Coffee + Stranger #10 - Coffee with Your Gestalt

Coffee with a Stranger isn't a project with a lot of rules. In fact, I'd say that most of the time there's a whole lot of improvisation going on, with maybe one exception: I always meet people at a coffee shop. Makes sense, right? It's a public space, a safe environment, and there's an abundance of coffee and snacks right at our fingertips.

Although simple and easy-to-follow, I actually broke my one rule to meet with Stranger #10. After several emails, some hemming and hawing on his part, and a series of miscommunications that led to me being stood up at a Starbucks near Lake Merritt, I actually met Bob, Stranger #10, at his home. And why did I break my one rule for Bob? Let's just say I had a hunch that he would be an interesting guy to meet, and he didn't let me down. What actually hooked me was Bob's website, or more specifically, the unusual opening animation featured on his website. You can check it out here.

Be warned, however! If you're at work with a puritanical boss lurking near your cubicle or if you're reading this with young children bouncing on your knees, you may want to hold off on exploring Bob's website. Trust me.

Bob, I might add, will likely not be happy with my giving you such a warning. He's not one for tiptoeing around sensitive issues or playing it safe. "America is so fucking politically correct that's it's ridiculous!" he told me.

Armed, by request, with a medium, non-fat latte, I pulled up to Bob's house one sunny, Friday morning. He lived in one of Oakland's older and wealthier neighborhoods, on one of those hills where as you climb, the houses get increasingly large and extravagant. In his small front yard he had a surprisingly green lawn, an immaculate rose garden, and some vines that crept along a railing and up a drain spout. His house was stucco and much larger than I originally thought. As I rang the doorbell, I noticed a statue, about knee high, of a man in a trench coat exposing himself to me. I gave him a little wave.

When the door opened, I was greeted not by Bob, but by two large dogs and a woman who I believe was related to Bob in some way. She led me to the back patio through several rooms packed with paintings, statues, photographs, trinkets, and figurines, many of which portrayed sex, breasts, and male genitalia. On a windowsill in the kitchen, I spotted a small statue of two pigs humping. The house was quietly buzzing with activity, as Bob's relatives, dogs, partner, and two Spanish-speaking housekeepers all went about their morning routine.

When I first sat down and started talking with Bob, he seemed suspicious and guarded. I got the impression that maybe he regretted inviting some guy with a tape recorder and a notebook into his home. We sat at a table shaded by an umbrella, surrounded by patio furniture, plants, and more art. Standing next to the patio door was a life-size statue of what I took to be a naked aboriginal man with a bowl cut. Placed in his hands was one of those rainbow colored dusters, which he wielded like a weapon.

"I photograph unusual people. That's what I do," Bob told me, as he took a few drags from a half-smoked bidi cigarette that had been sitting in an ashtray. He wore an inside out black t-shirt, peach colored shorts, and reddish-brown glasses that took me a moment to get used to - one lens was a square, while the other was a circle. His hair was short, dyed purple, and he had a red and blue yin and yang symbol tattooed to a bald spot on his head. I'd guess he was somewhere in his mid-to-late fifties.

"It's easy to photograph stuff like the Gehry Building or a beautiful sunset," Bob explained. "Helen Keller could take a picture of the Gehry Building - wait, do you know who she was?"

"Sure," I replied, somewhat surprised. "I know Helen Keller." These kinds of questions were a common theme throughout my conversation with Bob. He believed that most people under 30 know nothing about culture and history: "This is not a prejudice," he said. "This is what I get from talking to people. Five years prior to their birth it's a blank thing - they have no sense or idea of culture or history beyond color films and video games."

But back to Helen Keller: "Helen Keller could take a picture of the Gehry Building and it would be beautiful because it's not the photograph, it's the building," said Bob. "Anyone could take a picture of a beautiful sunset because it's not the photographer, it's the sunset."

