Evolution of a Coffee Snob
1996, Minot
I’m sixteen, at Ryan’s Family Diner, where coffee costs fifty-nine cents (including unlimited refills). It’s after ten on a Friday and I’ve just come from the Fitz of Depression concert at Minot’s Collective Cultural Centre. A smoldering Djarum Black rests between my fingers. The butt matches my painted fingernails. My hair is bleached the color of the snow that’s piled on the windowsills of the diner. I stir two sugar packets and one room-temperature Land-o-Lakes creamer cup into a mug. The coffee slowly fades from mud to cardboard. The chintzy clink of a teaspoon along the ceramic walls of the cup blends with the clattering of plates that busboys load into plastic tubs. I lift the steaming brew to my lips and sip. I can feel the stares of the squares surrounding me as I scribble onto a napkin what I’m sure is a masterpiece:
Heathenistic hell flames!
burn at me! lap at me!
lift me and digest me once more
squeeze my juicy, rotten fruit, oh lord!
Ryan’s Family Diner, Minot, ND RIP
1998, San Diego
I’m visiting Lara after high school graduation. She’s at work when I decide to explore the city. First order of business is to find a coffee shop—one she recommended, called Starbucks. I order a grande (that’s what they call a medium) drip coffee and am thrilled to discover shakers of cinnamon, chocolate, and vanilla powder near the trash bins. There’s a park out front of the Starbucks where an ambulance is loading a dead vagrant onto a gurney. I stare for a while and then tote my coffee around the neighborhood, in search of a record store I found in the yellow pages. I purchase ska band Hepcat’s “Scientific” and pop the cassette into my Walkman as I bop among palm trees. I walk close to ten miles, stopping off to get my tongue and eyebrow pierced on a whim. Later that day, I tell Lara what I did all day and her eyes fly open. “What the hell, dude? Mom’s gonna kill me!”
Lara and me in San Diego, 1998
2005, Persian Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz
I roll out of my rack just before twenty-two hundred hours, pull on my poopy suit and stumble down the p-way to the aft galley. I approach the coffee canteen and fill up a styrofoam cup with lukewarm sludge, before climbing down the ladder to the bowels of the ship—the Reactor Compartment. I relieve the mid-watch, settling onto the operator’s chair. I run my gaze across the board. Dozens of dials, meters, LEDs, warning lights, buttons, and triggers stare back at me. I pray to god that nothing out-of-the-ordinary will happen over the next six hours and take a long stinky pull from my cup. Having taken my hourly logs, I flip to the last page in my clipboard, where I’m writing what I’m sure is a masterpiece:
Blue sky, blueberry,
Blue sea,
bluer than Robert Johnson
2007, Brisbane
I wake up at a bed and breakfast outside Brisbane on Lacey & Adam’s wedding day. Breakfast is served outdoors on a sunny patio, in the shade of sweet viburnum. We have warm bialy rolls with Vegemite, orange wedges, and a French press. I pour myself a small cup and taste coffee like I’ve never tasted coffee before. I catch flavors of blackberry, pine nuts, and somehow, honeysuckle. When I get back home, I throw out my Mr. Coffee and never look back.
2014, Edgewater
The best part of my day is early morning. I bike down to Coffee Studio on Clark and Olive. They make the best coffee in the city, I’m sure to tell anyone who asks. I order a single-origin pour-over and a red velvet donut. I sit on the sidewalk and watch the buses and cars stalled bumper-to-bumper. It’s early September and there’s a crispy chill in the air, though it will heat up by midday. It takes five minutes before the barista—Clarice, a clarinetist—calls my name. The oversized mug is filled all the way to the top and the deep brown liquid has a sheen on the surface. Lacy ribbons of steam rise up out of the mug. I slowly bring the coffee to my lips and sip. This moment makes the rest of my day, processing timesheets at the Illinois Department of Rehabilitation Services, feel a little easier. I pull out my notebook and compose what I feel is my masterpiece:
The entire goddamned globe is always
within arm's reach, now.
