The Cafe v1.2

Jaycie was some kind of fire. Always talked about change, about revolution, about art and activism being the same thing. About how both spark something in an individuals mind and provided them a choice being doing something or doing nothing. It was undeniably clear to her. It freed her. To the point where she was almost invulnerable. To the point where she could do anything.

So she started this thing she called, The Cafe. It was kind of like an open forum for budding artists she knew from around Los Angeles to get together and share the shit they’d been working on. She bought a microphone, a speaker, a stage light, found an open court yard outside of a true cafe somewhere in Little Tokyo, and had them go at it. She set it up every Tuesday night, invited other people she knew, other artists and activists to come and watch the show. And people did. For the first few shows there was a good ten or twenty people.

To be perfectly honest, it was pretty fucking weird. Some of the people that showed up threw me for a loop.

There was this one black guy, originally from Chicago, son of a Black Panther, but came to LA to pursue a rapping career, which eventually and strangely, lead him into puppetry. Well, not necessarily puppetry. Not real puppetry, anyway. He was still rapping, but he taped Barbie dolls to his shoulders and called them his ‘back-up dancers.’ He even spoke for them. He had conversations with them. And that was his art.

There was this one Korean girl. She sat down on the cement in front of the microphone. Took out a piece of paper. Took out some scissors. Started cutting up the paper. Took her a good five minutes. Then she stood up, took the pieces of paper in her hand, and threw them into the audience. Then she smiled and said into the microphone, “Milk.” And walked off.

“What the fuck was that all about?” I asked Jaycie, unequivocally confused.

Jaycie, with a tear running down her cheek, applauding furiously, said to me, “It’s about police brutality.”

“Oh. Okay…” I shrugged.

There was this one older Laotian guy. He wore, from what I assumed because it didn’t look like shit a person would wear shopping at the mall, traditional Laotian garments. He starts moving like a robot. Dancing like a robot. Then eating like a robot. When he’s done with that weird robot mime thing, he went to the microphone and started telling some sort of bedtime story about a bird from Australia who worked as a busboy in England. His whole set took an hour. A whole fucking hour of What The Fuck.

I didn’t know what was going on. The people around seemed to like it, though. All the cheering and yelling and snapping of fingers. It seemed like they enjoyed themselves a whole lot. And, in a way, I enjoyed it, too. Not because the art was stimulating, because, c’mon, really, anyone can get up in front of a microphone and talk backwards, do the moonwalk, and then juggle rocks, and call it art, but I enjoyed it because the people around me, genuinely, and enthusiastically, loved art, period.

They all shared this common respect, this common appreciation, this common support for something most regular people just didn’t do.It was an incredible feeling. To be a part of something bigger than myself, to be given the chance to contribute to something that, wow, I don’t know, could actually, maybe, possibly, change the world. And change it without violence, or manipulation, or intimidation. Change it with inspiration, with inclusion, and with peace.

I’d often look back at my life before that time, back in the Valley, growing up in the Valley, and it was nothing like what I felt at The Cafe or in the Grains of Rice Theatre Company. The violence, the intimidation, the manipulation, that’s what I was used to. I was used to people lying and stealing and fighting all the time. It was ingrained in me to not trust people because that was the only way someone could keep what they had. Which wasn’t much in the first place.

Somehow, someway, I ended up doing art. I didn’t remember how it happened, or why I kept doing it, but that’s how it went down. I got to fly across the country, doing theatre shit, writing and reading my poetry at The Cafe, and meeting a bunch of weird ass, crazy looking, motherfuckers.

But most of all, I felt like I belonged. Around these fuckers, I was normal. I wasn’t an outcast anymore. I wasn’t different. I was part of their family. And they accepted me wholeheartedly, regardless of anything I had ever done in the Valley.

After the guy dressed in cardboard finished his fire juggling act, I turned to Jaycie and said, “Hey, Jaycie. Thanks.”

She turned to me and smiled. The under-bite appeared. The supportive, appreciative, under-bite I had grown to like. “for what, Xavier?”

“For everything.” I said. Genuinely. not caring if it looked like a Hallmark moment.

She laughed. And Jaycie’s laugh was really loud and really varied. The one she laughed at that moment was the one I associated with her feeling giddy. “You’re welcome. Are you liking the show?”

I looked at her. Into her eyes. Her brown, strong, eyes. I smiled and said, “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

She reached over and hugged me.

At first, I resisted. She knew I didn’t like hugging. She knew I didn’t like touching people at all. But she also didn’t care. So I relented and hugged her back. And, once again, all over again, I felt like a normal human being.

It just sucked her boyfriend was cheating on her.