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!

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!”

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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…”

Evolution of a Coffee Snob

JA Sauvageau