Reason #105 To Love Grounded

...is that you can come by in the morning, around 9:45 or so, sit down, order a coffee, and feel up one of the hot but not hot in a conventional way baristas. Grounded is this coffee shop in the city that I shouldn't be telling you about because it's a perfect storm of awesomeness and tinyness, and it's tough enough to get a table in here without you, dear reader, stopping by. (Although if you do stop by — you'll have to get a map and find it yourself — and you see me on the couch in the back, I'll slide over and make some room.)

There's this guy two tables down who's gotta be in his fifties and, okay, first I just saw him talking to the barista when she came in for work. Maybe he's a regular or whatever — he's there on his laptop minding, presumably, his own business and she came up to him. They're chatting. Whatever. Some people are just friendly, and Grounded has a brand of unpretentiousness all its own. The other, hotter but still not hot in a conventional way barista even smiled at me when I forgot to take back my buy-ten, get-one-free card, which those bitches at Casablanca Tea Room would never, ever do. Okay, but now Fifty-year-old Guy is sort of touching her, around the waist, like she's his prom date or something.

Maybe they're friends. Close friends.

My eyes are going back to my laptop but it's not two seconds later and he's all over her in ways that would definitely get him in trouble with the wife later on, massaging her thighs and ass like she's made of dough. You know that jar they've got up by the register that says, "Tips are good for karma?" Looks like they're good for something else, too.

A few minutes later, after she's punched her timecard or whatever, she goes back to this guy's table with her nose in a bag of organic fair-trade coffee, the most erotic of all the olfactory sensations, and they're ready for another go-around. Jeez, some of us are here, trying to think of stuff to write in our blogs, and you two really need to get a room. Still, it's always nice to know the possibility exists; it's a huge improvement over the Starbucks "they can touch you, but you can't touch them" policy.