8: Drink Your Tea

“How is the business job going?”

“Quite well, thank you. Business is jobby.”
 
“That's the truth and a half!”
 
“More like one point three truths, according to studies. How are your aimless artistic misadventures?”
 
“Today I thought about making a thing. Tomorrow I might make it. Then I will face the fact that I have no way to cause strangers to watch, hear, or read it.”
 
“Isn’t that always the way?”
 
“Isn’t it just?”
 
See? How hard is that? There’s a formula. There’s a formula to human conversation. You pour the tea, you act interested. It’s stupid, it’s superficial, and god how I miss it. 

See? Delicious. Photo an alteration of one by Brian Patrick Tagalog on Unsplash

​Me? I’m just sitting with this stranger in the void. Drinking her tea. Listening to her give me weird love advice that I didn’t ask for.
 
I want to demand where she thinks we are, who she thinks I am.
 
I want to tell her that once she’s done giving me love advice, she may as well give me suntan lotion.
 
But I don’t want to argue, because I’ve been raised to do the stupid thing. The polite thing. To drink tea and act interested.
 
And, sadly, it’s just nice to hear another voice.