Shake It Off

Sometimes a man just has to have a caramel milkshake. Right now is one of those times.

The café is what you might call “über chic.” With minimalist décor and wait staff more attractive than shampoo and conditioner models, I feel like the kid in corduroy when everyone else is wearing denim.

And no, Mum, corduroy pants do not mark me out as more sophisticated than the other children. They mark me out as a target for cruel, heartless, and, I have to begrudgingly admit, rather witty jibes.

Once, you callous beasts. I wore corduroy pants on a school excursion once!

The joint is busy. Über busy. It’s what I imagine The Wiggles concerts might be like: lots of young parents desperately trying to look like they’re still enjoying their lives while their souls crumble within.

There’s one table left that hasn’t been commandeered by parents and their baby cino-drinking spawn. I secure it and a Pantene Pro-V advertisement appears. She smiles at me like I have a fascinating story to tell. I smile back, mesmerized by the reflected light from her shoulder-length hair the color of a desert sunrise.

“Brunch this morning, sir, or just coffee?”

Mesmerizing hair and impeccable manners!

“I don’t drink coffee,” I say. In my head, I sound kind of like a mix between Chris Hemsworth and Robert Downey Jr. So, basically, the coolest and buffest dude on the planet.

When the words come out of my mouth, though, I sound more like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber. Not exactly what I was going for.

“What can I get you, then?” she says.

I’ve learned from bitter experience that there’s really no cool and buff way a man in his thirties can ask for a milkshake, so I just use my normal voice. “Caramel milkshake, please.”

Pantene Pro-V laughs. It sounds like the birds at the break of dawn. “Seriously? Just a caramel milkshake?”

“Yes, please.”

“Well, you’re a strange one, aren’t you?”

Is she flirting with me?!

Before I get a chance to contribute to this sultry repartee, she’s turned on her heel and is gliding away in her denim skirt. Denim skirt, Mum. Denim. Not corduroy! Her hair flows back over her shoulders like the gentle roll of the surf. I could stare at it all day.

Until, of course, a behemoth with a mass of curly hair tamed only by a topknot appears at my table. He’s sporting an intricate sleeve tattoo that signals both a higher pain threshold and more creativity than me. “All right, mate?” he says with the kind of British accent you’d expect from the downstairs staff at Downton Abbey.

“All right,” I respond, Earl of Grantham style.

“Sorry to bother you, mate, but we’ve just had a couple arrive and I need to use this table. You’re alone, aren’t you?”

Why is this British interloper trying to ruin my morning and my self-esteem?

“Yes, I’m alone. Quite happily, I might add.”

He points to a solitary seat at the end of a four-person bench facing out the window. The first three seats are occupied by a man, a woman, and their male child—approximate age somewhere between two and seven. “Would you mind moving over there?”

A relocation will not be conducive to the continuation of my courtship with Pantene Pro-V, but just as I’m about to invent an excuse about being allergic to sunlight, she reappears. “Here’s your milkshake, honey.”

Honey! It’s practically a proposal!

To impress my future wife, I move to the empty seat next to the child. He stares at me with the kind of unblinking intensity that would get him into a lot of trouble if he was of age. In a pub. Right now, though, he’s just disconcerting and impolite. “What are you drinking?” he asks.

Despite having zero interest in conversation with the boy, I’m not entirely devoid of social skills. “Milkshake.”

“What flavor?”

Don’t push me, kid.

“Caramel.”

“Can I have some?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because kids are full of diseases.”

That silences him. He turns back to his dad.

I watch the surf caressing the shore.

“Did you tell my son he’s diseased?”

What? Who’s talking to me?

“Oi, mate. I’m talking to you.”

That settles it, then.

“Um, no, of course not. I told him kids are full of diseases, which is a fact.”

Another fact is that this man appears to be some sort of professional wrestler and/or lumberjack. This fact is revealed as he stands up to, I presume, wrestle and/or lumberjack me. “I think you better find somewhere else to sit,” he says.

“The café’s full.”

“Then leave.”

I can’t leave, of course, not without proposing, but the tide is suddenly turning decisively against me. WrestleMania Lumberjack’s wife is standing beside her husband, glaring at me as though I just insulted Taylor Swift. I can see where the kid picked up his manners.

Surrounding patrons have gone quiet and the tension is rippling out to the far reaches of the café, where I see Pantene Pro-V watching me. Though she is an ocean away now, I detect the slight nod of her head and narrowing of her eyes.

Sweet Shakespeare, she’s trying to protect me!

Her fearless devotion warrants an equally fearless response. “See you, kid.” I throw him a wink. “Nice knowing you.”

As I stride out, the tension flows with me and the satisfied buzz of the über chic resumes. Just as I’m about to cross the street, there’s a soft touch on my shoulder. It shines light into the darkest parts of my soul. Pantene Pro-V hands me a paper milkshake cup. “I couldn’t let you leave without this. It’s on the house.”

I take it from her hand. Her left hand that is bejeweled with an engagement ring. I nod like a vanquished, yet noble, foe who has been vanquished by the coolest and buffest dude on the planet: Hemsworth Downey Jr. “He’s a lucky man.”

She smiles. “Try not to pick any more fights.”

“It was worth it.”

She walks away.

I turn in triumph.

And immediately run into a stroller.

It knocks me backward, my fall broken by a bin. I lose my grip on the milkshake and the sweet caramel nectar crashes onto the shore of my underdeveloped chest.

The woman pushing the stroller gasps. “I’m so sorry! Let me buy you another one.”

I consider her offer.

I glance back in at the über chic.

I decline.

Because, as The Beatles famously said, you can’t always get what you want.