Life is like a Cappuccino.
Or, in my case, a Crappuccino.
Covid restrictions in Ireland were relaxed this week.
Yay, make with the bunting and the secondhand sound system.
I knew change was in the air.
It nibbled at my equanimity like a protozoan parasite.
I felt it in that special place, between my xiphoids, where I keep my instinct.
If you can call it that.
It flared back into life like an old injury.
Not as bad as the bleed I had on the 26th of December 2009 but a form of magmatism just the same.
Freedom to mingle and reclaim one’s human right to ignore the delicacies of personal space dovetailed with the realization that the true test of my mettle is only beginning.
Feathering my own nest had blinkered me these past two years.
I was so intent on creating a three course, silver service style banquet out of a tin of sardines, I forgot about the wider picture.
A world seething with challenges, temptations.
It’s like opening the triptych of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch.
One minute all grey and third day of creation, snug and developing beneath a dome.
The next, an onslaught of life in all its pomp and splendor, a vomiting of imagery that confuses and overwhelms.
Especially if one is the eternal novitiate as I undoubtedly am.
Condemned to see life how other people experience it and not be able to partake of it.
In any way.
Though I could probably shit crows or play the arse Piccolo with fine flourishes if pressed.
Just don’t ask me, under any circumstances, to make you a cappuccino.
The froth of contention.
With its redolence of the monastic order, you’d think I’d be a whiz kid with a steam wand.
Nope.
I attended two of a four-day course on International Barista skills during the week and proved to myself I can make a wonderful crapucinno.
Strange, how all one’s neuroses can fit so snugly in a coffee cup when you’ve trouble fitting your beverage in there.
Froth like pond scum, again and again, and the fact I’m over 40 with no family and no prospects boiled up to the surface.
You’re only saying you’re trans because you hate yourself.
Oh great, look who’s back, the shit-stirrer of old, my inner crone and resident crank.
A key light shone upon me to flay my nerves, exposing me as a coffee house dilettante that would, unintentionally but expertly, create a Guernica behind the counter during the lunchtime rush, enraging colleague and customer alike.
If the ground would open, I’d gladly become a Barista in Hell, Bosch style.
No good for God nor man; that’s me to a tee.
And by the way, does anyone in the room even know I’m transgender?
I think I’ve unnerved the guys and the girl sitting next to me is a Goth so maybe she might understand a bit more.
My insecurities whipped up into a fine foam, better than one I could ever make.
And beating it into town afterwards to catch the train and beautiful young fellas laughing at the fact they think I’m a man.
The Real World is making you do an impromptu dance of the Seven veils when you only have two.
In that situation all I can do is surmise that I might as well be dragging two stools behind me as I walk, with feigned importance, through main street, cursing the distance to the train station.
I need to whip the froth up a bit more around my scallop shell it seems, check all my nuances or lack thereof.
The realities of transitioning are akin to making the perfect cappuccino.
It isn’t rocket science but if you saw my efforts, you’d probably think it was.
It’s all technique, needing the 3 Ps: practice, patience persistence.
Oh, them. I tend to forget them.
You have to get the angle right, place your wand just beneath the surface and aerate the milk.
Steam wand as therapy trope, I really do need to get out more.
The little fine things one must perfect to create the desired effect.
A bevy of crapuccinos, a wardrobe of failed outfits.
Not much difference to me.
But you keep trying to get it right and there’s the rub.
And add space and time to the three Ps.
I’m not entering a beauty pageant just yet.
But I want to.
The desire to try is more important than the end product.
It sounds new age-y to me but it makes sense.
It’s either that or accept the crushed May blossom, who rang the training centre Wednesday morning to remove themselves from the course, as an indisputable fact.
I’ll have to make do with that for the moment as my nerves glister more than my sequins at societies groggy re-awakening.
