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Black

Out

Coffee

Date

By: BeaverReturn

"You are all [Still] a lost generation"- Gertrude Stein [Modified]

I work at a coffee shop on the corner of 1st and 2nd street. It's a warm little spot, and pretty well off too. People come here for the vibe. They stay because they need coffee. Business is competitive here. After all, this city likes its coffee. In this city, this young city, this cultural city, this city of lost artists young and old, we like our coffee. In this city, they say you can't throw a stone without hitting a coffee shop window, can't blink without seeing a cafe, and can't walk too long before you find yourself lured in, lured in somewhere, anywhere, as long as it serves coffee in this city.

It goes without saying that I'm in a rut working here. I couldn't leave the city when I was supposed to. I couldn't just run away like the rest. I decided to stay behind even with student debt, rent, and the cost of living. I couldn't just leave like some did; couldn't just migrate away like the others. I had to continue on living here, had to continue working here, had to continue making only minimum wage plus tips.

At the end of every month my bank account never exceeds double digits. There is no future here, I was told. You lack ambition, they said. You'll become trapped, they worried. Yet to all those who voiced concern, friends, family, and ex-professors, I could only tell them one thing,

"You don't understand."

It was his eyes that drew me in first. They were dark eyes, feline eyes, rather sharp looking as they came up to accidently meet mine. He looked irritated, a paw-finger placed over the page he was reading. Initially I had felt certain that my attempt to grab his empty cup had disturbed him. My heart stammered, I felt instantly intimidated, my shier side had started to show. Under my brown, otter fur, I blushed. Then his eyes lingered, rising up, and then felling down as his frigid stare started to warm.

"Go ahead, take it. There's not a drop left," he said to me, pushing the cup further. Before he spoke I stood mollified, lingering awkwardly, as though captured by his studying gaze. Not until he pushed the cup forward with a single paw-finger did I break from his spell, grasping the cup as it entered my paw. Without words, for I could not speak, I nodded my head in appreciation and ran off with full tray under my arm.

My breath felt heavy after that encounter, my heart thumping like a hammer in my chest. Even after every dish had been put into the washer, did my nerves still linger. When I could, I studied him from behind the bar, serving other clients with half a mind always on him. He must have been a lynx, for his fur was white and grey, patterned in half stripes that ran like a ladder down his back and dabbed along his ears and paws as though placed with a stamp. Contrasting his fur was a red scarf, blood red, maybe the red of wine, or perhaps even rose red; a kind of red wrapped 'round his neck. I stared on, and I studied devoutly, and I appreciated him with every ounce of my heart newly burdened, but he remained frigid, statuesque, like a photo of a fur sitting, his nose devoutly planted within his book.

He left that day before I finished my shift.

It was not long till I saw him again.

That night on my way to the shop it was blowing frigid winds, winds that were full of snow. I was expected to work the overnight shift, a burden I was not happy to take. I had just come off the subway. The outside world was an urban shade of dark, save for white snow that whirled around. Against the winds of the blizzard I fought my way up the street, my coat pulled tightly around me. That night was infected with a kind of cold that rattled right down to the bone and made it hurt to breathe. In a second, I felt relieved when I saw my shop just around the corner, and then confused when I saw its lights off. Then I saw that on the door of the cafe sat a sign:

Cafe Closed due to Power Outage!

-Management

My back fell against the threshold of the door, and I let out a great sigh. It was not a sigh of relief.

In being sheltered slightly from the storm, I looked out towards the street and watched as the white flakes performed their chaotic dance. From this perspective it looked rather pretty and for a moment I felt entranced by it, calm, kind of, a slight tingle of warmth, but not really. With nothing better to do, and no intention to enter back into the storm, I smiled, and then waited, and then continued to wait, although it would seem I did not have much reason to stay.

That's when he came. In coming towards me through the storm he had a miserable face, one that was most likely similar to what my face may have been moments earlier. In approaching the cafe, audibly he groaned when he saw the lights off.

"Power's out here too," he sighed, reading the sign with disbelief.

"Yea would have been nice if the boss told me," I commented, leaning back slightly as he turned sharply and with surprise.

He then blinked a few times. "Shit. How then can the street lights still be on?"

In unison we both looked up to see an orange beacon glowing outwards and towards us. It appeared as though it were a lighthouse burning through fog. I was the first to turn back, using my momentary advantage to give him another look. His lip was pierced, a ring of metal lay around it. An urge to kiss that ring of metal bubbled within.

"You cold?" he asked suddenly turning to me.

