david michael

Sitting with a friend inside Banquette Cafe on Main, we looked up and David Michael was sitting on the other side of the window, smoking Marlboro Reds, every now and then pushing his glasses up, taking sips of iced coffee from a thick bistro glass, looking for all the world like some kind of advertisement for every romantic image you secretly harbor of intense writers scribbling and starving artists sketching at sidewalk cafes. It could have been Paris.

As it turns out, we weren't far off with the starving artist thing. He was homeless, depending upon the empty couches of kind friends most days, trying to stay in design school and the big plaid bag on his table's other seat was full of most everything he'd decided to carry with him. He was drawing intricate and graceful patterns on the pages of his sketchbook that he hoped ultimately would be designs for fabric.

When we interrupted him to ask what he was doing and explain how very romantically he'd struck us--with his drawing and cigarettes and Woody Allen sort of sexiness, if Woody Allen wore Levis and white t-shirts-- he was startled but charming and bemusedly consented to a photo. As we ate lunch, it became evident that the waitress had quite a crush on him, considered him one of her regulars, and his iced coffee never reached the glass-half-empty spot.

We wanted to buy him lunch. Offer a couch. Invite him to dinner. Put our fervent wish that we'd someday wear a patterned silk dress that burst with the bright essence of his creative drive into his duffel bag, to carry against those days when it seems one is too old, too poor, too damned tired to keep struggling, to keep dreaming it will all one day come together the way we imagine.

We settled for slipping a twenty to the waitress for the next time he came in, sure that she'd look out for him. I walked by Banquette for weeks to give him a copy of his picture, but I never saw him again.