So no buildings or sunsets for Bob. In fact, he mentioned a trip to Africa where he didn't bother taking pictures of "zebras and elephants and all that safari bullshit stuff." Instead Bob takes pictures of "unusual" people. Even if they look somewhat "normal," he prides himself in digging deeper and finding what truly makes someone tick. "I have a degree in psychology," he said, "and I like to do what I call getting between the psychological legs of my subjects. I really like to get in there. I mean, I'm fascinated by people. And that's one of the reasons why I like your [Coffee with a Stranger] idea, because it's a way of communicating and connecting with people in a way which is really human and that's kind of disappearing because of the internet. I like that."

When I asked Bob to expand on what he meant by "unusual" (and by this point, his initial suspicions of me seemed to have waned), he told me that it was the seemingly "normal" people who actually scare him the most. "Although I photograph unusual people, I understand that people who are unusual looking do that out of a need to be unique," he explained. "So when you see people with Mohawks and tattooed faces and all that, those aren't the scary people. People who are scary are the ones who wear beige or plaid. Those are the ones that people say: 'Oh, he was so quiet. I don't know why he killed his entire family.' The people I take pictures of are basically ordinary people who want to be, and who are desperate to be, unique."

Bob is currently working on a book of photographs that explores feelings of pride. "Pride is like a hydra," he told me, after asking me whether or not I'd ever heard of this mythological beast. "It's one of the seven deadly sins, and people are proud for many different reasons. Pride is really a hydra-esque kind of thing and it runs that entire gamut, from arrogance and egotism to sexual pride, religious pride, and family pride."

Bob showed me the prototype to his book about Pride. Entitled A Puff Piece on the Human Condition of Self-Love, Aggrandizement, Narcissism, and Ego Appreciation, the cover featured a full-frontal pose of a man wearing nothing but a shit-eating grin. He was also, ahem, well-endowed. "When I was living in Palm Springs, this guy came over to my house," Bob explained. "He looked like a gay Ricky Ricardo and he had these giant balls. He's what's called a penis pumper - do you know what that is?" I nodded - I've heard of these penis pumpers before. "Anyway, they use this vacuum machine and I was like, 'Wow. That's quite the set of balls you've got there.' And he's like, 'Well, if you let me, I can come back tomorrow and make them even bigger.' I said, 'No, no, no. That's okay.' So I put him in front of these drapes and took his picture. Ever since, this photo has always affected me as an image of total pride and self-love."

Bob had also been working on a book of photos called Net Men. Basically, this book has lots of photos of men Bob had found on Craigslist, gay chat rooms, and other corners of the World Wide Web. "I was always very direct," said Bob. "I would go into chat rooms, find someone interesting, and write: 'I'm working on a project and I would like to photograph you.' Then they would call me and say something like, 'Are you going to be naked, too?' No. 'Can I jack off in front of your camera?' Yeah, whatever you want. But then I say, 'Who are you. Tell me. What are you? Do you have any interesting fetishes?' I mean, I don't really get off on fetishes, but there's a fetish for everything." Bob picked up the barbecue lighter he'd used to light his cigarette. "I mean, there's even some people in the world who I'm sure get an erection when they see this."

"Net Men is the perfect paradigm for a book," continued Bob, setting the lighter back down on the table. "Because regardless of what they do in front of my camera, that's a portrait of them. If they come over to a stranger's house who found them on a sexual dating site and they only want to wear a suit and tie and sit in front of the camera and do nothing, well, that tells me as much about them as somebody who comes over and does something more interesting."

What's more interesting? "I had one guy come over at 4 in the morning," said Bob. "He came in a pickup truck with three giant suitcases filled with a giant bottle of baby oil, ties, dildos, and all kinds of stuff. He put on a show for me for an hour and a half and made a real mess of my bed because of all that fucking baby oil. That's the same thing, though, as the person who will sit there in a suit and a tie, because it tells me who they are."

