For two years, Kelsey McConnell worked at a popular coffee
chain. This is her story.
While I worked the night shift because it didn't interfere with my substitute
teaching, many of my compatriots worked the same because it didn't interfere
with their recreational drug regimens. After 4 pm, the walk-in fridge was
basically a lactating humidor. Someone was always selling and I blame Group
Thought for my maiden voyage on shrooms.
While that experience gave me little more than a profound appreciation for
Badly Drawn Boy's album Bewilderbeast and the revelation that the world
and all of humanity is a series of interlocking machines, my co-workers'
reminisces of past use taught me so so much.
There was Walter, who said that after the FIRST time he did PCP, the friend
he did it with jumped to his death from a high rise window. After working with
Walter's sister at another store, I asked him who was older. He replied simply,
"I don't know" and went back to cutting the tigers out of a roll of
Siddhartha Blend stickers.
And then there was Mecq'ah.
My mother warned me against dropping acid (and unwashed hair) by invoking a
film strip she'd seen in high school. It showed an aged hippie wandering
aimlessly, plagued by constant flashbacks. In doomed tones, the audio reel said
these flashbacks would torment him for the rest of his now useless life.
Mecq'ah had done enough LSD to make that PSA a reality. After a co-worker
read his birth name on the schedule, she asked how he'd arrived at "Mecq'ah."
"You know how a ketchup bottle says 54," he said. "It's kind of
like that, plus my Grandmother was Cajun."
One hot summer night, with a line of customers to the door, Mecq'ah stopped
all the blenders and doubled over with laughter. After a moment, he composed
himself and explained, "they are so adorable, and so funny."
Surprisingly, I found we had a mutual acquaintance: a friend of mine he'd
worked with years before at a non-[redacted] job. He spoke with supreme
tenderness about how she'd pick him up at his shelter and take him out for long
drives and hot meals. He said he'd always wanted to tell her how much that meant
to him. Hoping for a Hallmark moment, I told all this to my friend. "All I
remember is I had to fire him for stealing and now I still see him
everywhere," she responded.
A year after I left [redacted], I was walking down my block when I heard
someone screaming my name. I turned to see Mecq'ah hanging out the window of a
passing BMW SUV, flailing his arms in my direction. I was startled to see him so
close to my home, but took comfort in the fact that I was about to move to a new
apartment, one Mecq'ah had never visited. But late one night, months after I had
moved, he left me a voicemail saying I should go roll up my car windows, because
it had started to rain. I figured it was another flashback, until I walked to my
car and realized he was right.
Previously:
Bad
Santa: Bad, Bad Santa.
Just
Have It Your Way, You Expletive Expletive
The
Eye of the Siren
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