross-legged in the snow.

“Do you want anything?” Luckily I had my wallet with me, and with my newly freed hand I took out a fifty and stuck it out in front of the guy. “Take it,” I ordered him. Still no response. Maybe he wasn’t the type to take money, or maybe he was tripping out hard on a handful of shrooms or something. I don’t know; it could’ve been anything. I didn’t have any answers, and I wasn’t getting any closer to this guy telling me them, so I figured I’d just buy him something and set it down next to him for when he wakes up. It was the least I could do in exchange for him giving me my hand back.

So I get up looking around for something to give this guy, and right across the street is once of those street carts I was looking for when I ran into this guy. I couldn’t figure out how I didn’t see it on the way here--it’s like it just appeared out of the blizzard somehow. I mean it was definitely hard to see anything at this point, the snow was falling so hard, but a giant silver street cart with neon signs is pretty hard to miss. Actually, it was one of the only things I could see at this point. Between the two feet of visibility I had through this snow, my worsening coffee withdrawal, and my injuries from the fall, it looked like everything besides this street cart had faded away into the snowstorm.

I’m a not a huge believer in coincidences--if something happens, it’s probably for a reason. And I don’t know if I believe in a God or anything like that, you know, someone up there ordaining every thing exactly as he says, but I’d say I also definitely don’t believe in sheer coincidence: it’s just too good to be true.

With my new hand I managed to tie both of my shoes and finally pull my right arm through its sleeve. But at this point I couldn’t tell what was road and what was sidewalk, so I hobbled over to this cart as fast as I could trying not to get run over. I picked up three large black coffees this time, no problem. And as soon as I downed both of mine, which took all of about thirty seconds, I turned around to get back to this guy. Coffee’s one of those drugs where you feel it kick in almost immediately--thank God too, because I was ten minutes away from a complete nervous breakdown. I was actually surprised that the guy was still there after I downed my coffee; I mean I was seriously expecting him to be some kind of figment of my caffeine-deprived imagination.

But now that I was able to see a little straighter, I crossed back over to his side of the street and placed the coffee down on the ground next to him. It felt like there was almost a foot of snow at this point; the guy was almost completely buried. I dug the cup directly into the snow beside him, and nudged him one last time.

“You okay?” I asked again. I wasn’t even quite sure if he could hear me, otherwise I would’ve tried to get him some help. But it was starting to get dark, and I didn’t see anyone else on the entire block. Not that I could really even see that far in this weather. But even if I did see someone else, I wouldn’t have trusted them to help this guy. I wasn’t in any state to try and lift him up, and I didn’t have a phone on me to call for help, so I figured I’d at least try and keep him warm. I had a couple of nice jackets at the Laundromat that I had yet to pick up, and I’m sure I could wrap this guy in a couple of them before I left to get help.

I took one last look at this guy before I took off: he was almost completely white now, both because of his near-colorless skin and the snow that covered it. His eyes were still closed, and he was breathing calmly, peacefully even. Slowly inhaling through his nose, he exhaled white clouds of condensation from behind his gray beard. As I turned around I thought I heard him say something, but I couldn’t tell if it was him or just a muted sound from somewhere far off in the distance. I hoped he would drink the coffee I left.

Starting off in the direction of the Laundromat, the storm started to get worse. I really didn’t think it could, but it somehow managed to. By the time I got there, it felt like the worst blizzard I had ever been in. It was like one of those real famous ones you hear about in museums and books--some kind of historical myth that you could only imagine, only this time I was right in the middle of it.

But the truth is that you’re always right in the middle of it. People never really think these kinds of great things can happen to them--you study them your whole life in history class, but they’re never really things that you can feel or touch. They seem so foreign, so remote. But if you take the time to look around, you can see that history is being unfurled over us like a banner over a great parade: unfolding slowly and surely as we march under it. The best we can do is look up and marvel.

I picked up my clothes, quickly put on a couple layers, and trudged back into the night to try and find this guy again. I couldn’t recognize anything. There were no landmarks to follow, and even all the street signs were unreadable; they were long since covered in ice and sleet.

So I wandered through the streets for a bit, trying to find my way back to that street cart and the man across the street from it. But despite how frantically I was trying to get back to him, I could only walk so fast. So naturally I took my time to wonder at the snow-covered city I was a part of. No snowplows had gotten the chance to clean up yet, and a thick two-and-a-half feet of snow had carpeted everything: cars, buildings, trashcans all blended together into a single sparkling mass of snow.

The air shimmered with it, but it wasn’t just falling from the sky--the wind lifted it from every surface until it swam in every direction: ripples of snowflakes grew and shrank in front of me against the purple night sky.

I tried heading back in the direction I came, but with their new coatings, every intersection looked exactly the same as all the others. It was like looking into two mirrors facing each other--a web of identical streets and avenues seemed to stretch out infinitely far into the distance.

The silence was just as disorienting. Sounds traveled no further than two feet or so before they were buried in the snow along with everything else. Even the usual soundscape of the city, that incessant whirr of traffic and subway, was muffled almost completely by the storm.

I had never been able to hear my thoughts so loud. I thought about my day with that thing stuck on my hand, I thought about the snow, but I mostly I thought about that man. I couldn’t stop wondering how he sat so calmly or why he wouldn’t get up. I also just wondered if he drank the coffee I gave him.

But at some point I started to get worried I would never find him; how was I supposed to find him if I didn’t even know where I was? But secretly I was a little glad to be lost. At no other time are you immersed in your surroundings so seamlessly. If you know where you’re headed, there’s an end in sight; you’re bounded on either side by a beginning and an end. But when you’re lost with no exit in sight, there’s only the in-between, only the now. It was simply me and the blizzard marching lock step with each other, watching history unfold around us.

I never found the street with the street cart, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew that the man had found his way somehow. Still, I wandered for another hour or so looking for him, but by some small miracle I ended up finding my way home instead. Too tired to do anything else, I took off my drenched clothing and crawled into bed. Snow continued to fall gently outside my window. I listened to the silent sounds of the city as I slept.

Author's Note

What do you think?