The lights were dim in the Des Moines coffee house, mostly coming from strings of lights that would bow intermittently from the ceiling above.  On the far wall, above each table that sat against the big windows that kept the patrons from the street, stooped a solitary light for those beneath to share.

With me there sat a man with clear blue eyes and the face of a priest.

“I drink coffee now,” he said with his graying hair curling up against the bowed down edge of his ears.  “At one time I used to come to a place like this to smoke.  Then those damn Democrats over there took it away from me,” nodding over to the group of college students, huddled around a large table, some sporting t-shirts that gave an idea of their politics.

“Could have been worse, I guess,” he continued.  “A hundred years ago the group behind you would have took away my cocktails.”  I didn’t have to look for the bible study group.  I had already seen them.

“I’ve never been here before.”

“It is quite the place.  Very different people at different tables, all in the same room.  How one hasn’t protested the other’s existence, I don’t know.  I have been coming here for years.  I’ve seen no fights.”

“Perhaps the coffee is Swiss.”

Unamused, he continued.  “Do you know why I think people read what I write?” he asked, leveling his glare at me and exhaling like a man who still smoked.  “I write about being lonely.  Being lonely has no party.  It relates to everybody.

It makes them equally uncomfortable.  I have no idea if I write well or not, but I do take comfort that no book of mine makes someone feel better about themselves or worse about someone else.  Sometimes I wonder why anyone reads them.”

“There’s a truth to it, isn’t there?”

“Do you think people like that?” he laughed.

“I don’t know.  Perhaps a lot of us just respect it, especially when it’s delivered softly.”

“Respect.  Ha.  Some here would talk to you about personal responsibility, some about privilege.  Both represent the idea that someone else didn’t suffer enough.

You write.  You must look at people.  Have you ever seen someone that hasn’t suffered?”

“I’ve seen some that work like hell to avoid it.”

“Where does that get them?”

“More suffering.”

“Ha.  We sit in one big room together.  We drink our coffee together.  And we suffer together, whether we are at different tables or not.”

“Sounds a little depressing.”

“No.  What’s depressing is how we waste it and let it push us further apart.  I always find it hopeful coming here.”

“What do you do with it?”

“Me?  Well I write.  Occasionally, though, I shrug personal responsibility and in my privilege sneak an occasional cigarette.  But a coffee…sometimes a coffee will do.

What about you?”