Saturday night and the Sharks are 1-to-1 tied with the Oilers. I'm at the house cheering them on the telly with a weary voice. The off-season pushed them through major changes and it shows in the negative. Adjustments need to be made. A knock on the door catches me offguard and it's Kubrick back yet again from Davis. [WHILE WRITING THIS, THE TELEVISION IS ON - QUICK THOUGHT: AHH BOo! They've censor blurred Annie Cruz's mamarries on Creepy KOFY Movie Time. She's been able to go all clear in the weeks past with pasties. Guess they're experimenting with what boundaries they can push. Hmmm . . . she's got an adorable smile. Never noticed it before, given her profession.] Bored at his own home, he's up for a night out at one of the multitude of Vietnamese bars in San Jose. Last time we went I had the rare - yes rare, I, Recluse - opportunity to be in the close presence of attractive women. Of course I'm game for what's to go on tonight and tell him I'll tag along.
The gloomy weather forced a chill upon the Bay, putting me in my cardigan with a trenchcoat back-up to repell the awful liquid hoard that sometimes runs from the sky. Sitting in my usual fedora and tie we ride out to a place he says he hasn't been to in a while. The night and bright lights is a mix that bothers me unless I'm in a city of slot machines and themed hotels. Kubrick knows of my aversion to extreme wattage in the after hours and assures me of the calmer moods we are to attend. The ride ends not far from the big Chuck E. Cheese's off of Tully Road. A cluster of local businesses are huddled together in lots streetlit less than their franchised cousins. In this area a thin purple glow escapes from the open door of a coffee bar signaling potential customers of the social switch that takes place when you break that 7'x4' boundary: this bar, like any bar, permits a return to a primitive and far more human nature, away from the belt-tightening formalities of a bowtied restaurant or even the procedure incognito of pedestrianism. Don't walk in commitment to the crowd. Relax. Step into the utter casual. This is Cheo Leo.
Kubrick finds a table not far from the center of the room. I walk in with a remnant reminder to myself to take a proper posture but walk in anyways with my broken-in vulture-like stoop; screw it, I'm already here. Televisions line every wall of the room. The bars these days with their thousandscreen approach is damn near fetishistic and it amuses me every time I look in through the windows and get blinded by free throws, home runs, knockouts and/or touchdowns. There aren't many people inside Cheo Leo tonight but the few there are is enough to push my discomfort button. Cool down, Recluse. Get used to it. Then I see two naked chicks. Huh? Wait. No. They're not naked . . . I think. I don't know. I can't look directly but catch them in my peripherals and they're showing skin aplenty. Despite their near-nude state they stand with exceptional poise. A waitress needs to be confident. Especially when she's made to serve pseudo-starkers. Kubrick orders 2 cold Vietnamese coffees. Usually a more sociable character than I, he is uncommonly quiet tonight. A not-so-naked one returns with beverages and pasties on her very ample C-cup breasts; they hover over the table seemingly of their own accord, supple creatures of temptation. Seated, I freeze, looking neither up nor down as tall glasses are placed on the table. It's the complimentary tea. That is all that I focus on. Soon after, the other waitress - a blonde in a see-through lace bodice sans bra - arrives with the coffee. The proximites of those visits paralyze me. Opposite sides of magnets throw each other apart. Those bare beauties throw my head spinning. My eyes are on the TV screens but they aren't paying attention as my thoughts pinball maniacally on the wild social affair set in a cigarette smoke swamp of purple. Am I allowed to look? That's what they're their for, right? Would it be disrespectful? Unanswered questions like these tumble on and on, never reaching the forgiving THUD at the end of a fall. It's a miracle I do not implode from the madness.
The iced coffee tastes good. The blend of sugar sweet and bean bitter is just right. Usually a person of low energy, the caffeine works against me by only perking up my awareness of the situation at hand. What was before the sluggish acknowledgement of bold female accoutrements become a punch-you-in-the-face discovery: BOOOOOOOOOBS!! I sit higher in my chair, at the welcome reality before me. Unfortunately it doesn't have an effect on my outward demeanor, still very much reserved, now keeping my eyeline above or below where a bountiful set of dear-lovelies might walk across. During the occasions that the waitresses do pass, I sometimes think they look my way. They must think of me a fiend. A rude, better-than-thou asshole who can't make eye contact. Sips of the tea become more common as I notice Kubrick taking time with puffs of cigarettes and scratch tickets he purchased from a dedicated vending machine. I don't want to finish the coffee prematurely and sit awkwardly with an empty glass, knowing fully well that was the only thing to be purchased. By this point a quarter of the tea is gone and the blonde merrily jaunts her way to our table, filling a glass with a friendly "hello." I look up and reply, "Hello" only to see she's kept her eyes down. She walks away. I do not know if she heard my feeble attempt at being cordial. Just as I sip more tea and put the glass down, she comes back in an instant . She's more ethereal now, departing from the physical, taking the form of a headless laced ghost, filling glasses as a kind haunt. The story goes: Partake of a beverage, however slight, a laced spectre soon appears to fulfill your delight. I break the pattern, not wanting the anxiety associated with the proximity of her return and stop drinking the drink that calls her.
