The Merchants

Like any successful cult, medicine steadily and efficiently continues to atrophy my relationships with friends, family, and any hope of having a beer with the potential father of my children.

Relatedly, my primary contact with other human beings is either (1) The claustrophically school related: classmates, teachers, students, patients or (2) commercial.

Currently my most regular non-school relationships are constituted by these people: (1) the grungy musician morning shift of Philz Coffee (2) the sleek hipster early evening and weekend shift of Ritual Roaster's (3) the three Mexican girls working at People's Cafe who sell me my lunch (part 1) ceasar salad (4) the French-Algerian crepe guy for my University Ave breakfast (4) My former co-workers and emergency latte makers at Yali's, who update me on their crushes (Iced mocha boy), grill me on my spanish grammar, and ask me whether i am a doctor yet (5) the amused filipina woman who knows to put hot sauce in my bagel at the Addison Annex, and the Morrocan owner who knows our entire class by favorite coffee drink and food allergies (6) the African guy in the Valencia liquor store who watches me stumble in go straight to the atm machine, and leave (7) the closing shift at the Whole Foods next door where i beg them to let me in, and I buy the same damn thing ever 3 days: tortilla chips, spicy salsa and hummus.

While there are risks to relying on these relationships to sustain my lonely lonely lonely spirit (see: barista not actually flirting with you, I-VIII), there is a great comfort, in their regularity, their familiarity with the only things that matter to me outside of school: coffee, breakfast foods, late night snacks, and the means to acquire these.

And there is that celebrated life blood of the big city service industry: The merchant class. The bombastic interrogations: whereyoufromyouspeakarabichowareyou, the ridiculous over the top jokes and generosity: foryouillputonawholeotherpotofcoffeebecauseilikeyou, and the winking flirtations: morningbeautifulsamethingforyoutoday? That like the aggressive carpet salesman in Turkey, the langorous alpaca merchants of the Andes, the fluttering cosmetic salesgirls in Beijing: there is some universal hardwire in that old world art of Making the Sell. Charm them, try 10 languages, flatter them, feign bankruptcy, mention your mother's kidney transplant, chase them down the street and bodily return them. And I realize what i really love about these people is that they are basically my father.

Like many of these folk, my father knows how to bargain in spanish, hindi, swahili, german, and japanese. Mind you, what i realized only in my early twenties, he doesn't actually speak any* of these languages. Critically, he knows the greetings, the capital, the current politics, and he's friendly as hell. Instant camaraderie. My father can befriend old British ladies, American ranchers, Kenyan professors and middle eastern drug cartels. As a buyer, he can reduce any professed price to half of what was offered and* get invited to the daughter's wedding that weekend. And as to women, never mind that he and old school devoted family man, or that his wife and three children are actually sitting right by him and snickering, or that he has just turned 60 years old, he can make grown women laugh with delight and flattery, while children and dogs adore him.

And as i am grinded through the self absorbed arts of medical training, a humbling and battering that lends itself to cling to any profession of self worth: we are doctors! we are ucsf! this is what matters! everything else is meaningless! The pomposity and self congratulations to some extent are justified: people work hard, they are clever, they are devoted, useful and passionate. But it is still good when one comforted to be a child of farmers and merchants, and that one's entire mental stability is sustained by a cashier's kindness.