Sometimes I can’t get to Dunkin Donuts for my daily dose of dread. When I go to “work” in the Back Bay, it’s more convenient to go to Au Bon Pain on the way. It’s a little different, but just as good, as for despair. (That’s what the pain in Au Bon Pain is, innit? Bet you thought it was French for “bread,” dincha?)

Dunkin Donuts in Dot, you get that blue collar crowd. Au Bon Pain in Back Bay, you get the white collar perspective. Honestly, in my experience, working class people, when they’re in their element, are more polite on the whole than their cubicle-dwelling white-collar counterparts are in theirs.

I think this has to do partly with the stress of expectations.

Being working class is pretty cut and dry (which is not , by any means, to say easy). But when you have haute bourgeois ambitions, things get complicated. And in the cut-throat world of the cubicle, forget Solidarity: you’re on your own. It’s not just at the top–It’s lonely in the middle, too.

So Au Bon Pain, around ten to nine on a weekday is a war of all against all. For some reason, as I stood waiting for my order, looking around, I caught myself thinking of one of my favorite Bukowski poems, “eyeless through space”:

it’s no longer any good sucker
they’ve turned out the lights
they’ve blocked the rear entrance and
the front’s on fire;
nobody knows your
name;

last is first
lost is everything;
the giant dogs mourn through
dandelion dreams;
the panthers welcome cages;
the onion heart is frosted
destiny is destitute
the horns of reason are muted as
the laughter of fools blockades the air;
the champions are dead and
the newly born are smitten;
the jetliners vomit the eyeless
through space;
it’s no longer any good sucker
it’s been getting to that right
along

Just thought I’d share.