the coffee monkey
The only thing that makes caffeine dependency a tolerable state of affairs for me is the incredible sensual experience of truly good coffee. But since there is so little good coffee available - in fact I’d go so far as to say most coffee drinkers have never experienced a good cup of coffee - I have to wonder why so many people choose to maintain it as an addiction. Enslavement to a perfectly pulled ristretto shot of espresso or a great cup of freshly roasted Papua New Guinea or Ethiopian Harrar transcends mere vice. As monkeys-on-the-back go, this one is smart, well mannered, and gives you back rubs. The Maxwell House/canned-coffee monkey is an evil lice-infested, shit-hurling monkey with bad breath and an earsplitting shriek - almost as unpleasant a monkey to live with as the tobacco monkey. So what sort of primate is your coffee monkey?
[props to goopymart for the illustration]
October 27th, 2004 at 5:39 am
It used to be a quite studious monkey. Wearing classes, it’d look over my shoulder (all the while massaging — I do have my standards), reading Crime and Punishment in two evenings or encoding texts for seven hours in a row.
I had a favorite coffee shop when I was at BU, an Espresso Royale Cafe on Commonwealth Avenue that was so good, I actually went back up to Boston for years after I started graduate school in Providence. It could get loud sometimes, but the music was almost always great, and the coffee was unfailingly delicious.
Now I don’t go there much anymore, and am sad to say, I’m no longer a self-identified Patron Saint of Caffeine. Maybe it’s because I lost my button proclaiming same, or maybe it’s because I got a taste for strong delicious tea in the morning, $EspressoDrink in the afternoon during the year I lived in London. In any case, I don’t drink coffee daily anymore. I gotta say, I kind of miss it.
July 20th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Coffee is only a steaming metaphor.