Bob spoke most fondly, however, of a series of photographs he'd done of a man named Mark. You can check them out here on his website. "Mark's a friend of mine, probably my best friend, who I met in Palm Springs," Bob told me. "He's bi-polar and he has dementia, so he was on disability and was always available. He was a perfect subject because he's also a photo collector and he's really bright. He's a writer and a psycho, which is to say it was a long time before I would let him walk behind me holding an axe."

The photos of Mark are wide ranging. There are straight up portraits, graphic sex scenes, staged suicides, and the occasional tender moment. Perhaps most memorable and somewhat shocking, however, are the photos of Mark's alter ego, Candy-o. Named after a song by The Cars, Bob described Candy-o as "a really bad gender fuck."

"I'd call up Mark at 4 o'clock in the morning and say, 'Get up, come on over, and we'll go out and take photos of you at the Greyhound bus depot,'" recalled Bob. "One time we were driving through Palm Spring's gay neighborhood where all the hotels are and there was this bad paisley couch, and I mean bad, that someone had thrown out. There were two sections of the couch, one on top of the other, and I had Mark crawl between them as Candy-o. It looked like someone had murdered Candy-o and left him on the street inside this paisley couch. It's called The Death of Candy-o."

Although Bob obviously greatly cared for his friend Mark, I was struck by how much control he seemed to have over his subject. "I always tell Mark he's like a potted plant with a brain," said Bob. "He will do anything I come up with." In fact, Bob was very clear that Mark was not only his ideal subject, but that he seeks men with similar personalities for a lot of his work. For instance, when he posts an ad on Craigslist, he writes that he's seeking "submissive exhibitionists."

"I love photographing submissive men," Bob explained. "You never have to say please. They'll hold a pose forever until you tell them to move, and they get off on that." Here in the East Bay, he's also now working with a friend of Mark's who's manic, bi-polar, and a former alcoholic and drug user.

"Do you ever feel bad working with these guys?" I had to ask. "I mean, if they're manic, bi-polar, former drug users, do you ever feel like you're taking advantage of them?"

Bob was emphatic in his reply: "No. Absolutely not. Because I'm not taking advantage of them. I never take advantage of people. I use people. I believe in using people because everybody uses everybody. Nobody gives anything unless they want something in return. Even Mother Teresa wanted something in return. You just don't go out handing out birth control pills in Calcutta for nothing."

Bob went on to say that his work, and the idea that he could be "taking advantage" of his subjects, was all about perception. "It's the gestalt," he asserted, referring to a school of psychology that led to the coining of the phrase "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."

"Gestalt is about perception and organization," Bob continued. "Let's say you see a picture of a man and a woman in a bedroom. She's in the process of either putting on or taking off her clothes. Depending on your gestalt, you either see her getting dressed or getting undressed. Or maybe you've seen those pictures that, if you look at them one way, it's a chalice. But if you look at it in another way, it's two profiles. That's all gestalt."

If I'm following Bob's logic correctly, then, if I look at his work and simply see him taking advantage of someone, I'm only perceiving and focusing on a certain part of his work. I'm not stepping back and seeing the whole, or the greater picture behind his work.

"I'm a very selfish person, okay?" Bob said. "But being selfish is not a bad thing. Just like pride isn't a bad thing, but you can take it to the point where you're arrogant. Selfishness is about taking care of yourself. Okay? You can't take care of anyone else unless you take care of yourself."

I must have looked skeptical, because Bob continued, bringing me into his analogy. "You're selfish," he said, pointing at me. "I mean, you were determined to come here and get me to talk. In order to do that, with me or anyone else, you're willing to do whatever needs to be done, hopefully in a kind way or whatever, to meet them. You need to get people to show up and meet you so you can get what you need from them, which is what's in their head. But you could also turn it around and be doing this project for really horrible reasons. You could be writing terrible things about people. You could be a real asshole. So being selfish is about getting what I need for me, so I can give it back to them."