"Aren't you?" I replied, burrowing into my jacket.

He didn't answer. "You live far?"

"Yeah."

"Come up for a coffee?" He smiled, and I thought at first that it was a joke.

"Seriously?"

Again, he didn't answer. Instead he leaned forward and I tried to move back, but could not move back on account of the cold slab of cement behind me. He moved to kiss me, to suddenly kiss me, and I turned away with my cheeks burning.

"Something the matter?" He was close to me now; I could feel the warmth of his breath. Compared to the chill around us, it was hot like fire.

"I'm not the kind to just..." I began.

"I caught you staring." He interrupted, and I stammered nervously in trying to find a reply. He did not let me reply however as he then made a better use for my mouth. We kissed, and then he wrapped his arms around me, and in his embrace I felt warmth, a shelter against the whirling storm around us.

He broke the kiss. "So, come up for coffee?"

The lynx lived directly above the coffee shop. The apartments there were considered student residences although they weren't exactly close to campus. Part of the charm of my cafe was that the building itself was old, and it was within these apartments that the aged aesthetic continued on. We entered his home, and in a gesture of surprise romantics, he took my jacket off from my shoulders.

"Thank you," I said. "What do you study?"

"Just graduated," he replied instantly putting mine and his own jacket away.

"Oh, I saw you reading and thought you might still be in school. You looked like a student."

"It was hard to not feel like a student anymore."

"I know the feeling," I confessed.

We paused for a moment, and although we had just met, we had at that time come to feel a connection. Joined by a pain of uncertainty, which hurt like a feeling of abandon, we both looked at the other and in a way apologized without any real reason to be sorry. This shared, elongated silence was filled by the sound of storming wind and snow outside.

"Coffee?" he asked. His real intention was to break the silence.

"You don't expect me to make it, I hope," I joked without really laughing.

"No. I'll do it." He gestured for me to sit on the couch, and so I made myself comfortable in this stranger's home, which as I stayed longer, came to feel less and less strange.

He came to give me a cup of coffee once it was ready.

"I read a lot too," I commented.

"Yea, like what exactly?"

"Poetry. A lot of poetry."

"Not exactly the most useful of texts."

I looked to his bookcase and saw his own collection and chuckled at the joke he just made.

"Makes life interesting though."

"No, just makes it easier." He wrapped his arm around me, and I placed my coffee on the table in front of us. "Easier to stay here anyways."

He then moved his tongue up my neck, and a moan escaped me. In learning where I was sensitive, he then began to suckle on my neck, his teeth pin-pricking me, and for a while I fell into ecstasy until I bounced back into reality. I pushed him away, grabbing my coffee, half holding it like a shield between us.

"I'm really not the kind to just..."

He pushed the coffee slyly away from me, and relenting to him, I placed my coffee back on the table. There was a low rumble in this throat now, he was purring now, he was again kneading his head along my neck, licking slightly at my fur, and then he was kneading his paw along my pant, and I was falling into ecstasy again and then I relented to him again, and then I fell backward, and then he was playing with my fly, and then he released the clasp of my jeans, and he slipped a paw down, then inward, and then he grasped my arousal and then he was rubbing my dick. I was losing myself. It felt good.

"Fuck."

"That's it." He moaned with his voice low. He pulled his paw out and tasted the pre that had stained it. He drove it back down, and then with his one paw still in my pants he began to unzip his own jeans with his other paw. He slipped out of his pants in a single, near fluid motion. He was wearing briefs, yellow briefs, tight briefs that curved over his well formed ass. My head was cradled in his paw, it was a large paw, and he was pulling me in for a kiss. We were sharing tongues, and I was beyond hard, painfully hard. He pulled me through the loop of my own underwear, exposing me to the slightly chilled air. He then warmed me with his mouth.

"Ah shit." I cried, his feline head bobbing over me. He was pulling and twisting, teasing and kissing, playing and working me, building me up. His tongue was rough; he worked it so it felt smooth. He got me out of my underwear, and then I was half naked, so he played with my balls, rubbed at my hole with a wet finger. I had a feeling he was seeing if I was a virgin. I was not. I had lied before. I used to sleep around. I guess I still do.

I wanted him out of his underwear then. I wanted to see what was waiting for me behind his tented briefs, behind the yellow curtain. He was endowed. I could see that, see his long and thick pole protruding in a straight line towards me, begging me to kiss it. It got me more excited to think about it, to dream about what its true shape would be. He stopped sucking me off momentarily to ask me,

"Do you want me to fuck you?"

