Blocked At The
X PRESS
How To Show Up As a Writer, Anytime and Anywhere.
The Quest For ElDorado.
by Peter Bruinsma
I was really thirsty and I was at the X PRESS because I was out of ElDorado crystals. I had some left over from when I was developing film with it and it’s actually not too bad, if you’re a writer. I thought let’s go outside a bit and get a vitamin D fix and then run by the supermarket. I saw the train-station café and I had brought my laptop because just in case, because I’m a writer. I thought, let’s splurge and go all-out and get a ready-made cup!
The end of the month is approaching and since I’m a writer I have to raid my daughter’s monkey bank. It’s not a pig because she wanted a horse and I’ve scoured all the thrift shops and yard sales within 100 km and found out horses don’t exist. I could have found one on AliExpress but who would think that there aren’t any horses or even ponies between all that nearby porcelain. And now my other daughter wants one too.
So I’m paying for a forest-berry flavored fizzy water because I really need to hydrate well, because I’m a writer, and I’m also really thirsty and then I hear screaming. It’s a tiny two-year-old with his fingers stuck in a powered restroom door. So I just leave my wallet right there for anyone and pry open the door. Dad’s still in there and I kind of didn’t want to see that. But the Chinese boy’s OK I guess.
I go back to pay for the water but it’s 25 Swedish Kronor for basically water, which is $2.95 US because I fact-check, because I’m a writer. I ask, how much is a coffee? because I don’t want to blow the budget. Then I hear screaming again and the kid has his fingers in the door for the second time but the mom is right there. So I get 15 Kronor ($ 1.77 US) in coins together but the screaming doesn’t stop and after an eon I see the kid still has his fingers in the door, and mom is checking Tinder or who knows what, and I run to open the door again. I didn’t look inside this time to see if dad was on Tinder as well or whether he was looking at somebody’s feet on Periscope.
I finally sit down and I get all settled with the mouse pad and the pigment liners and the Moleskine, because I’m a writer, and I open the lid to check my Medium stats. The place has no Wifi. Then the coffee tastes like when you have an instant espresso machine with pads and you forgot to put in new pads and it’s just brown water, a little off, because the pads sat there for a week already. I really want to wash it down with some of that three dollar water.
I’m ready to write, because I’m a writer, but I remember I have to get coffee granules and then I see the little boy again drinking a Coke Zero. Then an acquaintance who doesn’t know yet that I’m a writer sees me and sits down to chat and somehow I just don’t get that writing thing going today at the
X PRESS.
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