breakfast at the pharmacy

there's something truly satisfying about being able to smoke a cigarette and read the times with your eggs done just so. the magic becomes hard to handle when that place isn't george webbs, but rather a locally-owned establishment dripping with old-timey pomp and unattractive waitresses outfitted in unflattering uniforms, balancing regular and decaf steaming in one hand, a plate of unappetising corned-beef hash in the other. the very simplicity of it makes me nostalgic for things i am not old enough to recall without a gentle tale from a great-grandparent.

i am singing the praise of the retiree's breakfast ritual. there is little more i wish than to be a septogenarian man, relishing in my old-oldness. i want simply to drink burnt hot coffee while arguing with the dehydrated, decrepid and wise. to eat a perpetual breakfast, indulging in a double portion of raisin toast, even if it means to sacrifice the enjoyment of other meals... overdone cholesteral from generously buttered slabs, doomed to cottage cheese or chicken salad with limited amounts of red meat. to be called "hon" by someone much younger than me in hopes of building enough rapport that i should feel guilty for leaving a 50 cent tip for a seven dollar meal consumed over a period of several hours. this is the life i fantasize about almost daily.

sadly, i shall probably never make it. due to birth consequences, i will never know the discomfort of erectile disfunction, nor shall i speak intimately about folk remedies for male pattern baldness. i will have to be content with my lot in life as a female secretly looking in on the lives of the regulars, sipping coffee while reading the paper, silver chains glistening hardly distinguishable from a forest of chest hair.