I looked away, and then I looked towards the collection of poetry lying on his bookshelf. At that moment, I knew that none of those words could help him, that none of those words had helped me, that nothing we could do would help us. So what really was the point?

"Yes." I then nodded my head.

He pulled a tin full of condoms and lube from under his couch. He brought himself out of his underwear, and I got sight of his glorious manhood. It was a nice cock, a beautiful prick. Taking initiative, I rolled the condom over his head and it came to fit tightly. I drove it into my mouth, deep into my throat, and it gagged me until I brought it back out. I kissed his balls and he liked that, so I licked at them for a while. I then kissed his tailhole, and he pulled me away, and rolled me over. Pulling up my tail he then rolled a tongue over my exposed end, nipping slightly along the curve of my ass cheek.

I was shaking now, feeling nervous now. He had started to fuck me with a lubed paw-finger, and then he started to fuck me with two paw-fingers, and then in another moment he was leaning over me, pushing into me, opening my walls and entering me, filling me, his thick cock was pushing into me, and then it was pulling out of me, and then it was coming into me again. I was moaning now. He was purring now. He was humping me, penetrating me. I was grasping at the cushions beneath me. He was coming into me, and then he was leaving me, and then coming once more, only to pull out again. I was moaning. He was purring.

His strong arm came to grab under me as he continued to work me from behind. We were facing a window on the far wall. The storm was blowing on outside. Wind raging, snow stirring, there was a warm embrace fucking me continually from behind. We were keeping warm. The air outside was so cold. We were so warm.

He pushed harder into me, faster, he started to nip along my neck. He rolled me over, went inside of me again, and we started to kiss once more. He was tensing now, pleasure was fluttering across his face. I knew then that the end was coming. That he was coming. That the end had already come. That he had then come.

He finished quick and hard like the final line of a poem.

That night he stayed with me on the couch, eventually bringing a blanket to wrap around us. Eventually we went at it a second time and I had my chance to come before he confessed to me, "I'm not the kind of guy who sticks around."

I shrugged the comment off. In the end I had expected it. As we remained together on the couch, I looked towards the table where my coffee had sat, only to see that the cup had now toppled over. Across the table it had spilt, and from the table's edges it was now dripping downwards. I knew then that nothing in this world could help us.

In this city we like our coffee. In this city, this young city, this cultural city, this city of lost artists young and old, we like our coffee.

***

In writing a mock erotica at work today (it was a slow day), I wrote out the following line while my co-workers giggled on behind me, "He went in, and then he went out, he went in, and then he went out..." The more I typed this out however, the more it seemed that my own joke was starting to escape me. I, with the original intention of humour, could not help but look at my own joke and see a terrible, less funny joke in its place. In this sense, sex seemed ultimately indecisive. To me, it became as though sex was the result of a choice between if one should want in or out. My supervisor then came by later on and I had to close my document before I got caught.

As I continued to work however, I could not get this idea that my generation, amongst all of its other misguided stereotypes, comes to also be defined by indecisiveness. I played with this idea more, and this story sort of came from there.

Obviously this is a more experimental/stylized approach to telling a story, something with a raw emotion that also reacts to the world as I see it now. If I had to label that emotion, I would call it fear, a fear of coming to know fear. Which is to say, I'm terrified of the day when the "safety blanket" that our generation was supposedly raised on comes to lift itself away and we see the ugly head of the reality that we are living in today.

I've become more obsessed with ideas concerning the supposedly, "Lost Generation," and how it was written about during its period. Hemmingway and Fitzgerald, to provide the best examples, seemed to see a world around them rich on splendor, yet so indifferent to the world around them. If today proves anything it's that history is repeating itself.

I've never known poverty. In this world, I could have anything if I really wanted it. Anything except for love, which in being material, while not being material at all, eludes even my grasp. I'm not sure this is entirely my fault, and yet probably it is. I'm part of this generation, this generation that makes love so hard, so material, makes it into wasted splendor. Sometimes I feel like love isn't really romantic anymore, not special at all, but rather wasted in the dollars we can barely earn.

I did however just go through a break-up, so maybe I'm just pessimistic. But do all relationships end with a total and agreed indifference towards the other person? In the end it was as though the passion we had was only ever an illusion, only ever a mirage to bring us towards the sex which we both only ever really wanted. Once all was said and done, there was nothing there. No matter how hard we tried to push ourselves together, there was nothing there. I wanted to try, and we did try, but like bread, it grew stale after a couple of days.

...Sorry. I don't mean to become just another furry drama-bombing y'all. :3