Then, as if to punctuate his entire argument, Bob looked me straight in the eye and said: "So I don't take advantage of people. They don't give me anything that they're not willing to give me."

Although I'm not sure I agree with Bob entirely, I do see some of the logic behind his argument. I am meeting people over a cup of coffee for selfish reasons - I want to write about them! There's a part of me, too, who wants the people I meet to be a little whacky and who hopes they say some outlandish things. That makes things more interesting, right? But at the same time, I try to be very careful, sometimes maybe even too careful, with how I portray people in these pieces of writing. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, especially since they took the time to meet with a total stranger. I don't want to be an asshole. Sometimes I might even omit something particularly odd that someone says, just because I don't want them to read my blog and think, "Holy shit! Did I really say that to him?"

Food for thought, I guess.

As for Bob and I, we parted ways on good terms. We even managed to fulfill both of our selfish, creative needs - I got Bob to talk to me, and he got to take my picture:

Coffee with a Stranger #3 - Coffee with Expanding Your Comfort Zone

There are times when we all need to expand our comfort zone. Maybe you're in a rut. Maybe you're bored. Maybe you just broke up with your girlfriend and you've decided to "show her" by discovering a little thing called whiskey, not showering for several weeks, and starting a punk band with some street kids you met at a NOFX concert.

Or maybe you get in your grandpa's Honda Civic and you drive across the continent with your dad for a low-paying, part-time job and an interview for a possible "manny" position in Oakland, California. Maybe you stop along the way at Graceland and the Grand Canyon. In the car, maybe you listen to a ridiculous David Baldacci book-on-tape that features an even more ridiculous narrator who raises his voice several octaves whenever a lady is speaking. Maybe your dad, who's flying home once you reach San Francisco, rubs his hands together multiple times during the trip and says, "This is really neat!" Maybe you spend New Year's Eve in a hotel in Bakersfield, CA, and while your dad sleeps and you peel labels off bottles of Sierra Nevada, you wonder what the hell you're doing moving 4537 kilometers/2707 miles away from almost everyone you know.

Or maybe you do something a little less extreme. Maybe you're bumming around Craigslist, looking for a job in the coffee roasting world because you're sick of working in "ink" and when you search for keyword "coffee", some post entitled Coffee with a Stranger pops up and you decide, "Yeah, whatever, why not?"

Well, that's exactly how I ended up meeting with Jason, Stranger #3 and a native of Wisconsin, at Blue Bottle Coffee in Oakland's Jack London Square. In Jason's own words, "This isn't something I would normally do, but it's not like I've got anything else going on and it's been explained to me that I should start doing things outside my comfort zone." Then he laughed.

I'll take it! Coffee with a Stranger is open to any and all reasons for meeting over a cup of coffee.

Unfortunately, this particular Blue Bottle Coffee didn't have much in the way of seating, so Jason and I set out on foot to find another place to sit in Jack London Square. We ended up on a bench outside of the train station where we were serenaded by train whistles, the squeal of train brakes, and pre-recorded arrival and departure announcements. We also witnessed a little boy wander up to our bench to deliver a couple of swift kicks to a nearby garbage can. Kid's gonna be the next Pele!

When Jason, who I'd guess is in his mid-to-late 30's, first mentioned that he used to work in "ink", I thought of one thing: tattoos. I eyed his cropped, salt and pepper hair, Oakley sunglasses, long-sleeve Carhartt shirt, cargo pants, and hiking boots and wondered if he was hiding some extravagant tattoo somewhere underneath. He didn't seem the type, but I've been wrong on these kinds of things before. Turns out, however, that when Jason says "ink", he's talking more along the lines of McCormick Spices and Benefit Cosmetics. And, no, that doesn't mean tattoos of basil or dried chilies on your knuckles or lip gloss and eye shadow permanently etched onto your face. No, instead we're talking about product packaging. Jason used to work in commercial ink, mixing and matching different colors of ink for a company that manufactured packaging for the likes of McCormick Spices and Benefit Cosmetics.

