Gucci Mane Is In Starbucks
Gucci Mane goes into the Starbucks outside the mall and joins the line. Not only does Gucci want to buy and drink coffee but he also wants to sit down. His legs are tired from walking around the shopping complex.
Gucci scans the coffee shop: approximately 3/4 of all the tables are occupied, including all the sofas. No matter, thinks Gucci, I don’t like sitting on the sofas anyway. They are always too low down and leant back to comfortably drink coffee. In fact, last time Gucci tried to drink coffee sat on a sofa he spilt around 80ml of liquid that was around 75° celcius onto his right knee. He was with a girl he liked (Amy) and tried to make out like he hadn’t spilt any coffee on his knee. He thought she had noticed and was too polite to say anything. The next day, when Amy didn’t return his text, Gucci assumed that it was because he had spilt the coffee on his knee. In fact, Amy didn’t reply to his text message because a network error occurred that resulted in Amy not receiving Gucci’s text. She hadn’t even seen Gucci spill the coffee. Amy assumed that Gucci simply didn’t like talking to her enough to maintain a constant level of contact. This was not the case. Gucci, at the time, liked talking to amy very much, and he still thought about her fairly often. He hated his body for spilling the coffee that he blamed for not speaking to Amy anymore.
Gucci sees an empty small table in the back corner as he and his shopping and the queue edge closer to the barista at the till. Gucci has all his shopping in one hand and his other hand is in his pocket, trying to find the correct change for the drink he is intending to order. He wants a smoothie but also paying for items in stores induces lot of anxiety within him. He feels under a lot of pressure, when making a purchase, to give the cashier the correct amount of change, whilst also appearing to be a calm, collected human being who the cashier would like and possibly want to start a “meaningful relationship” with.
The combination of these two activities means Gucci will often panic and feel as though he is taking far too long. He will glance back to check for imagined stares of hatred from the people behind him in the queue he is slowing down by panicking, which would make him lose track of what he was doing and become even more anxious. So Gucci tries to have the correct amount of money ready in his hand as he approaches the till.
Gucci successfully completes the purchase with only one error: when asked whether he would like to ‘drink in’ or ‘take out’, he chooses ‘take out’. The pretty young barista boy grabs Gucci a large cardboard container and asks for his name. Gucci Mane, replies Gucci. g-u-c-c-i m-a-n-e.
The barista boy smiles as he hands over ‘gucci mane’s machiatto’ and Gucci waddles over to the still-empty table. He has his coffee in one hand and all his shopping in the other. He is both conscious not to spill the coffee and that his hand is slowly becoming more and more uncomfortably hot. Just as the pain is becoming really uncomfortable, Gucci arrives at the table and sets his shopping down and his cardboard cup of coffee onto the table. He looks around, making sure no one is annoyed that he is drinking ‘to go’ coffee ‘in’. No one is looking at him and he turns his head back. Something out of the window catches the light and his eyes automatically focus on it. He remains staring at this point for maybe four seconds until he becomes self aware again and leans over the table to pick up his shopping. He sets it down on the chair opposite him and begins to go through the bags, inspecting the items he has purchased and the items he has stolen.
Gucci does not agree morally with shoplifting, but it became a habit when he realized it meant he could avoid approaching the cashier. When he told amy about this she suggested that he start shopping online, but Gucci enjoys the fundamental process of shopping. On the tube home he will feel a successful hunter-gatherer emotion, not unlike the emotion he feels after cooking an intricate meal. However, when Gucci arrives home at his flat with his new ‘purchases’ he will find they look small and insignificant compared to what he already owns. He realises that all that has changed about him is his inventory – there is a disappointing lack of anything else different about him.
Gucci Mane sips his machiatto with the lid off and flicks through a copy of ‘little white lies’ (the film magazine) which he dropped into his open shopping bag. He leaves it open on the table and checks his phone (no texts) his twitter (108 new tweets) and his facebook (10+ new stories). A drop of coffee falls from the rim of the cardboard cup and hits Gucci on the thumb, which makes him jump slightly, almost spilling his coffee. He doesn’t, however, and puts it down on the table to avoid any further incident. In his head he plans his exact route to the second closest bus stop to the Starbucks – the closest one is on a corner and you cannot see when the bus is coming. Gucci gets an email about cheap flights to Barcelona and Marrakech and Amsterdam and other interesting places. He doesn’t delete it, and imagines himself packing a bag and arriving in a European city with no return ticket. Gucci wishes he’d focused his energy on his language classes in school. He could never live abroad – he’d have to steal everything.
Gucci Mane finishes his machiatto and stands up to leave. He puts his empty cardboard cup into the waste bin and holds the door open for a woman with a pram. Outside his eyes squint in the bright sun, like stepping out of a cinema, or a circus tent on an August afternoon.