(Why is this happening?)

THIS IS WHY (?)

Let’s talk about things that are embarrassing.

I’ll go first.

A question I want to ask people in filmed interviews MIGHT be about their first experience at MOKABE’S.

So…

Okay…um.  Anticlimactic.  The first time I ever went to Mokabe’s was with my friend (the LOVELY and soon-to-be-married) Sarah.  But…I sat outside into the late night.  I didn’t talk to anyone, and I didn’t really know where I was.  (The CITY?  What’s…the city?)

LATER, things changed.  Later, it was 2007 and I was a senior in college and I (listenedtoalotofanidifranco, worebandanas, hadmynosepierced) came with my acting major friend, Sari.  (Not to be confused with Sarah). 

Let’s be real: I was MUCH more interested in this time at the promise of…lesbian sightings. 

(It seemed a guarantee.)

SOON, we were there every day EVERY DAY every day.  We sat upstairs and sipped our multiple beverages and hoped that eventually the people who worked there would talk to us (beourbestfriends).  This was a counterintuitive approach.  We didn’t talk to anyone.  We didn’t even see anyone.  Our studying was not conducive to socializing or meeting lesbians.  When we DID see other people, we usually looked away, down to our textbooks on…whatever it was we studied. 

Let’s skip a huge part of this story so that I can humiliate myself more rapidly.  Things went REALLY slowly but they sort of, in a dysfunctional way, functioned.

ONE DAY I was sitting upstairs on one of those high tables that go up to the window.  I may or may not have been sporting a wrist brace to comfort my carpel tunnel and I also may or may not have been wearing a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt.  Um. 

SOMETHING happened.  I spilled my soy latte!  And it just…whoosh, a tidal sticky raw-sugared mess across that little yellow table, swallowing up the bottom of Sari’s BRAND NEW MACBOOK.

(Disaster disaster disaster disaster).

Good thing she was almost finished with her seventy-page thesis…

(Oh right!  We studied plays!)

uhhhh...

She left to go to the Apple Store.  She was not mad and she didn’t even seem upset.  For some reason THIS REALLY FREAKED ME OUT.  I went DOWNSTAIRS.  I SAT STARING AND SAD AND REALLY SAD SAD SAD at everyone around me.

I MIGHT, might, have cried to the lovely people working behind the counter.

(I OWE MY FRIEND THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS.  I HAVE FORTY-SEVEN DOLLARS.)

Anyway…so…I guess…that was a bonding experience? 

Also…(because, really, who doesn’t like to hear about other people’s discomfort?) I kept running into one of the girl’s who worked there. 

THE PROBLEM would have normally been that I have a lot of trouble with out-loud human language and general social contact.  (I spend a lot of my time thinking about ways to NOT fall down). 

The BIGGER problem was that it happened like…three times within…a week.  

And she was always with friends and/or her girlfriend and I was always alone.  There was Whole Foods and then there was a (not Mokabe’s,) coffee shop and then there was the art museum.   Yes, I was wandering (maybe barefoot?) on art hill, headphones in, and for the THIRD TIME IN A WEEK I HAPPEN TO RUN INTO THIS PERSON.  And she was all like…SO NICE and… “you want to go in with us?”

So I wandered the German expressionism section a little bit behind a group of people I did not know...

Good thing I know her now and that is more funny than it was at the time when I would start sweating profusely and speaking what I meant to be English but what sounded a lot like Russian.

And, also, anyway…those were (some of) my first experiences at MOKABE’S.

So then what?

Time passed.  I moved place to place.  Eventually, (because we’re skipping to only things that humiliate me), I was drunk and living with my wonderfully rambunctiously Alanis Morisette-ly tattooed MOKABE’S barista roommate, trying to make pasta in the early morning hours.  Stovetop?  Oven?  Microwave?  Who knows. 

He came into our (purple) kitchen, and I THREW my phone across the room in excitement to see him (startled simultaneously by the vibration of a text message). 

The phone cracked into several pieces on the linoleum.

Ooops.