Swing and a miss on my part, eh?

Speaking of which, Jason and I actually talked a lot about "swinging and missing". For example, he somewhat jokingly suggested that if things didn't work out for me financially and job wise in the Bay Area, I could always consider Spokane, WA. Jason once lived in Spokane, which he described as "kind of a crappy place, but if you're earning a decent wage you can live like a king in Spokane!" After a little research, I discovered that "Live like a king in Spokane!" isn't Spokane's official city slogan, but I'm thinking it probably should be. It might, however, have a tough time competing with this:



Jason, who was a pretty even keel kind of guy, was at his most animated when we talked about coffee. Although he'd mainly been working in the non-tattoo-related-ink industry and was currently unemployed, he had just applied for a coffee roasting position. He did have some coffee roasting experience, too, as he and his ex-wife used to roast coffee out of their garage when they were living in Portland, OR. They even had a logo and a name for their particular brand - Blue Train Coffee. Jason fished out one of their old business cards from his wallet for me to see. The card was dog-eared and a little wrinkled, but it did have a cool design and logo featuring a blue, toy train engine.

There was something both really endearing and kind of sad about Jason's memories of his home-based coffee roasting business. He was definitely very proud (and rightfully so) of what he had accomplished - he even offered to give me his old business card before realizing that it was likely his only remaining one. But he also admitted that it made him "kind of depressed" to think about Blue Train Coffee. It was, after all, a project he had worked on with his now ex-wife. He roasted the coffee, she did the design, and they worked together making sales and attending the occasional roasting conference. Jason estimated that they'd sold over 1000 pounds of the stuff. "I had plans," he told me, "to do a lot more with the roasting business, but then, you know, I got divorced, moved down here, and now I'm living in a studio apartment where there's obviously not enough room to roast coffee." In his even keel way, though, Jason seemed excited and hopeful about this coffee roasting position. It even involved working under a "master roaster" who used to work for Peet's.

"I'm going to give it a shot," said Jason, twirling his empty coffee cup in his hands and nervously bouncing his leg up and down. "And if it doesn't work out, maybe I'll be living in mom's basement in Wisconsin. At least I have that to fall back on, right? I can go to sleep at night knowing I'm not going to be out on the street."

By this point and nearing the end of my conversation with Jason, I wasn't exactly sure which "it" he was referring to when he said he was "going to give it a shot." He could have been referring to the coffee roasting position, living in Oakland, or maybe even this general notion of getting out and expanding that comfort zone. But it was also entirely possible that he was talking about something completely different, something that we hadn't talked about explicitly. Jason often seemed lost in his own thoughts while we talked on that bench outside of the train station. He was always polite, friendly, and honest, but as he spoke with me, I felt like he was busy working through something private and difficult in his own mind. Like he was kneading a thought into a slow fruition or, like that empty coffee cup in his hands, he was twirling a difficult idea through his mind, circling around it, and wondering when and how to tackle it head on.

Once the sun began to set behind the warehouses and lofts around us, Jason and I headed back to our respective cars - me to my grandpa's Honda Civic and he to his Hyundai Elantra. One of the last things Jason mentioned was that he'd fought a ticket he'd received for unknowingly driving in the bus lane onto the Bay Bridge. It was an honest mistake. The signage really isn't clear, so he took pictures to prove his side of things and got ready for his court appearance. Fortunately, the ticket was thrown out - the issuing officer never showed up to court to disprove Jason. I mentioned that I thought small victories are important, and that you've got to keep things positive.

Jason smiled, we shook hands, and we went our separate ways.

