“Everything is being recorded,” the goth girl standing behind me in the Starbucks said, “so it’s there ready to be played back.” I thought she was talking to someone else, or talking on the phone. I turned quickly and saw that her heavily mascaraed eyes were trained on me. “Yes,” she said, “I’m talking to you.” I was going to ask her if we had ever met but I knew we had not. I know few young people and zero goths. I thought the whole goth thing had passed, but perhaps it was a revival of the mode, a retro thing. She was Siouxsi Sioux with a little Joan Jett thrown in with the spiky mullet. “Did you hear what I said?” she asked, lowering her chin as she spoke and darting her eyes at me. “Are you into simulation theory or something like that?” I asked. She scrunched up her nose and scratched her cheek with a black-lacquered fingernail. “You know this?” she said. “Well, I don’t exactly believe in the theory—or hypothesis—myself,” I said, “but if I’m shown the proof.” The line moved forward. Two people stood in front me. The crew behind the counter, displaying great imagination in hair styles and approaches, hustled and cheerfully barked to each other. Under the patina of serviceable friendliness, I sensed underlying hostilities not soon to be resolved. I hated Starbucks coffee in general. Being Italian I found the charred profile of their beans ridiculous and even disgusting. Take a trip to Italy and taste that coffee and taste Starbucks and tell me what’s up. And yet there I was, standing like a mook in line for one of their over-fucking-priced lattes, And why call a small coffee tall? What the fuck kind or Orwellian horseshit is that? And why belittle your paying customers when they ask for a small coffee and you correct them by sputtering tall. I’m tall. Not the fucking coffee. The goth tapped me on the shoulder. I swung my head around. “Have I angered you?” she asked. “And how the fuck would you have angered me?” I snapped. “Whoa,” she said, “no need to be so agro, bro, I was just asking. Like, I feel the anger in you big time. I can taste it. It’s like one of those old-fashioned pennies in your mouth.” She smiled, one of her front teeth dead. “I think it’s kinda cool,” she added. I turned around. I was next. My hands shook. The charred aromas galled me. The chirpy fake-friendliness annoyed the fuck out of me. Why was I there? Why the fuck was I there? There wasn’t another coffee shop for blocks. And that was another Starbucks. Go figure. They had the market cornered. Why? Why? Why? We were stupid. All of us. I turned to the goth girl. “We’re stupid,” I said quietly. “How’s that?” she said. “We’re stupid,” I repeated. “All of us.” She blinked slowly and nodded.

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