Coffee is probably my favorite drink outside of water. Fresh lemonade with only a little bit of sugar, sweet & creamy black tea, and sparkling mineral water* are very close runners up, but coffee wins if only on the ritual of it all. I found all coffee and coffee flavored things absolutely disgusting (in fact, I warmed up to dark chocolate and red wine, the other notorious acquired tastes, significantly before coffee) up until the summer of 2017, while working at my first job as a host at a local restaurant. Shifts there were long-- little 16 year old me would often be at work until 1:30 or 2:00am on weekends. My go to work drink was, and continues to be, a glass of Pepsi-- I've only ever worked in Pepsi product restaurants-- for the caffeine and also the calories. Sometimes, though, it just wasn't enough to keep me going on the days when I worked late, then worked lunch the next day. So I started drinking coffee, even though I thought it was gross.
This is odd, because caffeine doesn't really wake me up so much as it just makes me feel less like there are countless bells ringing in my head at once while going over the plot of the last movie I watched, trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing, and forgetting to eat all day. So I can drink a cup of coffee and go right to sleep if I want to. It's more that I've realized that without some caffeine I simply do not focus on anything for more than a couple minutes at a time, even if it's something I really want to do-- unless I can kick my brain into intense focus, and that's just not very predictable. So while I don't function nearly as well without coffee (and I know, because I've quit drinking caffeine several times in the past few years just to make sure that it wasn't making my anxiety worse; the results being every time that in fact it was helping my anxiety) I don't need it to wake up or compensate for lack of sleep. That, I'm more likely to get from exercise or sugar.
Here are other things I love with coffee:
- The coffee my mom makes every morning and I drink reheated as soon as I get out of bed.
- The iced coffee that your coworker brings over to the restaurant for you at 10:30 am as your shifts begin. I'm grateful that whoever brought the coffee was kind enough to think of all of us. I don't like iced coffee very much, but I also don't like the coffee from this cafe very much, so I'm grateful that, being iced, it is quickly consumed. I feel very bubbly now. At work I am either happy bubbly silly fun to be around or Literally Weeping and there is very little in between. Mostly I'm a pretty fun person to be around, I think and hope.
- The espresso I make myself at 2pm before Ancient Cities and Sanctuaries
- The coffee I made in my little Moka pot most days at school in my junior and senior years. I took classes at the university that only met every other afternoon so I would have a few hours free in the middle of the day (don't tell Ms. Rodems or Mr. Leff how often I skipped their study halls. Honestly, they already know. Hi, if you're reading this. Both of you are the coolest and I feel bad for the thing I already mentioned and also Constantly being late to your first period classes, often carrying a coffee in with me). I would have a few hours free in the middle of the day to do my readings, which at the time I could absolutely devour like I can devour sour patch kids, I would read my art history readings very closely with my highlighter and pens in hand, I would ask for extra ones. I made coffee in my Moka pot and sat down at 1:00 to read.
- The coffee in little decorative cups served for brunch when my friends are with me at my house.
- I love a well-brewed cup of pour over coffee, Chemex (at home) or Melita (in my dorm room, made on the top of my lovely bookshelf underneath the posters of butterflies and herbs that every single Smith college student has on their walls. My room always smells like orange peels, mop fluid, pine needles, and coffee grounds, sometimes like acrylic paint. I don't know how I never got in trouble for getting acrylic paint on my floor, except maybe that housing services is used to Smith students getting paint all over their rooms and just don't bother anymore. So my room always smells like coffee grounds, and it's also always very cold because Massachusetts is Cold and I have a corner room (which is nice, to be clear, the two windows and the sunlight I get at any time of day). I also drink a lot of green and black tea, though sometimes the tannins make me feel kind of sick. As I write this I just drank an actual bowl of black tea so we will see how that works out. I like the small amount of caffeine sometimes because I like to be less focused sometimes too. I like to have a friend or three in my little room, drinking very hot tea with lots of honey, and eating little dark chocolate peanut butter cups. That's how I end up with acrylic on my floor. I love the feeling of a hot mug in my cold hands as I sit in the dining hall eating something that probably doesn't taste very good, then getting more coffee and more water, sitting in a 9:20 am class feeling thoughtful and ready. This is a very different feeling than waking up, washing face (maybe) and trying to seem alive for an 8:20 zoom class en français.
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| lovely room in the morning |
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| my dear darlings in my room, with coffee grinder visible in the background | |
- The coffee at Caffe Paradiso truly is not very good. I love it anyway. When I went every day and sat for hours in a booth, by myself sometimes but much much more often with my pals, the baristas all knew that I probably wanted an espresso and some sparkling water. The one I had a crush on and the ones I saw at shows, the one who likes to talk to my dad about film. Sitting at a booth for hours, we do get our work done, but we also read books like they're water. We also talk endlessly. We also read each other's writing. We cry. We stay until they close, late and hot in May already. I turn 19 in a booth across from Solomia, smiling into her camera drinking a London Fog. We run around the block and leave our stuff at the table. We are full of kid energy and thoughts we feel are very grown up.
*It is debatable whether this counts as a separate category from normal water. Also considered include: diet Dr. Pepper, good red wine, and the specific Sun Drop left over from a summer party in 2018 that I drank for breakfast on the way to my internship.
Listening to:
- Rachele Gilmore's performance of Olympia at the Met
- Sweater Weather, The Neighborhood
- The Mother We Share, CVRCHES
- Presumably Dead Arm, Sidney Gish
til soon, x
for some reason I can never acquire acquired tastes, I've always liked dark chocolate but coffee and wine just don't appeal to me at all. I like coffee if it's sugary enough to qualify as a dessert, but even then I like the way it emphasizes other flavors more than the actual taste. I guess I never understand why I'd go to the effort of acquiring a taste when there are so many other things I already like (I mean, I like strong black tea, which some people would probably consider an acquired taste)
ReplyDeleteI didn't emphasize this enough but it's interesting that sugary coffee is up your alley, Unknown. Who are you by the way??? Anyways, I can't stand sugary/milky coffee or coffee flavored desserts.
DeleteFor some reason as I'm reading this I'm imagining you as a little kid sipping red wine and snacking on dark chocolate while all your friends are drinking their coffee, deep in a conversation about the meaning of bus stops.
ReplyDeletethis is not all that far from a thing that happened. i used to bring a little square of dark chocolate in my lunchbox to school, and we did a show about the philosophical implications of bus stops in my sophomore (junior?) year of high school.
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