The Fed

The Hungarian Pastry Shop Pick-Up Artist

Jennifer Aziz

The Hungarian Pastry Shop – the beloved little café on Amsterdam Avenue.  We’ve all spent our share of time there squinting under outrageously dim lighting and giving ourselves ulcers from the seventeen cups of coffee we consume.
But there are others who go there for a different reason.  They’re headed for the pick-up-artist with an agenda for love.

Watch out, ladies.  This creature is cunning and dangerous.  He knows how to irritate and nauseate.  He is the Pastry Shop Pick-Up Artist and he strikes without warning.
Like the trickster chameleon, he will change shape and form to confuse his prey.  But we are not fooled by his camouflaging ways.  The moment he utters his first word we know what he’s about.

His mission for love is always clear as he scopes out the place with his bedroom eyes.  Maybe he even throws in a shot of rum to his Russian coffee to loosen up his nerves.  He orders his coffee without the whipped cream.  He’s a real man.

He may be sitting at the next seat from you, acting quiet and aloof.  He’s merely waiting for the most opportune second to advance.
And then the moment you most feared arrives – you have run out of sugar.  You could play it safe and just reach over to the neighboring table, but you’re far too lazy to move the extra eight centimeters.

A minute of panic.  You pull yourself together and in your most nonchalant and unseductive voice you mumble a request for the sugar.  Dear God!  He doesn’t hear you (or so he wants you to believe).

You clear your throat this time to get his attention.  After you repeat yourself in an almost too loud for Hungarian voice, he finally acquiesces.  But there’s a price to pay.  He’s been waiting for this moment, and he makes his move.

If you, like me, can’t bring yourself to be outwardly rude to a harmless, polite boy your only salvation at this point is a distraction.  The best are usually a surprise visit from a friend or getting up to refill your cup (for the sixteenth time).  If there is no friend in sight and your cup is already half full (or half empty) then you are out of luck, my friend.
As you nod frequently and smile, he will eventually get the picture and move on to the next victim.  And don’t worry about discouraging him.  He possesses the rare gift of eternal self-confidence.  Unfailingly, he will pick himself up by the straps of his Italian boots and find another poor soul to badger.

The irony of the situation is that many of us frequent the Hungarian despite the presence of these philosophy reading, coffee loving, bathroom vandalizing love poets.  No matter how often the waitresses mispronounce our names (and I suspect they do it knowingly after a while), or how many Pastry Shop Pick-Up Artists encounters we brave, we still return for me.

Maybe they spike the English Breakfast tea, or maybe there is something in the air.   Whatever the reason, we go on loving the Hungarian, refilling our coffee coups and asking the guy sitting next to us to pass the sugar.
September ish, 1999