The Silent Machine Room Prayer

I really just wanted a coffee that Friday evening, not a sermon. The sign read, “All welcome,” so I assumed I was part of “all” and entered.
A conscript’s first three-day pass is sacred. That seemingly trivial reward marked the transition from recruit to gunner.
Yeah, I made it through the gruelling three-month basic training. After an arduous, soul-sucking train ride, the taxi from the station dropped me in the middle of town, and I began searching for a payphone.
It was about 6 PM. I was cold and hungry and I started walking toward the old cinemas and arcades where my childlike self had once spent countless hours. It was a central pickup point, known to my dad.

I saw the sign welcoming me to coffee. It was the “Crossroads Coffee Bar.” Back then, the world shut down on Sundays, but that establishment was open, ready to catch lost souls and flotsam emerging from the sewers. At least there was a payphone in the back. I got through to an ecstatic parent and was told I could be picked up in two hours.
Massive dudes flanked me and ushered me toward a corner table. Did they imagine this was some sort of invasion? I was dressed in my uniform. For about twenty minutes, I was solidly evangelized. That wasn’t the problem. But did those dudes read the room? Nobody cared how I ended up there. Only that I could be checked off like another stray dog dragged into their kennel. One more lost soul saved.

The coffee wasn’t great, but after a day on the road, it was heaven. I left abruptly, before round two of the sermon, and elected to wait outside, on a street corner. The coffee bar had drained the last reserves of energy I possessed. There was so much I needed to process, to share. Even the foul, lingering thought that in less than three days I would be back here, boarding the train to return to the base, stabbed at my brain. What a waste. Thoughts of Sunday evening were too close for comfort.

I had done some holiday work as a student, earning money at a massive clothing retailer. During lunch, I sat in the makeshift rec room. One guy would always come in, light his Camel, peer through the trails of smoke, and mutter, “Fuck this.” Instinctively, I knew not to ask questions. I called that spot the machine room. It was a junction of pipes, valves, and other whatnots, a place where one could hide for thirty minutes.

That night outside Crossroads, I longed for the machine room. Had I smoked, I might have lit a Camel or a Lucky Strike. Instead, I just said, “Fuck this.” Often, we don’t need words, only someone nearby fluent in the language of disconnection, letting the solidarity of silence and camaraderie drift through smoky trails. Acknowledging that there might not be answers in this moment becomes an answer in itself.