I have a buddy in the cafe.
He’s my buddy because there is only one electrical outlet in this cafe, and my battery is on 24%, and I need to say “excuse me, can I charge my laptop” because he monopolizes the space.
He wears camo cargo pants, like he’s in the military. Maybe he was, 10 years ago.
He wears an oversized grey hoodie that makes his body seem small and frail and thin. His skin is pale white, white enough that I think I can see some blue veins through his skin. A real blue blood.
His face sort of looks like Dracula. Weak jaw, receding chin, hooked nose.
His cheeks are chubby, skinnyfat. Low T. Hair is graying, thinning. Maybe 35, 45. He’s too wrinkly to be much younger, but his skin is too healthy to be much older.
As I look occasionally over at him, typing this out, he rests his head on his hand, blocking my view of his face. Perhaps, consciously or unconsciously, he realizes that I am painting his portrait, and he feels embarrassed.
On his large smartphone, he swipes through some unknown knock-off dating app. I expect that he was banned from Tinder, and is forced to use something else. It’s not Bumble or Hinge. It’s Konnect, or LetsMeet, or HookUPNOW, or some other terrible miserable valley of the doomed.
He should be at the gym. He’s clean shaven, and he comes here every day, for hours, just like me. Instead of writing essays on Substack, he’s playing some kind of League of Legends game on his phone, for hours, and then swiping on this dating app.
His expression is dejected, morose, about to burst out into tears. I wonder if he read this if he would fight me, or laugh, or cry. He apparently has many messages with many women. I wonder if he’s using his real pictures, or if he’s catfishing.
His hair is short, a terrible 5-year old’s haircut. No volume, no curls, no bangs, nothing. Too long to be a buzz cut, too short to be styled, combed, or parted. The ultimate kindergarten rizz, in the body of a 40 year old beta-male dracula.
Maybe he has a sleeper build, underneath that sweater, but I think not, because the cafe is directly next to the gym, and I go to the gym every single day, and I’ve never seen him there.
I always wonder how depraved these cases are, the cafe men. I know the depths of my own depravity, but I wonder about theirs.