Twenty years ago, few places would cause my nerves to seize and my demeanor to sour more than a trip to the hidden hippie hideaway that was the Red Cup, 3122 N. Classen. A then-favorite after-school hang-out for the beautifully pretentious enrollees of the newly-opened Classen School of Advanced Studies, it was a mostly ramshackle coffee-shop with very little to eat, a parking lot full of junkers and a game of hack ready to bust out at any moment.
For me, however, it was more of a quick lesson in learning to know your place. Whenever I would step through the door, all those years ago, it was immediately felt and made quickly known that obviously I didn’t get the memo about the secret handshake. Routinely ignored by the too cool for school staff and, when I was finally being helped, roundly dismissed and made to wait forever for a simple cup of coffee; I would often leave questioning what it is about me that they disliked so much, still naïve to the ways of the white world.
Even worse, after listing my soul-baring litany of presumed reasons for avoiding the Red Cup, it was still a major cause of far too many arguments among friends—and especially girlfriends—who wanted to see and be seen there, forcing me to, per usual, be the cold cup of yesterday’s café con asshole that gets poured down the drain, feeling gaslit before it was even in the lexicon.
That was a very long twenty years ago.
Yet, still, when I pass by there to get myself a cup of coffee from the friendly neighborhood 7-11 next-door, that teenage trauma continues to momentarily grabs a hold of me, the aforementioned nerves seizing and demeanor souring, even after telling myself that I am a damn near 40-year-old man and no one (more than likely) knows me there anymore, if they even truly did in the first place.