Inflation Is Like...
Seriously, I'm getting bled dry here and it is a major buzz kill.
Inflation is that first date with a woman, the unforgettable one where you two smile at each other disarmingly but with a wattage suggesting an undeniable connection. Everything is going exactly as planned—suspiciously well, even—and you wonder if she is tactfully omitting her visceral distaste for sour beer, or her obsessive preference for binging Selling Sunset over anything related to sports, or her unfortunate propensity for scarfing down all the leftover butter chicken before you get home for dinner.
Two hours and six cocktails later, and you two are sauntering along in that wobbling first gear employed by couples who are only walking to be doing something while they’re talking. But you two happen to be incidentally strolling in the direction of her apartment on the Upper East Side. She stops outside of an idyllic brownstone. Above the rooftops, the fog hangs low and thick, a down comforter blanketing the sky and isolating the city and the night, making the cafes and shops and lights that dangle from the limbs of the trees feel like the setting of a cheesy Hallmark movie. She invites you up for coffee. Your heart speeds up inside your chest, a hummingbird in the wind. You are pleasantly surprised at how this night is going so well.
As you mosey up the stairs, the satellites of first date anxiety that orbit the nucleus of your brain seem to drift away, as if gravity suddenly stopped working on everything but the essential elements of you two at this moment. The door swings open and her place is quaint and inviting, a tasteful mix of IKEA furniture and DIY decor she’s collaged together from various Pinterest influences. You two feel the coiled power of your youth, along with a certain ownership of the city, the night, your lives. It is engulfing, consuming.
She’s making coffee and she’s telling quirky stories and you’re both giggling and the three negroni sbagliatos from happy hour are hitting you perfectly. You two are sharing your dreams and ambitions and passions with each other and gushing about all the places you’ve been itching to travel to with wonder and whimsy. Your mind flashes to a specific memory of flipping through your Instagram newsfeed, absolutely flowing with pictures of engagement rings and adorable dogs and vacations at Croatian beaches, dozens of these tiny digital windows in the sepia-filtered infinities of people young and coupled and satisfied, one after the other. You are acutely aware of the importance and opportunity of your independence, but it is suddenly secondary to finding someone you can love, someone who will love you.
You take that first sip and begin to fantasize about how this could be every morning of your life. You could wake up and have this coffee with her and cozy up on the couch with a weighted blanket and watch a show on (HBO) MAX. You start thinking, “Am I this lucky? Of all the gin joints in the universe, how have I been blessed with this beautiful cosmic accident?”
She puts her cup down on the table and the sound of it snaps you back to the present. She leans in toward your face and you can feel her breath on your cheek. It triggers something inside of you, like the universe is exploding, contracting, dissolving into this inescapable magnetism. She whispers, “This cup of coffee costs 25% more now than it did three years ago.”
Then she shoves an iPad in your face with a tip option.
Just gonna leave this here https://youtu.be/-skZx5liyaM
To be fair, if it went like that, I'd tap on the bigger tip — but those damn negroni sbagliatos never hit me where I aim them