Sunday, with Bullets

January 17, 2010, 6:45 pm
Filed under: Daily Specials | Tags: alcohol, cafe bassam, random, thoughts, writing

This is the wine-stained stream of consciousness from my late afternoon visit to Cafe Bassam.

Today’s drink: AutoMoto Merlot, Climbing Shiraz.

It’s Sunday, my favorite day to drink wine, and I’m sitting at Cafe Bassam amongst a lot of people that are more attractive than I. The owner is here, as he almost always is, wearing fashionable turtle-rimmed glasses, a red check shirt and brown corduroy paints. He always reminds me of the descriptions I’d find of French people in the writings of Henry Miller or Anais Nin, but I think he’s Turkish or something more along those lines. But what do I know, except that he has impeccable taste in women; his baristas are always gorgeous.
As if to prove it, a guy just walked in and tried to start hitting on one of them. It’s probably a common occurrence here. Like people at the zoo trying to feed the bears.
I finished a collection of short stories by Stephen King titled Just After Sunset, and it got me thinking about the difference between good books and bad ones. Jenn would inevitably think rather lowly of the fact that I enjoyed it, and that thought crossed my mind as I closed it in that satisfying, “The End,” sort of way.
Is it the writing that makes a book bad? Or the story? I think a good story with bad writing is salvageable, because the concept is left to the imagination anyways. But bad writing is difficult to get around, because it’s sitting there in its tiny obstacle course of black ink. You can’t get to the next word without reading the first one, so that bad writing becomes a series of necessary evils.
But anyways.
The owner just brought me a small pastry filled with mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes and basil, I think. He pointed to my wine as if to say that it would go better than the biscotti I had ordered.
I’m sucking down my wine the way you’re not supposed to, thinking about the dinner scenes in A Moveable Feast which, in turn, makes me think of Andy King and his sad genius. Withering away in Red Bluff in the Palomino Room. Actually, a bar is the perfect place for a genius writer. You hear and see so much, and then you go home without an extra ounce of responsibility on your conscious, except your own.
Mr. Bassam, as I’ve been told his name is, just bought me another glass of wine on the house. To steal from an email I just wrote, “…the attention and the wine both feel good, so I’m drinking them in.”
This room has more than 10 fans, although the space itself is perhaps three times the size of my apartment (which only has one). None of them are moving, which gives the illusion of a still photo if you look up and away from the people in the room.
A group of people just walked in, and looked at the rest of us as if we were intruding on their plans. I’ve been on both sides of this feeling, and neither are positive.
It’s a quarter to 5 p.m., Josh called a bit ago to tell me that he’s still in San Clemente with his friends, and I’m admittedly getting drunk from the excessive free wine at Cafe Bassam. I’m not sure if it was my generous tip or the way my jeans fit, but the owner has made a point to lavish me with free wine, and I’ve made a point to accept it.
One of the waitresses here has olive suede flat boots that I love.
Whenever I see people on the street, I imagine what their apartments look like. Messy, clean. Eclectic, minimalist. More specifically, I imagine them trying on their clothes in their apartment until they find their current outfit. And I doubt (for no particular reason) that anyone else could clearly imagine what my apartment looks like.
I’m dying for karaoke tonight, or any kind of public singing. I could pull out some jazz standards at Red Fox, as long as I turned in early. I wonder what karaoke at Bassam would look like. It would probably be only French songs, like Vie en Rose, which doesn’t work for me.
Jenn and Liz are on their way back for wine and who knows what(cough-karaoke-cough)else. Good night.

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