I tried again to be the diner’s first customer, a dastardly plot to snag The Fixture’s stool before he arrives. The diner opens at 6:00 in the morning, and I was parked on the street at 5:44. I flipped the dome light on and read my magazine in the car until 5:50, when I covered my face with an anti-pandemic mask, locked the car, and walked to the building’s door. It was locked, and I was alone, so I’d won, and if The Fixture showed up, he’d have to fight me to take his customary stool.

An old white man walked up, stood behind me, sorta groaned and said, “Why don’t they unlock the frickin’ door a few minutes early? They shouldn’t make us stand out here…” It’s Damned Good Coffee, so nicknamed by me because he’s a grouch until he gets his caffeine. Dude should be a background character on a sit-com. I said nothing, but nodded in pretended agreement.

ManBun and Lady ManBun approached; they’re a couple of young hippies who frequent the diner. She said hello, and ManBun smiled hugely and looked right at me and said “It’s good to see you, man.”

Why would he say that? I thought, but instead of saying anything I grunted in response, and he launched a long description of how sunny and beautiful yesterday was. Yeah, ManBun, I remember yesterday.

Already I was zoning out from his bubbly happy-talk, but then he did the dreaded introductions, his ladyfriend’s name and then his own, both of which were instantly forgotten. He asked for my name, which I didn’t want to provide, so “Domingo,” I lied. “Pleased to meet you,” and that was another lie. It’s 2020 so we did not even think of shaking hand. Then he started prattling about spirituality and shrooms, and told me he plays bass in a band, but I am so very much not someone who cares. Unlike Damned Good Coffee, my ‘perpetually grumpy’ schtick never fades, and it’s usually an effective shield against moments like this. Jeez, ManBun, Do you not see my shield?

Thankfully, Damned Good Coffee said something to Lady ManBun, which got those three talking without me, but Phil was approaching. He’s another regular at the diner, a jovial, extroverted 40-something white guy who cracks jokes as easy and often as Harvey cracks eggs. He said something to me as he came within talking distance, and it was probably something funny so I chuckled, but I didn’t actually hear it. I’m a little hard of hearing but mostly hard of conversation — having several people talking near me and to me is something I rarely endure and never enjoy.

Whatever happened to six feet of social distancing? I wondered but didn’t say, and also, Please, someone, unlock the door and let us inside. I was there to eat breakfast, not to meet and greet and mingle at the door.

Phil said something else that was probably funny, and I smiled but inside I was sagebrush blowing through the desert.

At last there came a knock from inside the diner’s door, and Kirstin smiled and waved at us through the door’s small rectangular glass window. She was letting us know that we could come inside, but she couldn’t open the door because it swings outward and we were all huddled against it.

Sweet relief — the awkward conversation at the door was finished. I’d made it into the diner before The Fixture. In my mind, a brassy orchestra played triumphant music, as I stepped inside and slid my fat butt onto the sacred stool where nobody but The Fixture ever sits. It might as well have had his name embroidered in the upholstery.

“You came early to steal Frank’s seat?” Kirstin asked, and then she answered, “He’s not going to like that, but tough luck. You snooze, you lose.” I smiled, she poured coffee, and now I knew that The Fixture’s name is Frank.

The other customers scattered inside the restaurant, and for the rest of the morning I overheard nothing interesting from any of them. My heart was still racing from all that hellish conversation out front. It would be worth it, though, to annoy The Fixture when he came in, and saw me sitting on his stool eating breakfast.

Gloating at that thought, I unmasked, sipped my coffee, and heard the door open. I turned my head to see my moment of victory, the disappointment on The Fixture’s face, but it wasn’t him.

Instead, a couple of men walked in, dressed like construction workers, complete with orange fluorescent vests. They sat at the counter and loudly ordered, and instantly I didn’t like them, and that snap judgment was reinforced all through their breakfast. Chatter chatter a little too loud, followed by loud laughs, more chatter chatter, another loud round of
laughs, and then more chatter chatter a little too loud.

These were beefy and boisterous best buddies, and their mannerisms reminded me of too many men I’ve hated, so I hated ’em. I am not Dale Carnegie.

♦ ♦ ♦

Conversations at the diner seem to start the moment the door is unlocked in the morning — or before, apparently. People come to eat and to talk, or maybe to talk and to eat. I come to eat and maybe to overhear, which makes me weird, sure. I’m not required to participate in the dialog, and I don’t, but you can’t escape hearing it. Sometimes it’s amusing and sometimes it’s annoying and since there’s no opting out I take notes, jotting down people’s profound or stupid remarks. Then I come home and try and sometimes semi-succeed at sewing the words overheard into something worth reading.