Kubrick picks up a good haul with the scratch tickets, turning up a good profit for what was mainly intended to be an amusment. He gets his pay at the bar proper located to the right and slightly behind where I am sitting. I take it as an opportunity to look around and gander at the waitresses who wait to serve right at that area. I spot a third asian waitress who I have not yet seen. Perhaps she works the other side of the bar. An older women who I presume to be the proprietor of the business stands with wide purposeful eyes. She looks out, always out, in one gaze taking the bar in its entirety but at the same time somehow visually connecting each individual customer. It's as if she's waiting for a secret albeit common request that only the regular patrons of the Cheo Leo are privy to. Lastly, on this single brave outlook I make direct eye contact with one girl. Her face is soft and charming, dominated by bright eyes and beautiful raven black hair. Caught unaware by my peeking, she looks back with a calm, inviting expression. It is a reaction I don't explore. My view immediately resets to two tall glasses of tea and coffee. A thought tumbles in my head once more. Realization? It was the waitress with the pasties. Throughout the night when she passes into view, the confidence in her gait is noticeably less assured. She serves a new trio of customers in front of me, her arms are crossed and tucked beneath her generous bosom, cradling her breasts, clutching herself from the Quiet Awkward who gave her no gentle attention. I damn my unsmooth ways.
With the coffee gone, I down the tea in one final gulp. Kubrick and I leave. It is only when we leave the purple glow behind us that he confesses to his own unease with the bar's change in uniform. Last time he was a patron of Cheo Leo, the breasts were more modest with their attire. This explains his unusual behavior. Kubrick talks on about the blonde who waited on us most of the evening. Apparently her nipples were pink, though I never noticed. She was also trashy. I didn't notice that either. In a place where you can get reprimanded for wearing a bra, trashiness is a hard one to gauge. I tell Kubrick of my own wish to have been more amicable with the waitresses. I know of the coldness I set forth when around ladies (that's a defense mechanism, by the way - you can disregard giving me undue asshole points) so I must have been positively freezing around the bare ones tonight.
"It would have been nice to know their names, ya know?"
Kubrick aggressively responds, "What the hell you want to do that for?"
"To be friendly. I didn't see any nametags. It would have been nice to know their names."
"Where would they put their nametags?"
Chuckling, I reply with a smirk, "Ugh, they could paste it on!"
"Shut up, Justin." Here is where the discussion starts. All the way on the drive back home, Kubrick and I debate on the rights and wrongs of getting to know a waitress' name. Specifically, waitresses of the caliber we met tonight. Kubrick says I have no business knowing their names and they might take offense to it by thinking of it as flirtation.
I come back with, "It's okay to stare at their tits but we're not allowed to know their names and treat them as more than their cupsize?"
"How would you know they gave you their real names?"
"That's not the point, the point is I could refer to them as something other than, 'Hey you with the pink nipples.'" In other words, to make a sincere link with the actual person and not just her body.
Kubrick says I shouldn't care anyways, that they are there just to serve me coffee and are not worth more than that.
I tell him, "I do care."
Mockingly he replies, "Gah, you're such a humanist, Justin. I should give you a plaque with your name on it."
I was not able to give up my inhibitions at Cheo Leo, a place where such a thing was welcome, reflected in the steps and assurance in which the waitresses held themselves. To go into a place like that is to know its boundaries and in doing so you find out your own. You find out more about yourself when thrust into unexpected situations. In terror and in surprise there is a return to the primitive. Though it may last for an instant, control is out. Instinct kicks in. Who are you? Women, so dear to me in a way that I only know, were seen tonight in a form I'm not accustomed to and what did that bring? Something I know all too well and is now concretely reaffirmed: I'm nervous as shit around good-looking women, arrested by my awe of them. Only this time it was accompanied by some good coffee.
Back in the neigborhood 613 nurtured in streetlight yellow, I tell Kubrick as we part ways for the night, "That was fun. I'd go back."
Anybody want to go?
Maybe I'll get a name this time . . .