Coffee + Stranger #1 (Part II): Coffee with Good Days and Bad Days

Apparently adult snuggle parties are a thing nowadays. Who knew? Not me. These are, I learned, organized parties where consenting groups of adults and strangers get together to lie around and do some non-sexual snuggling, kind of like that big monster pile in Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are (see above around the 1:10 mark). Curious, I googled the shit out of the phrase “snuggle party” and actually found several “how to guides to snuggle partying": you can find examples here and here. Among other things, it’s suggested that these fiestas include drinks sans booze, light snacks, soft, cuddle inducing music (maybe a little Monsters of Folk? I could snuggle all day with those monsters!), snuggle “lifeguards” to reign in potential amorousness, and the understanding that the occasional boner could arise. Furthermore, if you’re having trouble pulling such a party together, it’s suggested you defer to the experts - certified cuddle party facilitators.

I wonder how they’re doing in this economy?

And how did I learn about snuggle partying? From Marianne¹ , the fun, open, and energetic first of hopefully many strangers in this little project of mine. Although she herself had never been to a snuggle party, Marianne mentioned these shindigs as an example of why I might get many responses to my Coffee with a Stranger ad on Craigslist. People seem to be increasingly searching for “real” interactions with others, even strangers, so what’s the harm in a quick, free cup of coffee with some guy from the Internet?

And what can I say about my initial impression of Marianne? She was in her late 30’s, seemed tall to me, and had long, dark hair that was wet from a shower after a run around Lake Merritt. And as I mentioned in Part I of my experience at Café Madrid in downtown Oakland, she was a little late for our meeting. 15 or 20 minutes late to be exact, which gave me plenty of time to weave a fun web of neurotic, self-conscious, and self-doubting thoughts in my busy little brain. Good times!

Marianne, however, turned out to be well worth the wait. How could I not enjoy someone who, after some initial awkwardness and everyday chitchat, broke the ice with the story of the first time her boogers froze up due to horrifyingly cold weather? That’s when I realized Marianne and I could really talk and get down to business. If you can talk boogers ² with a stranger without it being a reference to your kid or pet, you’re okay in my books.

If I had to describe Marianne in one word, I would use “expressive”. She had these huge, brown eyes that you could just tell didn’t miss a whole lot. She was also always in motion in some shape or form, even before the caffeine in her café con leche had a chance to work its magic. Her hands were always moving and she constantly shifted her body as she sat across from me. This isn’t to say that she squirmed around like some little boy who needs to go to the bathroom, but you could tell she’s someone who likes to be active. She also had the habit of pulling down the sleeves of her sweater and scrunching them into her palm when we talked about more serious things than boogers.

Things got a little more serious, for example, when we talked about “good days” vs. “bad days”. I know all about good and bad days – the difference being those days where I strut around like a man on a mission versus those days where I’m convinced my hair looks weird, my pants feel too short, I’m constantly checking to see if my fly is down, and I’ve definitely managed to dribble coffee down the front of my shirt. Obviously we all have our good and bad days. Marianne, however, talked about those particularly painful days where you pose those difficult “self-worth questions”. Scrunching her sleeves into her palms, she said that sometimes she felt like she wasn’t meeting the expectations placed on women in her age group. She was in her late 30’s, divorced, unemployed, and not preoccupied with burping babies or driving tweens to soccer practice. She felt it was easy, then, to sometimes feel like she didn’t fit into any of those “worthwhile/worthiness boxes” that society, media, and well-meaning friends and family want to place us in. Essentially, if you’re not a mother wearing high-waist mom jeans or a career woman wearing business suits a la Condoleeza Rice, what are you and where do you fit in? And if you’re not in the “mom box” or the “career box” like everyone else around you, who do you hang out with and what is your community? Jokingly, Marianne wished that she could be a part of a more “alternative” community. If, she said, she was a “transgendered polyamorist, maybe there’d be a stronger and more supportive community of like-minded people waiting for her?

