There is something intensely social about coffee:
I remember an Arabic friend for whom I strived to make the perfect espresso, who told me the story of visits to his homeland, of drinking multiple cups of strong, black coffee poured ceremoniously for each man during gatherings.
I remember, as a youth, waiting with great groups of people outside of crowded, luxurious Austrian-style kaffehauses in Atlanta’s Buckhead and Dunwoody areas to sit with friends and sip hot cups of espresso-based beverages and nibble on tall cakes and rich pastries.
I remember spending late nights in chilled trucker-style diners, crowding three-to-each-bench with friends, drinking countless ounces of dark, watery, acidic liquid to warm myself with the cheap, bottomless cups.
And driving nearly an hour at least twice a week to low-lit white rooms while handsome twins cooed melodies to my sister, our friends and me as we sipped rich, bitter broth from large, matching, ceramic mugs.
I was never one to drink coffee alone, never brewed a pot or ran a cup from my rarely-used espresso machine unless someone shared with me. The Unmentionable Shops opened, quickly becoming a worldwide fad and taking so much clout from our pretty, artsy coffeehouses, yet I never went to drink alone; absently nibbling dark-chocolate-covered espresso beans while laughing, watching wondrously as the stage of five or six improv actors entertained a cafe of strangers who all felt like friends was far more addictive.
I’ve loved every eclectic coffeehouse I’ve ever entered for its potential, even in the cold of Cincinnati’s winter, even that bohemian, blue room and its droning spoken-word poets where I felt like I had stepped back in time, where my well-dressed friends and I were clearly overdressed and out-of-place.
Perhaps it was when I was alone that I stopped going to coffeehouses, when I stopped drinking coffee: after I dumped my boyfriend (or he dumped me; I’m still not sure), and when, returning to Atlanta, I found no one close with whom I wished to share such intimate things. I always claimed it was the aching belly I would have after the second or third cup, that it was the yellow-and-black diners’ white-and-black mugs of tannic acid that turned me from every single drop. But maybe I was wrong…
Since, after six years of swearing it off, it was in the company of three close friends that I returned.
“Are you sure you don’t want to have some?” he asked. “Here, try mine.”
“I don’t like it; it makes my stomach hurt,” I protested. And still I gave in: his cup looked, smelled so delicious, so richly tanned, so perfectly balanced in the pretty white cup of this opulent hotel restaurant. I lifted his cup delicately to my lips, sipped… and fell in love.
It was clear he loved his café whenever I saw him drink it, and clear now why he enjoyed every cup he sipped, whether from a diner or from a fine place such as this: he drank it like a prince and had the sensibility to distinguish whether it deserved to be drank or not.
He saw my face change subtly, saw the unspoken surprise, the acceptance. “Do you want one?”
“Yes. Please.”
In taking that small porcelain cup of heavenly-rich, creamy, sweet liquid, I suddenly felt a part of this group, taken into their realm of enjoyment, lifted to a higher plane of sensibility that included the ambiance and the conversation between these men. It was not that I did something that I did not wish, that I forced myself to fake belonging; but rather that I found my place again in something forgotten, discarded years before when it became unsatisfactory in every aspect.
My wealth was given back to me in this place, with these men, at this table, in this gesture – in my acceptance of this cup.
It surely seems silly, exaggerated, to think that a mere cup of joe could change so much. Even until this moment, I only peripherally felt, thought, knew it did. All I knew was that I was awake, that it was beautiful: that moment, that day, that place – that cup of coffee – and that I would drink it on occasion afterwards.
I do crave coffee now, from time-to-time; and I do go for it alone. But I think it is not the caffeine I desire, since I never suffer from its lack; nor even the taste, since I rarely get it quite right. I am even more sensitive now than ever to coffee’s effects, my heart pulsing and racing frighteningly if I drink an ever-changing and indistinct “too much.”
It is the experience of coffee that I crave: the social aspect, the craft of coffee-making, of serving coffee, the interaction of one human offering a simple pleasure for another, of one person enjoying a simple pleasure with another, wherein, I’ve learned, nuances can be so distinct. It is the act and gift of pure pleasure in commonplace things that makes even the caffeine rush so poignant and close, that makes coffee so good; that makes me yearn for every coffeehouse, for every friend with whom I’ve shared a cup; that makes me love coffee.
Oceans of Mine 