Do you have oat milk?

Reading books, people and the very expensive menu.

I enjoy reading books. Most of the time I enjoy reading whatever book I have chosen, but sometimes reading feels very similar to eating vegetables. There are some people in my life, my father is one of them, who are drawn to books that look far better on Goodreads at the end of the year than my choices do. The likes of Yuval Noah Harari or Isaac Asimov do not sit on my bookshelf. It sometimes feels, when I try to have a more mature palette, that the books you should read taste of broccoli. I remember thinking that when I read the classic: Treasure Island. It just felt like a chore. For the most part, however, I really enjoy reading. It feels rewarding, productive and usually, fun.

As much as reading books appeals to me, reading people is several orders of magnitude more exciting. I sat in a coffee shop opposite my girlfriend today, chatting and sipping a cappuccino. I feel, here, like I should apologise for being so predictable, but I refuse; you may want to know that we also indulged in a shared pain au chocolat. The café that we chose to visit was especially ‘hipster-pipster’ (this is my girlfriend’s phrase, though I am unsure if she coined it). I sat in the corner of the coffee shop with my back against a wall and a view of practically all the tables at which all manner of hipsters sat. I had brought a book with me to read in this little café while my girlfriend studied - one of my dad’s, but not one that tastes like veggies. All I could manage to read, though, were the people.

I am always so enveloped by the act, and I believe skill, of reading people. I look at everything I can when I see someone sitting on the other side of a coffee shop. There was a gentleman sitting to my left with branded shoes, jeans, hoodie, everything he owned was emblazoned with a big logo. In contrast, there were a pair of gentlemen who appeared to be five or so years younger than the man to my left sitting diagonally across from me, who displayed almost no brands at all. The only brand I could discern were their very new and expensive MacBooks. The assumptions I made: my guesses as to whose salary was fatter, what they worked on on their computers, were all informed by how they presented themselves. I even guessed at the kind of music one of the younger men was listening to on his headphones based on how he dressed and what coffee he ordered. Unfortunately, his music was too soft to prove me wrong.

I am reminded of the philosopher Descartes’ idea, ‘even not choosing is a choice’ (I am paraphrasing, of course). No matter what, people will make assumptions when they look at you. Even if you decide not to participate in social expectations, that, in itself, is a choice. I like to think that I didn’t fit in that hipster coffee shop, that I am more down to earth. I believed that I had made a choice to present myself as something other than a hipster. But there I sat in my thrifted jeans, film camera in my backpack, talking about the big dreams I have for my small blog. How would you read me? Hipster-pipster indeed.