Its Long Beach's Fault

I liked it for a minute, but... but not right now.

I started my day at a local panineri called Paninis and Bikinis. Beach themed names never tire around here. It was too busy and filled with middle aged Jewesses lunching, and if you've ever seen to two middle aged Jewish women lunching, you know their tone is bursting with varying levels of aggression, even if said aggression is good natured.

So I switched venues and came to the only locally owned coffee shop on Long Beach. I'm not sure I know the name of this place, but I'm sure there's a 'surf' or a 'wave' in it in some insipid alliterative configuration. It isn't SO bad, except for two impossibly irritating features. One are the people who work here, who are young and dumb and are talking loudly about who they "hooked up" with last weekend. Second is the lousy fucking music emanating from the speakers. I had considered asking them to change the station, but as I'm writing this, the prior turned the latter UP. I just can't write with top 40 in my head.

I could go to the library. The thing is, the library in Westhampton was so lovely. It had lots of nooks and cushy chairs everywhere, and the tables where I was sitting were heavy wood with glass tops and between the glass were old maps of the area. The Long Beach library is so sterile. I just don't want to deal with the contrast.

My final option is the starbucks, which is generally pretty quiet. But do I want to say I wrote part of my novel in a freaking starbucks? I suppose I could go to the diner or something, but I'm not hungry, and the waitresses might not take kindly to me lingering endlessly.

It's a sad state of affairs. My house seems so dingy and cluttered in comparison to the empty little clean slate of my writer's cottage. Plus, it's fucking freezing cold inside. I don't know if the heat is broken or what, but I slept in a sweater and a hat last night.

I feel incredibly angry at the moment. And frustrated. And very open to the possibility of lashing out at strangers which hardly ever serves me well. It could be the 17 cups of coffee I've had today. Or it could be the square peg-ness of me trying to fit into the round hole of Long Beach. I really was happy here for a time, but today I could just be done with it. For good. And actually.... never come back.