The Common Ground of Killed Time

I’m sitting at a round table surrounded by people enjoying their hot caffeinated drinks and pretending to enjoy the company they brought. These people have found themselves here for a variety of reasons. Some are here engaging in business. Papers with all sorts of figures and statistics litter the table before them. The financial information is offensive in how it seems to pollute the space with its self righteousness. The people discussing business look like they’re above what they are actually beneath. The come to an independent coffee shop like this in an attempt to feel young and important again. I wonder if they know they’ve failed?

Directly across from me sits someone I vaguely know. I suppose I know more of her than I actually know her. We have only formally met once, and to be honest, I’d prefer to keep it that way. She was a lesbian, but I’m unsure if she still identifies as such. She’s sitting at a table with a young man engaged in the awkward conversation of posturing I usually attribute to dating. When I first arrived and sat down there was a moment of recognition that neither of us acted on, and one I’m sure her potential date failed to notice.

She’s a student at the local university, and the young man she’s with is clearly a student as well. He speaks, but doesn’t seem to really understand what he’s saying. It’s obviously he has taken an introductory sociology class about gender.

“So, do you, like, believe that there are any intrinsic differences between the sexes? Like, my mom really believes that men are one way and women are another. But I’m like, ‘I’m not, Mom!’ You know?”

He’s asking the basic question of the class he must have just come from. He must be pretty new to the university because the question has been pretty much answered definitively hundreds of times. Ironically, he must not yet have learned the term “the social construction of gender,” because it is completely absent from his vocabulary in the places that it should certainly be included.

“You know, there are, like, basic biological differences between things like brain chemistry and all that. But is there more? Or, like, do they not exist? What do you think?”

She shrugs and mumbles something about how she doesn’t know. The truth is, she surely knows more about gender expectations and gender roles than this upper middle class white man ever will.

Their conversation continues on, but it degenerates to the point where the man gets up to go to the counter and purchase another drink. It’s obvious the meeting just needs some silent air to resuscitate the conversation. When he returns it seems like he might as well have just read over his notes. I overhear terms like: “his moral theories,” “the worst of all possible worlds,” and “the principle of alternate possibilities.” Oh, introductory ethics; I took that too. The girl doesn’t seem impressed or wooed by his mastery of the vocabulary of a liberal arts education, either.

Their conversation now reveals itself to me as exactly similar to the one of the businesspeople to my left. It’s all posturing. It’s all a transaction. To my left the stakes are financial. A good conversation may lead to an engorged bank account; a bad meeting will probably force their next coffee choice to be less expensive. In front of me the stakes are physical and emotional. If the conversation is successful, maybe they’ll spend the night entangled in each other’s naked, groping limbs; and perhaps they’ll even fool themselves into love. If the date goes poorly, it will just be another failed attempt. Does it really matter? We’ve all got to fill our time somehow.