Manhood and Black Coffee

Given my beardlessness, short stature, tiny hands, lack of interest in professional sports, and heart condition which prevents me from lifting heavy objects, I was desperate for some way to prove that I am an adult male. I weighed a number of options – eating fire, walking on nails, hanging from the ceiling by strategically placed body piercings, etc. But all those things hurt too bad. So I decided on coffee.

In my opinion, nothing says ‘man’ like black coffee. My dad was drinking black coffee from a bottle when he was nine months old, just weeks shy of his first shave. Now he makes two pots of coffee a day. The first he pours directly into his drawers, the second he chugs piping hot straight from the carafe. When I was a kid, I used to ask if I could have a taste. He told me coffee would put hair on my chest and turn my elbows black. Half of that sounded like a good deal, but since I didn’t want black elbows, I decided to wait until I was an adult. (Now that I am an adult, I know that the chest hair part was right, but it also stunted the growth of my arms and my facial hair. Oh, well.)

My friend Jed, the toughest individual I personally know, also takes it straight. He is fond of saying that he likes his coffee like he likes his women – hot, black, and bitter. When offered cream or sugar, he takes it as an indictment of his manhood. People usually only offer it to him once.

I don’t want to get myself into trouble and I’m sure I’m going to be deluged with comments on this, but I’ve never known a woman who drinks coffee black. I’M NOT SAYING THERE AREN’T ANY, its just that every black coffee drinker I know is a man – a very tough man.

I will say that the most hard-core coffee drinker I know, even though she doesn't drink it black, is a woman - the mother-in-law. I recently asked her if she ever microwaves coffee hours after the pot has grown cold. She replied, "It depends on how desperate I am." I generally reserve the word desperate for life and death issues. In her mind, coffee truly is a life and death issue. She was once on an airplane that had been sitting idle on the tarmac for a good forty minutes. The captain came on the intercom and revealed that the hold up was due to a malfunction in the water lines that are used to make coffee. He said that they were delaying because they wanted to be able to serve it during the five hour flight. He announced that they would take a vote by show of hands how many people wanted to wait for the lines to be fixed before taking off and how many people just wanted to get going. "All in favor of waiting for the coffee?" A sole hand shot up out of approximately 200 passengers. That's the mother-in-law. She would rather miss a connection and cause scores of other humans to miss their connections than try to survive 5 hours without her Sanka. By the time the plane landed I'm sure her co-passengers were wishing they had waited for her coffee, too.

So obviously, there are some prolific female coffee drinkers out there, but as far as black coffee is concerned, its a man's world. And that really stinks because it tastes nasty. But I’m out of options.

I’ve always liked the smell of coffee. I vividly remember waking up at my grandparents’ house (and my other grandparents’ house) to the smell of ‘The Best Part of Wakin’ Up.’ So I always wanted to like coffee. But in my mind I imagined that it tasted like hot Coke, which has always been quite appealing. I don’t remember the first time I tasted coffee, but I do remember the resolve to never taste it again. How can anything that smells so good, taste so bad? It’s a huge paradox to me. It’s like a dirty diaper that smells like gingerbread. I realized that the caffeine was not what kept people awake, but it was the vile taste, vile aftertaste, and full-body heaving that it produced.

For me, it’s not just the taste, but also the temperature. I have a very sensitive tongue – it burns easily. Oh, that I had a nickel for every time a drink of hot chocolate has brought me to the verge of tears. I spend the rest of the week feeling like I have fur on my tongue. For this reason, I usually settle for warm chocolate. So you see, there were multiple barriers to my using coffee to prove my manhood.

Over the years I have wondered who on earth came up with the idea of coffee. “Hey, if straining water through leaves is good, imagine how much better it would be to strain it through dirt!” Yes, I know that coffee is not water strained through dirt, but it might as well be. I’m tempted to see if I can persuade people to drink water strained through tree bark or coal or toenails. Water run through ground up, burned beans just seems awfully arbitrary to me.

And yet, this is the acceptable beverage of manhood. So my quandary was finding some way to drink this sludge without vomiting or crying. Several attempts made it clear to me that black was out of the question. I would have to settle for half-manhood. A friend suggested the Frappucino. The cool sweetness definitely tempered the taste, and I thought I had found my in. However, I soon noticed the incredulous stares of the Starbucks faithful every time I ordered. “I’ll have a Venti Caramel Frappucino with no whipped cream.” Instantly, all Jazz music, coffee-making, and pithy conversation slammed to a halt and every soul on the premises turned their attention to me. They all looked at me as if I was wearing a brassiere on the outside of my clothes.

Most Starbucks customers fit into one of four categories. There are the young hippies in horn-rims, sweaters, and Army surplus knapsacks, with a general disdain for all of us morons over the age of 30 who, unlike them, haven’t figured out the world, yet. You have the self-important yuppie tech executive in business casual, shirt untucked, pretending to be chatting with Bill Gates on his Bluetooth. He pauses his conversation long enough to say, “The usual,” then glances around the room to make sure that everyone has noticed his tan. Then there are the young women, supposedly coming in fresh from the gym, where they failed to break a sweat. They can be heard ordering any one of a number of lowfat alternatives, as they, too, scan the room to ensure that they’ve been noticed. Finally, there are the middle-aged, independently wealthy, who have literally rolled out of bed and into their Beamers to get their morning joe. The balding, beer-bellied husband in sweats and loafers sips an espresso while reading the WSJ. The wife’s most noticeable feature is her curly bedhead, matted to her temple. She drinks a tiny latte while perusing a romance novel.

All of these ridiculous people had the gall to dash my dreams of half-manhood. Who needs them.

I eventually decided that it didn’t matter if other people accept me as a coffee drinking man, as long as I know in my heart that I am one. Now I only make it at home – mainly, because no one else stocks all the necessary peripherals I use to doctor it up. To be completely honest, I drink coffee creamer with a splash of coffee. But I use only the finest coffee money can buy – Folgers Gourmet (Vanilla Biscotti). This coffee combined with the Vanilla Coffee Mate liquid creamer is delish. I don’t even use caramel topping or chocolate syrup anymore.

It did occur to me that I could make my coffee and drink it from a travel mug so no one could see that it’s white. I knew that I would have to be careful to mind my cream mustache so as not to give the whole thing away. So I tried it.

And bingo. You’d be amazed how well I’m treated when drinking from a travel mug. I’m getting all kinds of respect. Women don’t open doors for me anymore. Teenage punks don’t question my sexual orientation. And men look me in the eye when they shake my hand. If I had known this whole time that the travel mug was all I needed I wouldn’t have wasted so much coffee.

On my way home today I’m going to pick up some Mountain Dew and a couple more travel mugs.