It all started when I was little and my grandma drank coffee all the time. That generation was obsessed with black HOT coffee burned alongside a hot sandwich or right before bed. Like any good grandma, she would give me 90% milk and 10% coffee so I would feel just as important as all the other Lady's at the table. Over the years she would go 70%/30% then 50%/50% then 99%/1%, okay by 12 I was hooked. How embarrassing.
About that time (dating myself) was when the( "Expresso", not espresso but people said X-presso) thing took off and everybody was buying a shed and selling coffee. This was during the small town, poor trashy years of my life, so no Starbucks. I would order a big hoe-y Iced Mocha (with enough sugar to kill my dad again) topped with a dome lid overflowing with whipped cream and chocolate drizzle, shizzle..lol. Anyway I would watch the cool older girls drink these big dramatic drinks and listen to Paula Abdul wearing Exclamation perfume. As I watched them the would slup the drink, talk some more then take another sip. Every five rotations they would automatically shake the drink to mix the ice and coffee and chocolate again. I was fascinated with this wrist rotation. How they just automatically went back and forth with the wrist while talking like it was nothing! It wasn't nothing, it was freedom and Independence and control. Those cool girls had the whole world in their wrists and shook it up when needed to. They acted like it was nothing, but I studied how to be like them. I got my big ol' coffee (32oz) and started shaking it at anybody who would look. I would wait for people to walk by and try to look "natural" and shake my coffe and make the plastic meets ice sound to let them know I was a adult. Also I would wait till my cousin Chaunte would pull up to a stop light in her Pontiac Sunbird and shake my coffee out towards the window, we were so cool. Its too bad I didn't have anybody to talk to and this situation after a while it got out of control, I would start aggressively shaking my coffee at anybody who would listen, if out in public when those other girls would unconsciouslydo it I would shake it right then too, trying hard to validate myself. Can you imagine passing Chaunte's old Sunbird on I-405 and seeing a skinny Blondie kid shaking his drink at you for approval?
Thank GOD we moved to Kirkland. I had Starbucks, Triple J and all of Seattle at my disposal.
From this point on it was coffee, coffee, coffee. It ran through my veins. Before school I had coffee, during breaks I needed a fix or go into the Teacher's lounge and grab a cup. Seattle and Bauhaus also played a part. Sipping coffee for hours and hours. Letting the warm fluid and caffeine take over my body and soul. Ordering a black coffee in a white ceramic mug with saucer. I would try to carry it upstairs without spilling into the saucer or on the floor. I felt like it was a test, if you were "coffee cool" you wouldn't spill a drop, but a "coffee looser" would spill on the floor. I often got it on the sauce and graded myself at 89%...not bad.
Then there was the Capitol Hill Starbucks on Olive. I fucking owned that place. I would hold court with Ellyn and Walter, Taeo and whatever homeless drug addict I wanted to fuck. We would talk to everybody with an ever-flowing stream of coffee. When we moved to Las Vegas and I had to DRIVE to get my morning cup I was pissed. This was the point when I decided to "make it at home" that idea lasted on and off for many years and probably cost me $1,200 in equipment. Ive had every kind of contraption and coffee related maker there is, but it never worked.
The years have gone by, I have grown up. I learned how to use a coffee maker, but prefer the French Press. Still going out to get my daily hand-crafted mocha...(not iced or hoe-y, more gay-ie) and continue to spend all money on it. Coffee owns me, it took my money, yellowed my big teeth and prob gave me kidney stones, but like any love affair, "love is not what you give, but what you get" I LOVE YOU COFFEE
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