I was in a bit of a surly mood and I didn’t know why. Maybe it was because I didn’t get any of those wonderful checks I’d been expecting for three new stories, four poems and one article. Why bother signing contracts with these publishers because these days not too many seem to give a shit and there’s nothing you can really do. Naturally, I did get lots of bills and spam though.

I thought about downing a new bottle of Jack but instead I walked into a coffee shop and proceeded to sit down with my cup of raspberry chocolate coffee. I then noticed a tall mussy man seemingly intent on hassling the young brunette waitress up at the counter. The one who’d just labored to make me such a fine caffeinated libation.

Dude was clutching a bag to his chest frantically, had hair straight out of The Clash’s London Calling period, had some mag stuffed in his jeans’ pocket and he wouldn’t shut up. It wasn’t long before the poor waitress looked like she was about to go insane. He kept asking whether the chairs were medium or large, large or small, rented or owned. In this public coffee shop where who really gave a shit, eh? Fucking asshole. This then went on for 20 full minutes. The girl was stuttering and seemed nearly in tears while I myself felt a bit crazed. I don’t like most people and I hate obnoxious assholes who hassle others. Finally, she said “Look, I’m sorry but I have to work. There’s a line.” He went to a nearby table and sat down on one of the matching, basic chairs found at the table.

Relieved, I returned to my coffee and reached for the copy of a book I always carried on me, this time either an early Philip K Dick story or a trusty ole Bukowski novel. Except Dude then got up and walked over to another table with its same chairs and sat down in one, immediately got up and went to another such chair and hit an internal loop button on this idiocy. I mean the chairs were all the fucking same like the place had done one IKEA model wholesale, so what’d it matter? Yet he did this over and over again for over 20 more minutes.

I had seen enough of this bullshit. I couldn’t take it anymore. His 20-second attention span was about to make me crack so I got up, and I admittedly sometimes get a touch “assertive” in some cases, so I got up and went over to him and said, “What the hell are you doing? What is your fucking problem? Why don’t you take a fucking seat and stay for awhile–get comfy.”

He looked confused so I popped him a quick one under his right eye by the bridge of his nose, rather than crushing his idiot nose like I wanted. I still felt that great satisfying crunch beneath my knuckles, heard his shriek and quickly bitchslapped his newly broken, bleeding face for good measure. It seemed like he wobbled too long before toppling backwards over the back of a torn olive-green vinyl couch, blood and snot flying. He grunted like a stuck pig I once saw on my uncle’s Minnesota farm and then he started bawling. Sounded like he was going to hyperventilate. Were people watching? Naturally, but not many people were in the shop. Anyone move our way? I only hoped. I find confrontation enjoyable.

Suddenly, though, it hit me that this guy was possibly DD, if not just simply nutso, and I felt momentarily bad. I don’t pick on retarded people and this seemed out of character for me.

I didn’t like how this made me feel so I stepped around the couch where he lay gasping and drooling while sprawled virtually upside down and I grimaced before launching a wicked roundhouse shitstomp with one of my steel toe Docs flush into his torso, feeling and hearing a couple of ribs give way. Well, snap actually. I recommended he get the hell out before I actually lost my temper. Sobbing, he hunched and dragged himself away toward a side door, snuffling and snorting the entire time.

I returned to my seat, thinking I should feel satisfied while now finally being able to make love to my coffee, yet somehow I found myself experiencing vivid flashbacks (in my mind or were they visible to all?) featuring my shrink’s assertions of rageaholic compulsions worse than he’d ever seen while I was simultaneously reminding myself I had an ex now for a reason as well.

Funny how I didn’t feel the usual satisfaction I’d enjoyed when problem-solving-by-force in the past. That was half the fucking appeal, but now this? Shit!

Now I felt, how to put it, oddly “watched,” and with the not wholly welcomed inspiration of the doc and my ex as I’d just experienced, perhaps ultimately now a toughened freedom of newly discovered awareness.

“Effect Change” my cuz Steve always said. Maybe it wasn’t Effect Change so much as Change will Affect … me? They’d said I needed an attitude adjustment. Maybe it was time, you never know, right?