This is not to say that Marianne doesn’t have good friends and a nice community in the Bay Area. Far from it, as she spoke of several friends and the fun things that they do together. Interestingly, though, she did mention that she wasn’t going to tell just anyone that she’d met up with me. Even some of her closer friends might think our encounter was a somewhat “odd” thing to do. I hadn’t thought about this. How many people might I meet during this project who might not tell anyone about meeting me or who might be quite selective, including the careful omission of husbands, wives, significant others, siblings, kids, and BFFs? Is there something inherently weird or taboo about agreeing to this particular kind of meeting? Marianne even mentioned that she has friends who are quite comfortable with one-night stands with strangers met at a bar, but who would never agree to a much less intimate cup of coffee with an Internet stranger. I wonder what kind of numbers I’d get if I took the following poll:

What are you more comfortable with?

1) A one-night stand with a stranger picked up at a bar.
2) A cup of coffee with an Internet stranger.
3) Neither. Both are gross/crazy/unappealing/immoral.

Maybe I could get Star Magazine to tackle this subject in their next big poll?

All in all, Marianne was a great test subject for my first Coffee with a Stranger. She might actually have been perfect, as she was a firm believer that people often “reveal more to strangers than to close friends.” Strangers, after all, never have to see each other again after an encounter. That’s the beauty of being a stranger, despite the loneliness and isolation that may come with it. If you’ve moved around a lot in your life, as Marianne had from California to New York City to the Twin Cities to Scandinavia and back again, maybe you can relate.

Eventually my conversation with Marianne petered out. We said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. Later that night, she would send me a nice email thanking me for the cup of coffee and asking that I keep her posted on my project’s progress. In the meantime, I’m going to try to keep my “bad days” to a minimum and, if all else fails, I guess I could give an Oakland snuggle/cuddle party a shot?




¹ Marianne, by the way, isn't her real name. This particular stranger had some concerns about privacy, which I wholeheartedly respect, so she asked that I come up with a pseudonym. Why Marianne? Lately, I've been listening to Beck's cover of Songs of Leonard Cohen with MGMT, Devendra Banhart, and others, so I thought I'd give Marianne a shot.
² In case you were wondering, Marianne's boogers were frozen while she was living in the Twin City area of Minnesota. I can't say she enjoyed the experience or would like to repeat it any time soon, but at least, I guess, it was memorable?

Coffee with a Stranger #1 (Part I) - Coffee with Self-Doubt

My first Coffee with a Stranger was scheduled on a Tuesday afternoon at Cafe Madrid in downtown Oakland. I had no idea what to expect. Not only had I never been to Cafe Madrid, but this particular stranger was a somewhat guarded and secretive individual in our pre-meeting emails. It was made very clear that privacy was of the utmost importance to this person, what with Google's prying eyes tracing our every step like a bloodhound following a potent scent with wild eyes, lolling tongue, and bristled fur. Or at least that's the way I picture it. I am, after all, a guy who refuses to post anything personal on a certain social networking site. Instead my page features the mildly inappropriate exploits of a stuffed animal. Seriously. I even spent time posing this stuffed animal in scandalous positions for the eye of my camera.

So, yes, I was going into this meeting with very little prior knowledge of this stranger. I wasn't even sure of gender, as his or her emails cheerfully signed off only with a pair of initials. I did know that this individual found my ad on Craigslist while searching for jogging partners. There was also mention of always being interested in writing, but being "too chickenshit" to take a class or pursue the idea further. Some other tidbits shared were the fact that he or she was unemployed, looking for temp work, and that some friends had had "scary experiences" with online dating.

Armed with these details, a tape recorder, a pencil, and a notebook, I head to Cafe Madrid. It was a dreary, overcast winter afternoon and downtown Oakland was, as per usual, somewhat deserted. As I approached the cafe, a woman coming from the opposite direction was also heading for the same cafe.

"Aha!" I thought to myself, mentally stabbing the air with my finger. "Maybe she's the one behind those cheerful initials!"