(Also, I was REALLY hoping the text message said something like…I love you…and I was pretty positive in the moment that the pasta-drunk-phone-throw would result in MASSIVE damage to my potential new affair). 

Anyway…those were the two things I have to say about breaking things in proximity to MoKaBe’s?

BUT THIS IS NOT A MOVIE ABOUT ME.

THIS IS NOT A MOVIE ABOUT BREAKING THINGS.

I DO NOT HAVE AN EXCITING LIFE. 

I just thought I’d go first.

And so…if you’ve stumbled upon this and you’ll be at the corner of Arsenal and Grand, PLEASE be ready to tell me your first (or overall) experience of MoKaBe’s.

I have had upsets and revelations and moments of real HOME in that place.

Have you?

And if so…that is the “why.”

THANK YOU TELL ME EVERYTHING. 

I WILL BE THERE SOON…

(What is happening?)

THIS IS HAPPENING:

I, Liza Birkenmeier (astro-physicist and juggler), am about to create a documentary in St. Louis, MO. Is it about coffee and cigarettes or trans identity or lesbianism or dancing or Kei$ha or bicycling or recycling or walking or drugs or money or revenge and love?

I don’t really have any ideas on what this is going to be ABOUT.

I don’t really have any ideas on what this is going to be CALLED.

(I really need you to tell me. Thanks so much!)

THE PLACE:

The place is key. MOKABE’S COFFEE SHOP on Arsenal and Grand.

Why is this place like any corner in this country and UNLIKE ANYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD? I really don’t know.

GO.

LET’S TALK ABOUT COFFEE.

I’m at a coffee shop right now in Delray Beach, Florida. It’s called the SPOT.

I’m sitting in the shade of a palm tree on the corner—the doors open, the egrets lurking.

THE CORNER is Atlantic and SE1 Ave. People are about—tourists, locals, babies, soccer parents, super-tan beachy people, surfer-ish people, older shoppers parking their Porsches…

So no.

I don’t feel like family at THE SPOT.

This is not MY spot.

In fact, in most places in South Florida, I’ve been getting sort of “sideways” glances from strangers.

(Okaaaaaay, people are NICE—they really are happy! Their vitamin D levels are probably close to toxic and no one seems to have a job. And the people who do have jobs seem freak-joyous in working at them. For example, usually I don’t like to be called “honey,” but here, everyone calls everyone “honey” at the front desk at the gym or the gas station or the Cuban restaurant. And suddenly I like it. “Honey, gorgeous, sweetie, pretty…” Because they mean it! I feel like their honey! And maybe I’m just lonely! But I like it!)

BUT here’s the thing, with the sideways looks. My basketball shorts and leotard on Clematis Street near the fancy port-side Italian restaurants aren’t really…in place. I tend to go to the ocean alone, jump in the waves by myself, and smile at birds. And so then—people look at me.

SO, like, what.

THIS PARTICULAR corner—the corner of the up-and-coming yet-to-be-determined film with a yet-to-be-determined title will be at a place that IS my place. Not my place like it belongs to me, not my place like I know all about it. But a home kind of thing. A place that I go. A place where if someone looks at me with a West Palm Beach Florida-type judgment glare, I know that THEY’RE probably the one who’s…not in the right place.

THIS IS WHAT I NEED…

(Oh, thanks, I really appreciate it.)

I need people to tell me about their Experiences With This Place.

I need people to tell me about their lives in General.

I’m doing a cross-section of humanity here—and am wildly curious about what brings you to MoKaBe’s, why it might (or might not be) your place, and why it is different from anywhere else. I want to know about where you live, what you do, what excites you, what happiness may mean or look like. This is just a sort of GLANCE, or…I don’t know, NOD. I just want to put a slight microscope to the world here. (There).

I want to get an insider look at the lives-times-dreams-bullshit-whatever of the people around Arsenal and Grand.

OHMYGOD such a party.

THIS IS A MOVIE ABOUT YOU.

YOU WILL BE A MOVIE STAR.

Or at least—a star of an experimental documentary that my DRAMA school is allowing me to shoot on my own. Why are they letting me do this? Ohhh, that’s a question for another time.