up the down escalator

In our circle of slackers who hang out at the Diedrich Coffeehouse in Costa Mesa there is a guy I'll call TA. TA is a stereotypically pugnacious Irish-American and a stereotypically romantic artist, far too self-conscious about both of those things, and much older and shorter than he'd like to be. I get along with him ok although I don't care for his art, and although he and I aren't really made to inhabit the same planet. We have a "nod and smile" arrangement and some friends in common but we'd never be friends and could end up enemies easily.

( Today things went overboard with him. )