Common ground

The best job I ever had, bar none, was working at
a place called Common Grounds. It was an on-campus job at Kenyon College.
In fact, it was the only on-campus job, since Kenyon does not have a very
large campus. It was about half of the top floor of one of the two student
dining halls, and by day it was, in fact, a section of the cafeteria where
anyone who wanted to get away from the lunchtime crowd could go. By night,
however, the tables would be covered with brown paper, with a plastic cup of
crayons as the centerpiece to each. The stereo would be humming with Sting
or Edie Brickell or the radio show Andy and I had recorded that afternoon.
And me? I'd be pouring coffee.

Okay, so I only worked one night a week, about two hours, for which I
earned the prjavascript:void(0)incely sum of $10, plus tips. But during those two hours on
Wednesday nights, everyone eventually showed up at Common Grounds: your
friends, your former girlfriends, that guy who always walked around campus
with a cockateel on his shoulder, the pretty girl with short blonde hair from
McBride whom you'd always wanted to talk to, the French exchange student
who wanted you to teach her how to bake chocolate chip cookies...

And even when I wasn't working, I'd sometimes drop by Common Grounds on
a Monday or Thursday night to play gin rummy with Amy, or talk politics with
George and Slappy, or listen to an impromptu acoustic concert by Pimentos
for Gus, the on-campus band. Common Grounds was not a "happening" place
-- nobody went there to be seen, or to meet someone special, or to try
something new. It was the same damn coffee week after week, except for the
week that I accidentally poured apple cider into the coffeemaker. It was
just a place to go and be yourself.

Common Grounds is gone, now -- I'm told something called the "Red Door
Cafe" took its place, although I've never been there. Since then, the
nearest thing to Common Grounds I've seen was the old Cafe Liberty in
Cambridge's Central Square. Cafe Liberty wasn't exactly chic. It looked,
in fact, like someone's basement: big, overstuffed couches everywhere with
mismatched throw pillows, brightly-painted support beams with strings of
gold garland twined around them, surly waitstaff who might come back with
your order by the time you left, and might not. I never went to Cafe Liberty
for the service. I went because it was someplace I could go to talk with
my friends, and because it was open until 1 a.m. -- which made it the
perfect place to decompress after a show at the Middle East.

Cafe Liberty is gone, too. There's a Starbucks and a Blockbuster Video
on that strip of Central Square, now, and it doesn't look as run-down as it
did in the days when I spent most of my weekends there. I don't resent
Starbucks for being there -- after all, Cafe Liberty never offered me a
coconut creme mocha frappuchino -- but I do miss having a place where you
could sit around with your friends and be yourself, where anyone you know
might wander in at any moment. I'm sure places like that still exist. I
just don't know where they are.

I remember the way I felt in the fifth grade, when everyone I knew was
reading Lloyd Alexander's "Chronicles of Prydain" and Douglas Adams'
"The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and listening to the Police's
"Synchronicity." I wasn't popular in fifth grade -- in fact, I didn't like
other people very much, and I suspect they felt the same about me -- and yet
I loved being able to walk into class and ask Jeff Fosdick what book of the
series he was on, or discuss the relative merits of "Walking in Your
Footsteps" versus "Tea in the Sahara" (and what was "Miss Gradenko" about,
anyway?) I never thought about it at the time, but I was part of a shared
community of culture. I couldn't play soccer to save my life, and I never
could see the appeal of "Footloose" or Iron Maiden, but I could carry on a
conversation about Star Wars or "The Dukes of Hazzard" with any kid in the
school and feel right at home.

These days, I get along with many more people than I did in the fifth
grade, and yet I'm not always sure what we have in common. My friends who
like ska music aren't all that interested when I dig out my folk CDs,
and the ones who will rock out with me to Blink 182 can't muster the same
enthusiasm for Otis Redding or Solomon Burke. Even movies aren't the
lingua franca that they used to be: one of my very best friends, a woman
for whom I have the greatest respect, told me last night that she'd
just come from seeing "Jackass: The Movie," something I do not plan to do
in this or any lifetime. Asked by a friend what books I've read lately,
I tell them I'm reading "The Corrections," by Jonathan Franzen.

"Uh-huh," they reply.

"You know," I say, "the one that won the National Book Award."

"Sure," they'll say, "whatever."

"By the guy who refused to be on Oprah," I sigh.

"OH!" they say. "That guy!"

It's not that I'd like there to be one, universal culture in which
everyone participates. I know perfectly well that if our culture wasn't
fragmented into particular niches and taste categories, bands like They
Might Be Giants, movies like "Being John Malkovich," and TV shows like...
yes, I'll admit it..."The Flash"...might never be made. I've never wanted to
be like everybody else, and I certainly wouldn't want everyone to be like me.
For one thing, Starbucks would never be able to keep up with the demand for
coconut creme mocha frappuchinos.

And that's as true of ideas as it is of the arts. I'm glad that we live
in a place where some of us believe life begins at conception, and others
believe life begins at 4 a.m. on a Friday night; where some believe everyone
should have guns, and some believe no one should have guns, and some believe
everyone but themselves already has guns and are aiming them in their direction
right...about...now; where some believe in Christ and some believe in
Buddha and some believe in Aquaman, and most of us get along with each other
most of the time.

Still, I like the idea that no matter where I am, or whom I'm with, if
it's 7:30 and we're near a TV, almost everyone will sit down to watch
"The Simpsons." We might not all agree on favorite characters (I'm partial
to Comic Book Guy) or episodes, or guest stars, but most everyone I know
feels a connection to the show, one they can share with other people. It's
a place where, for half an hour, anyone can relax and be himself, or herself,
and enjoy the company of anyone else who happens to be around. I think we
need places like that.