Going Back in Time
Musings on the diner of my youth full of strong coffee, stronger kisses, and unbuttoned jeans
We were out of coffee this morning, so I made tea. A spoonful of sugar (which I leave out of my coffee) made me wonder why I don’t drink tea more often. It’s hot, delicious, and sweet, and how joyful to start a day with those three things on my lips?
Writing has not come naturally in the last week or two. I’ve done more sitting and staring at blank documents than I have typing, and when it comes to sex, my interest has been theoretical at best.
As someone who needs to write to make a living, it’s not ideal.
But let’s start with the tea and see where it takes me. Maybe another sip will jog the brain and take me somewhere.
The first thing that comes to mind, is the diner near where I grew up. Built in 1926, it was the classic diner of aging films and youthful nostalgia. The waitresses smoked constantly, the coffee came with unlimited refills, and the line cook drank Modello from a paper cup through a straw.
The old clock on the wall used to read “The Nicest People Come to the Tenafly Diner,” but someone changed it to “Incest People,” and it stayed that way until they tore the old girl down to put up a faux '50’s diner instead.
As a teenager––and then a young twenty-something––the diner also had a sex appeal that was hard to explain. There was a veil of optimism that at any moment, someone beautiful might walk through the door. There were always friends there, and sometimes those friends had friends too, and on more than one occasion, I ended up in the back of someone’s car with a hand inside tight jeans and cigarette-tinged kisses on my lips.
One night, I made out with the owner’s ex-wife in the driveway of her mother’s house, and I can still see her tattooed shoulder and taste her perfume and soft skin.
All of those three a.m. memories are sticky and blurry, and while I can recall the sensations and emotions with some consistency, the physical details are less clear. The hope and the anticipation were far more critical than the outcome, and when I did find myself tangled in someone’s limbs, the thrill of having done it often outweighed the experience itself.
There was jealousy and anger as well; the diner had it all. When Anton took the girl I adored up to the view and did who knows what with her, I fumed. They walked out the door holding hands, and every single one of us pressed our noses to the smoke-stained windows and watched her get into his car.
“She’s getting pregnant,” someone laughed, and I wanted to throw up.
Fucking Anton.
Sometimes when a friend got off work at four AM, we’d drive down to the Jersey shore and find a Philly cheesesteak or walk the boardwalk until the sun came up. Or maybe we’d go up to NY state, where the bars stayed open late and we’d try to talk our way in for a game of pool and a few beers.
And if we were lucky, we’d do like Anton did and take a girl up to the view of the city from the top of the Palisades to see how far we could go before the cops kicked everyone out.
But those longing nights of laughter and friends (and heartbreak and jealously) felt like they might last forever. I can still taste the coffee and the tea (three bags left to soak in one small cup) and smell the cigarettes. I can remember actual kisses almost as much as the hope that kisses might be in my future, and I can see familiar faces when I close my eyes.
In the end, weeks before the destruction, I sat next to a girl I had met once before, and we laughed and smoked and teased one another for hours. We ended up on the couch in my father’s living room, where we kissed and undressed and didn’t fuck even though we both wanted to.
And when I think of her wry smile, her curly, wild hair, and her brilliant wit and shining beauty, it occurs to me that the old diner was a better place to fall in love than I ever knew. Between the grease and the smoke, a lightness of being let the world be strange and messy and beautiful.
Possibility flickered in the ancient neon lights, and I loved the diner as much as the girl with the curly hair.
Well, I’ve finished my tea, and the sweetness lingers on my tongue and lips. It has done what it was meant to do, even if I didn’t know it. My memories are now distant but kind, and I’m thankful for that.
So here’s to places that built us and saved us, and to homes we never knew were homes. And just as vital, here’s to late-night kisses from tea-stained lips and the lingering sense of possibility that can be so easy to forget.
I miss my diner too. Lost to the pandemic. Sweet story and sweet memories.
A lovely memoir. I have these impressions of the USA from reading and from the television, which are totally unrealistic. The 'diner' is not something we have in Australia in the same way it exists (existed?) in the USA. In the past, our equivalent would have been the 'milk bar', where you would meet friends to have a milkshake or icecream. That graduated to become the 'cafe' where you now go to have coffee - always espresso of some type or another. I still remember when it was considered a 'hippy' thing to go to a place that served coffee.