A latte, Milan’s work
Milan is feeling pretty frustrated. He wonders if he’s losing his edge, having found his first grey hair. He has just graduated in multimedia and he recently took a year out in Goa as per the expected, but he worries.
He worries he is becoming a cliche, one of the tree-climbing, yogurt-knitting crusties who yell into their branded smartphones at pro-Green demos about the terrible hardships that they’ve witnessed and the smell of poor people.
He hates Jeremy Kyle- but not out of any sense of neo-liberal guilt, no- he is concerned that twenty years down the line he will be him, admonishing with a jabby finger, The Finger of Justice, in public.
Sadly, he is a cliche-braying when he laughs, talking about “smashing the state, ya?” in Costya Coffee, where he works as a barista with his equally posh mates Jocasta and Tig, as they debate the real issues that matter: flat white or hazelnut latte? Gluten-free carrot cake or organic blueberry and mint cheesecake? Bruschetta or panini?
Costya Coffe,yesterday.
His last art exhibition ‘peep’ at the modern art gallery in Shoreditch was an out-and-out triumph, bolstered in no small way by mummy and daddy’s patronage (they’re both art dealers.)
“Talent will, like, out, though? ” he says in that quizzical way of the young and affluent. “Like, I, like, worked really hard for this?” (He uses the word “like” far too often, replacing commas with it) yet he knows that talent is irrelevant- soon, his dreads will be cut off, the hemp shirts and combat trousers replaced by a smart designer suit. No more soy latte selling for Milan-he’s going places…
Knightsbridge, mostly.
(Lorna Irvine)
Previously unpublished, written in 2014.
thetempohouse 