This woman was short, likely in her mid-thirties, and had long, wavy brown hair that reached down to her shoulders. She carried a squat, brown bag over her shoulders and a massive book in her hands. She looked up at me, looked as if she might smile or say something, then quickly looked back down and hurried into the cafe.

I was crushed! I was sure this was my mysterious first stranger and that she had taken one look at me and freaked out. As per our agreement via email, I was wearing my brand new, Flashback Friday Toronto Blue Jays hat (an incredible Christmas gift from my sister and the most noticeable piece of clothing that I own), so there was no mistaking me. After all, other than Raiders' hats, jackets, tattoos, eye patches, and head-to-foot costumes, there's not much sports paraphernalia being worn in downtown Oakland.

I followed this woman into the coffee shop. I may even have held the door open for her. My gut said that she was the one. I stood behind her in line, listened as she ordered a cup of tea, and watched as she fumbled between her squat purse, her Biblically sized book, and her wallet. I was even extra nice to her at the milk and sugar table. "Take your time," I assured her, my small coffee in my hand, as she rushed and fumbled some more with bags and books while pouring milk and sugar into her tea. I got a wane smile for that little effort. I realize now that maybe, just maybe, I might have been freaking her out with my expectant stares and over-politeness. But I was just trying to be nice! As I topped my coffee with milk and sugar, I watched disappointedly as she shuffled off to a far corner of the cafe. And by far corner, I mean tremendously far, as Cafe Madrid is really quite spacious despite a rather small clientele.

I decided I too should take a seat. I sat near the front door by a large window that looked out onto the street. And, no, don't worry, I didn't sit uncomfortably close to that woman who I suspected was Stranger #1, so I could continue to stare at her from beneath the brim of my brand new Blue Jays' hat. That would be odd. We were, in actuality, almost at exact opposite sides of the cafe, although I still had a clear view of her. She was busy sipping her tea and reading her Biblically sized text. I wondered what that big book could be. Harry Potter number four, five, or six? An Avatar-esque sci-fi/fantasy novel? Foucault's History of Madness? The Bible?

This is when the self-doubt really started to kick in. Was it ridiculous to think that this project could actually work? I mean, really, who in their right mind would agree to meet me at a coffee shop, so I could record and write about an unscripted, shoot-the-shit session between the two of us? Did this woman across the coffee shop, quietly reading, sipping her tea, and fiddling with her hair, see something creepy about me that I'd never noticed before? Was I too young? Too old? Overdressed for the occasion? Underdressed? Did I have spinach stuck in my teeth or Worchester sauce splattered across my cheek? Or maybe I just looked a wee bit ridiculous in my brand spanking new Toronto Blue Jays hat? Maybe not as ridiculous as this guy to the left, but close?

Soon 5, 10, 15, and finally 20 minutes passed as I nursed my small coffee before a table laid out with my tape recorder, pencil, and notebook. Part of me wanted to give up on this project entirely and head home with my tail between my legs. That is, of course, until I focused my attention once again back to that woman with the Biblically sized text. She had to be the one! I had to confront her! Looking back, it's somewhat odd that I didn't first consider that maybe I'd just been stood up or forgotten. I really had it in my head that that unsuspecting woman was my stranger, but for some reason she'd taken one look at me and decided against our meeting. It was then that I decided to approach her. To walk across that cavernous coffee shop and ask this woman if she was here to meet a stranger for a cup of coffee. To confront her. To figure this situation out. Why not give it a shot? Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

That, apparently, is what self-doubt can do to a guy trying to kick-start a writing project involving anonymous strangers found over the internet. I battered my doubts from the internal (me) to the external (unsuspecting woman) like a birdie hit between two hard-smacking, trash-talking badminton players.

Before I could initiate what was bound to be a somewhat awkward and accusatory conversation, luckily another woman came rushing into the coffee shop. Her hair wet and recently brushed, she took a quick look around before making a beeline for a certain brand spanking new Toronto Blue Jays hat. This little project of mine still had some life!