This morning I told Lauren - one of the many baristas I’m on a first-name basis with since drinking black cold brew is a core tenet of Ben’s Sober Life - that I’ve been living by myself awhile and I’m afraid I’m becoming a complete fucking weirdo. She’d just been visiting family, including an aunt at a retirement community, how insane and insular that life was. She said, “No, not at all! You’re really social!”
Glad my human suit still fits.
I’ve always been social with baristas (and bartenders in the olden days), because they’re trapped behind the counter with work to do, so that creates a certain stasis, and if there’s no expectation in a relationship, there’s nothing to be anxious about. This 30-90 seconds of chat is the extent of our relationship and someday I’ll move or you’ll move on without comment.
These calisthenic conversations are the vast majority of my social life. They come from a needier and wantier place known and beloved by my generation and perhaps only my generation: Spring Hill Mall in West Dundee, Illinois. (That link is paywalled, but the headline brings me dad-joke joy.)
Feast for the eyes. Picture nabbed from NBC Chicago
At 15, I worked at the Sears paint department at Spring Hill Mall, though this was during the shockingly long period of my life in which I pretended to be color-blind. (I was always inventing quirks to make me interesting.) A couple of friends also worked in Paint or in Hardware, which was adjacent, and god help our manager, a conflict-fearing guy in 30s who, when I try to picture him today, I can only conjure up the saddest brown color, presumably the color of his slacks.
My dream-girl, though. She worked at Carson Pirie Scott, in jewelry. I’d spend 45 minutes of my 15 minute break hanging out at her glass counter, where she’d politely chat and laugh at my jokes on weeknights. I assume now she was desperate to escape, but she was trapped behind the counter, the focus of Teen Boy Energy. We were in high school together, so it wasn’t quite as ephemeral as my barista love, and I made awkward passes here and there for a few years since we were part of the same social circle.
Corner your princess
There are lots of clickbait things of old malls - check out these crazy fashions, kids! - particularly notable for the fact that no one’s looking down at phones. That was my favorite part of rehab, the way half the campers smoked together and the other half hung out around picnic tables and Adirondack chairs beneath Hill Country oaks and cypresses, talking about their feelings. Before my wife filed for divorce, she said on one phone call, “I wish I had a month to just go away and work on myself.”
Spring Hill Mall closed on March 22. My younger brother worked for the mall itself as a teenager, doing demolition when a store was changing hands, so he was on the mall’s radio band. Apparently the security guards had a code they used whenever someone was breast-feeding so the other guards could go take a look.
While I considered myself - 5’10”, 130 lbs of nose, hockey hair and glasses - harmless, there is no way my dream-girl enjoyed receiving my focused, adolescent entitlement. There’s always a little menace in that. I’m sorry, K, wherever you are.
I have been coasting in recovery of late. No cravings or anything, but my accountability has drifted, particularly my diet and my lack of drive to get out of the house, because forming relationships without a counter in between them is hard.
So I’ll commit to y’all: see you around.
See ya round. 😎
My ex-wife said the same to me when I was in rehab in Fredericksburg, then living in a halfway house in Kerrville: “…while you’re off having a vacation in the Hill Country.” 🙃