Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2002-10-01 - 9:19 a.m.

Say It Ain't Joe

See, here's the thing. It is absolutely necessary to have coffee when one wakes up. In fact, it is necessary to have coffee BEFORE one wakes up; the before-coffee period is not really waking up, it's merely caffeine-deprived somnambulism. The closer the coffee gets to the side of the bed, the better. This is how it is.

I have a friend who goes OUT for his coffee. Not only gets up, see, but gets dressed, remembering that the underwear goes on UNDER the clothes, and that if he finds two shoes that will be enough. I think maybe sometimes he even SHOWERS before he goes out to get his coffee. This is admirable. I can see myself, sitting on the edge of the bed, perplexed because I have THREE shoes and one of them doesn't even MATCH. I'd never get out for that coffee at all.

Coffee, of course, should be freshly ground, we know that. Stored as whole-bean in the freezer and ground just before using. I compromise. Can't compromise on a whole lot about coffee, but I do have a timer on the coffee maker. It's a trade-off that works for me. I'm not qualified to MAKE coffee until I've HAD coffee, you see. When I visit my out-for-coffee friend, I just kind of trot along beside him, trusting that he'll keep me from walking into traffic, or tell me if I forgot to put on a shirt.

Got another friend doesn't touch the stuff at all. She can get a caffeine-high by waving a piece of chocolate under her nose. Two sips of Coke and she's up half the night. I wish. I'd buy Coke, if it did that for me. I'd have a big Coke breakfast habit.

Coffee is one of the best smells in the world. I don't think that's conditioning - my kids love the smell, too. They're horrified that something that smells that wonderful tastes so bad. That's the conditioning part - THEY think it tastes bad. Someday, it will be ambrosial. The little one, my anti-morning child, will be particularly grateful for the stuff, I think.

There are exceptions. We have coffee at work; they make it one of those big restaurant style Bunn coffee machines, and it smells like shit. Bad. I've never had it. Can eat sauerkraut, which isn't exactly perfumed, but coffee that's been on the burner for hours and smells like a prison kitchen? Nope.

Hazelnut is another exception. Hazelnut, Irish "Creme", Macadamia. I use the store grinder and it seems like the person before me has always been grinding the candied stuff. This is wrong, people - are you listening? They make a powdered kind for that, and it even comes with friends to drink it with and bonding moments, really. If you HAVE to grind candied coffee I wish you would do it at home, but trust me, Macadamia Nut coffee is going to be pretty much the same in the powdered form. It doesn't just smell like a prison kitchen, it smells like VACAVILLE.

My mother drinks instant coffee, the sparkly stuff. That's bad, too. That's my test of addiction: would I drink instant coffee if that's all there was? No? I'm still okay, then. I would put those shoes on and walk a mile to a freakin' Starbuck's before I'd go down the Taster's Choice road.

I have a travel coffee maker. Carry it with me. That's an addict - if I'm not sure of the supply where I'm going, I carry my works. I'm a nicer houseguest if after I knock back a cup or two. Until then, I do not want to talk about plans for the day or look at your photo albums. I do not want you to ask me any complicated questions, like whether I slept well. I do not even want you to help me with my shoe problem.

I had some coffee soap for a while. Really. It was on sale because no one bought it. Fools. Liquid coffee soap, it was wonderful; my shower was redolent of coffee, so for the few minutes I had to be separated from my precious mug I could still inhale the reminder. I loved that soap. I must have been the only person who bought any, though. Haven't seen it in the stores again. People will leave that Vienna Roast Body Wash on the shelves, but they'll buy the Vanilla Peach Orchid Musk which would knock you across the room. Go figure.

Once up on a time, I lived with a man who brought me coffee in bed. Every day, he did. Well, every work day. I worked evenings and he worked days, and he'd bring me a mug of Thanksgiving Mocha Java every morning at five-thirty and I'd wake up and talk to him and drink my coffee and then he'd leave for work and I'd go back to sleep. (Probably why the stuff doesn't keep me up much.) That was good coffee, the in-bed stuff. Camping coffee is also very good, even though you have to wait forever for hot water on a propane stove. It has that hand-warming thing going on, which makes up for the wait. After-dinner coffee in a restaurant is a good thing, because it means you went out without the kids to the sort of restaurant that serves real coffee and nobody's bugging you about can we LEAVE now. It's not a Denny's thing.

Good coffee: big mugs, fragile china cups, half-and-half, gold filters, demitasse, outdoor cafe tables, double shots, bedside, room service, Turkish grind. Bad coffee: crystals, Bunn pots, stir sticks, gas stations, decaf, percolators, styrofoam, non-dairy creamer, airplanes.

Even an addict can have standards.

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