Maybe 60% of what’s said in the diner doesn’t interest me at all — football, baseball, and other sportball, the weather, everyone’s fishing and hunting stories, their children and grandchildren, amazing things the dog or the hamster did, and so on. Like anyplace in America, the diner gets an occasional empty-headed right-wing bullshitmonger talking about the fact-free fantasy realm where they reside. I have standards, though. I’m not wasting a single scribble in The New Yorker‘s margins on any of that crap.

I’ll invest some ink in Brian, though. The line that catches my attention is, “Don’t feel bad for what you did, Brian,” and immediately I’m wondering what Brian did, and really, why shouldn’t he feel awful about it? He ought to be miserable, utterly wrecked with guilt!

Of course, I didn’t know who Brian was or what he’d done. I hadn’t noticed Brian and his breakfast companion when they walked in, because they’re two twenty-something too white men, well-dressed and moneyed by appearance. Young professionals on a career trajectory was my guess, which means they’re the egg-eatin’ definition of I’m not interested. I was intrigued, though, that Brian didn’t have to feel bad for what he did, so I eavesdropped intently.

Brian apologized, and sounded sincere. His voice cracked like he was on the edge of crying, and I was tempted to yell from down the counter, “Yeah, you ought to be sorry!’

Having lived their whole lives on Facebook, people like Brian and Not-Brian don’t understand the concept of privacy. I’m from a different era; if I’d made a major blunder and needed to apologize for it, I’d apologize someplace where half a dozen people weren’t listening, where a waitress wouldn’t interrupt to ask if we want more coffee, and where some fat stranger wasn’t taking notes in the margins of The New Yorker.

And what had Brian done? Well, it happened at a party, and Phyllis wasn’t acting like herself, and Brian and Phyllis have a history, but nobody knew what was in the box — something like that — and who the hell goes to a party during a pandemic?

Brian’s apology sounded genuine, and Not-Brian accepted it graciously. A sincere apology should always be accepted, unless it’s from some schmuck like my nephew, who screws up over and over again, always apologizing and then screwing up something else.

♦ ♦ ♦

One of the regulars — a quiet guy, so he hasn’t earned a nickname from me — was having his breakfast three stools to my left. Kirstin is a fabulous waitress but nobody’s perfect, and she’d forgotten to offer him salt & pepper, which is stored under the counter because COVID makes salt and pepper contagious.

Kirstin was momentarily not behind the counter, so the nameless man asked me, “Could you pass the salt & pepper, please?” I slid my shakers toward him, saying something like, “No problem, Mister.”

That’s me and some stranger being what before the pandemic you’d call ‘civilized’ , but now it violates all the proper protocol for our world under viral siege. Hope it’s not true but for all he knows, I’d just
given him salt & pepper and a fatal infection.

Maybe I should’ve refused, and let him go without seasoning until Kirstin returned? She would’ve given him a set of safely sanitized salt & pepper shakers.

Maybe nobody should eat at a diner at all, driving all the country’s restaurants bankrupt so’s we could emerge from the COVID era with nowhere to ear breakfast?

Or maybe just maybe, everything in life is a risk, and we have to accept some small risks once in a while because there’s more to life than avoiding death.

♦ ♦ ♦

Bouffant-Walker came into the diner toward the end of my breakfast. He usually gets there at about the same time, 6:30ish, and he always says ‘good
morning’ to me, or words to that effect. Today he said his predictable ‘good morning’ and added “What are you doing in Frank’s seat?” and then rolled away toward a table before I could think of an answer.

Bouffant is a 50/50 guy — sometimes he parks his walker and his self at a table, and sometimes he sits at a stool at the counter, leaving his walker partially blocking the aisle. In hundreds of meals at this diner, I’ve only eaten at a table rarely. Sat at a table the very first time I came to Bob’s Diner, with my wife. After that, we always sat at the counter, and now I sit at the counter, alone, every time.

For detailed but boring reasons I’ll skip, there are four or five stools I prefer — second, fourth, and sixth or seventh stool from the end on the right, or the last stool on the left — but The Fixture’s stool will never be one of them. It’s right next to the door, so you feel the breeze and probably inhale the coronavirus every time anyone enters or exits. Being the corner seat, his stool offers a panoramic view of almost everyone at the counter and at most of the tables, and that’s not the view I want. I’d rather see the backside of a coffee machine, in one of my normal seats.

I’m not sitting in The Fixture’s stool, ever again. The whole point of stealing it was to annoy him, but I’m the only one who was annoyed. He never even showed up this morning.

8/28/2020
Republished 4/13/2025

Breakfast at the Diner
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