Our once-beautiful faces
seared in a pale blue light--
dead dahlias drooping in a stiff autumn breeze
2021, Horner Park
I wake up at five every day, even on weekends. This is my golden hour; the one hour I have to myself before I start getting the inevitable early morning trouble-calls from work. I light the kettle, pour precisely eighteen grams of coffee beans into my burr grinder and press the button. The fresh grounds are of perfect consistency, like dried beach sand. I pop an unbleached circular paper filter on to the end of my aeropress, pour in the grounds, and once the water temperature reaches two-hundred degrees, I bloom the grounds. Steam rises up and I catch the first whiff: rose petals, dark chocolate, mown grass. I pour in the remaining eight ounces of water, stir for thirty seconds and slowly press the plunger into my favorite mug. I take a luxurious sip and gaze out my living room window, past the reflection of my hair, which is turning white naturally now, to see the sun shimmering through the honey locust branches. I open my laptop to a new email. Floating atop the dozens and dozens of rejection letters, I can barely believe the text: “I am delighted to inform you that your poem has been chosen for publication…”
RUTH
Mom, Lace and I moved back in with Dad in Minot, midway through my eighth-grade year. I played sousaphone in the marching band, wore tee shirts bearing the logo of my previous school, tucked into ill-fitting Lee jeans that Grandma and Grandpa purchased from the Dakota Boys Ranch thrift store. I often tied a long-sleeve flannel around my waist, à la Joey Lawrence’s character (“Joey”) on Blossom. The popular kids at my new school would wait long enough for my back to be turned before letting out a loud, sarcastic “WHOA!” At home, I’d listen to my Boyz II Men and The Bodyguard cassettes, alone in my bedroom.
Even though attending the middle school soirées had been my favorite activity at Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton Junior High, I have yet to make an appearance at any of the Erik Ramstad dances. In Spring, when the eighth-grade formal comes around, I have no intention of attending. On the drive to school one morning, Mom asks me, out of the blue, “Are there any girls you have your eye on?” My face turns red as I shrug and stare out the back seat window. Mom is persistent though, and at some point over the following days, I reveal that I have a minor crush on Ruth, who plays clarinet in the school band. Ruth’s often unkempt hair is the color of the bear pelt in Dad’s den. She has braces and a charmingly self-conscious smile. We have never spoken. There is no overlap between her friend group and mine. In fact, my friend “group” only consists of Aaron, a guy from my Social Studies class who wears a Nirvana Incesticide shirt and doodles in his textbook rather than taking notes.
On the evening of the formal, I am in my bedroom, shirtless in Zubaz and watching Cops on a tiny, hand-me-down black and white TV while playing on a 3D vision board: a “bass guitar” I have constructed from an empty Kleenex box, a cardboard paper towel tube, and four rubber bands. Mom raps on my door and tells me to get dressed up in a hurry—she has a surprise for me. I hear unfamiliar voices in the living room as I don my black silk shirt and a clip-on tie patterned with dueling electric guitars against a neon blue background. As I walk into the living room, I am stunned to see Ruth, who appears as bewildered as I am. I look at Mom and then at Ruth, who stares at our stained carpet. Our black longhaired cat, Circe, rubs herself against Ruth’s bare shins. Ruth takes a pronounced step backwards.
Mom clasps her hands to her chest and coos. “Let me get a picture of you two over by the TV set.” Reluctantly, Ruth comes alongside me. We exchange fleeting, embarrassed eye contact before I return my gaze to my feet. Ruth presses her hands along her knee-length floral-print skirt, and looks up long enough for Mom to snap her photos. Ruth’s dad is idling in the driveway. She sits up front with her dad, while I hop in the backseat. The vehicle is completely silent as he drives us to the school. Once Ruth and I walk through the doors of the cafeteria/gym/dancefloor, she joins her friends and I sit alone in the bleachers, wondering how Mom got Ruth’s phone number.
I never speak to Ruth again.