Java

What is the one thing you could never live without? And you can’t say “my kids” or “my dog,” or any other living thing. That’s cheating.

My answer is always the same. Black coffee. It doesn’t matter to me whether it’s a freshly brewed mug from the Keurig machine at my dentist’s office, an espresso from the Italian patisserie, a mug made lovingly from freshly ground beans in my French press, or a stale 3:00 p.m. cup of mud from the dirty pot at the local bakery, I’ll take it. I love the smell, I love the taste, I love the mystique.

Coffee completes me.

I developed my taste for black coffee out of necessity. Back when I was a wee lass, and student teaching in the Pocono mountains, there was always a steaming pot of coffee available in the English department office. I never ate. I was a skittish big-haired 21-year old kid trying to teach All Quiet on the Western Front to 17-year old kids, and any food I tried to eat would rumble and bumble around in my stomach, threatening to regurgitate at the slightest teenage provocation.

“Heeeeeyy, Miss Dispoto,” Matt drawled.

Social invitations were always extended by tall, lanky athletes with million-dollar smiles. On this day Matt was leaning back, hands clasped comfortably behind his head, legs crossed at the ankle, his vocabulary lesson sitting incomplete and ignored on his desk. He grinned lazily at me as I tried to give a diction lesson.

“Wanna come to a party this weekend? And don’t pretend you don’t party, you’re our age.”

They weren’t wrong. I could see my master teacher sitting in the back of the room, watching to see how I would handle this request. I always appreciated that no matter what situation arose in the classroom, she never interfered, and always let me handle it. She had told her students when I started that she would be invisible and mute. Man, did they take advantage of that. And now when I look back, I realize how hard it must have been for her to ignore such an inappropriate question. And since Matt extended this friendly invitation every Friday for three months, I soon developed a craving for the confidence-bolstering qualities of coffee.  

Since the English department office’s vile powdered creamer was difficult to digest, black coffee was it for me. I drank it all day. Strangely its caffeinated qualities and diuretic effects settled my stomach. It calmed me. Just holding a mug of black coffee in that classroom (times were different back then- a mug of coffee was a teaching accessory) was like Thor holding his hammer. Captain America with his shield, Hawkeye with his quiver. Hulk with his fist?

I love the Avengers. But I digress.

The smell of coffee can take me back to any place or time I choose. The olfactory sensation is like my own personal time machine, Doc Brown’s DeLorean in a mug. Just one whiff can send me back to my early years of teaching. To early 3:00 am diner plates of eggs and pancakes scarfed after a drunken night of reveling. Miserable mornings spent praying to the porcelain gods. Long nights spent visiting loved ones in the hospital. Work conferences, weddings, family dinners, holidays, ski trips, chilly mountain hikes, early surf mornings, funerals. Long afternoons spent huddling around a table discussing sad things like burial wishes, and happy things like new babies.   

And it takes me back to childhood. I had a ridiculously idyllic childhood. Just long days and nights filled with friends, sleepovers, tennis, kickball games, gymnastics, snowforts, sledding, and lazy bike rides. And while my parents rarely fought, of course sometimes there would be an argument. This can be a scary thing to hear when you’re a kid. But they argued so rarely that when it did happen, it was like some angry exotic bird had gotten loose in our house, and was fluttering around in a panicked state. Their raised voices were like flapping wings around our heads.

But when I would wake in the morning, and the smell of brewed coffee hit my groggy nostrils, I knew all was right with the world once again. Because there were Mom and Dad in the living room, contentedly drinking their coffee and reading the morning paper. Coffee put everything where it belonged. To young me, coffee was the Great Equalizer. The Ref. The Conduit. The smiling translator straddling the area betwixt two chaotic worlds.

Now, as a woman of advancing years, I cannot drink coffee all day the way I used to. My last cup is at 10:00 a.m., excluding special occasions. Coffee is like a dehydrating sponge in my innards. All-day coffee is no longer possible. And drinking it in the middle of the day will most certainly lead to a restless sleepless night tossing and turning and pondering age-old questions like:

Why did I say that in sixth grade?

How in God’s name did my boss hear me mashing avocado on Zoom?

Is an otoplasty the most extreme example of vanity? And what is the recuperation like?

My current part-time job is my passion project, but it has strange shifts. So there are many occasions when I work until 10:30 p.m., or even midnight. It is during these shifts that I stray outside the bounds of my coffee-drinking parameters. I’ll drink a cup at 2:00 p.m., 8:00 p.m., 11:30 p.m. if I’m especially tired.

I have a theory of coffee drinkers, and the time during which they indulge in the world’s favorite beverage.

4:00 a.m.- 6:00 a.m.: You’re expecting a baby, or you had one. You’re up with a loved one in the hospital. Leaving early for airport, you need to be at work by 7:00 (teachers), you didn’t sleep well, and got up early and said, “To hell with it,” or a shag session went well past midnight.

6:00 a.m.- 8:00 a.m.: You’re normal. You work a 9-5 job, you exercise in the morning, you have kids to get off to school.

9:00 a.m.- 10:00 a.m.: You bond with co-workers over the coffee machine, and it’s either your first cup, or second. Possibly your third. You’re a non-working mom, you did your yoga or Crossfit or whatever workout you do, and you’re drinking your first well-earned cup.

10:00 a.m.- 3:00 p.m.: You think of coffee as not just a morning beverage, but as a beverage. You work weird shifts, and need the liquid propulsion. You throw ice and sugar in it in the summer, and call it “iced coffee.”

3:00 p.m.- 5:00 p.m.: You need a little extra oomph in your day. You use it to fend off the mid-afternoon munchies. You drink it in the cold weather just as a mid-afternoon treat.

5:00 p.m.- 6:00 p.m.: You drink it with dinner; therefore, you are a 92-year old immigrant from the old country.

6:00 p.m.- 9:00 p.m.: You live in the world of psychotics, like night shift workers. Or you’re out to dinner, and you like to have it with dessert.

9:00 p.m. and on: You are psychotic.