Taki Magazine

On Needs

by Christina Oxenberg on December 14, 2009

I don’t know about you, but I need a cup of coffee first thing in the morning.

When I awoke my fuzzy morning eyes scanned the room and got nothing. I was in an unfamiliar bedroom, not for the first time I might add, but that would be another story. And not that I’m complaining, in this particular instance the bedroom I’m in is comfortable as a cloud.

I have no idea where I am. But I know that I need a cup of coffee so I best get on with figuring out my Global Position.

No sound disturbed me, yet I awoke. It was all amorphous, woke up for the sake of needing no more sleep, thank you very much.  A window was wide open, and all I could see was that it was dark outside. Warm and lovely inside. Even if I still had no idea where I was.

The red lights of an electric clock read 6:04.

6:04 what, though? I thought. Could as easily be dusk as dawn. No discernible clues to work with. I lay still. If it turned out to be early evening I’d make a mission of making a big night out of it. As a way to wisely use this seemingly ‘extra-found time’. If it was morning, which would mean I had been a-slumbering twelve hours straight, then I had probably best get my ass out of bed and fix on getting something productive done. Either way, by the looks of things, I would be getting out of these lovers arms of a tender bed. But what to do about the needed coffee? How do I get me some? When I still don’t know where I am.

I lie unmoving in the snug bed, my eyes are closed. Letting the magic happen. And then I hear the sounds of a New York City garbage truck. The hydraulics, the dragon snort of exhaust, the men barking and slapping the side of the rig. Oddly sexy, those garbage collectors, but, as I’m want to say, that would be another story. 

I open my eyes, I see day light glowing its first shiny swipe, and indisputably it is day. I’ve had the almighty mother of all twelve hour naps and yes, I do feel a million bucks for it. More important, I know where I am. I am in NYC. And coffee will be a short walk away.

I bound.

I’m out the front door and the daylight has shot up another shade, to a milky grey with overtones so awesome they could only be captured by the brilliant Brit painter (whose name eludes me – lots of initials?). Never mind, his name is not important, only his oeuvre is important. Yet still his talent doesn’t begin to compete with that of Mother Nature. In the warming glow of a glorious day I have walked to the corner where the street meets the avenue. No cars interrupt the rain-wet streets. I cross and watch a man, young, cherubic, somehow his aura reads ‘determined’, and he has just finished running up the metal garage door front on the west side of his establishment. He is now charging around the corner to the adjoining south wall where he releases the metal door and runs it noisily upward, crashing it to its moorings. And I’ve only just arrived at the other side, stepped up onto the curb.

The establishment is a coffee shop.

Are you open?

Yup! Right this second.

God I love New York.

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