Il Caffe

by Jyll

I want coffee so badly, I can't even tell you. My body feels way too calm and centered sans caffeine...I'm like thinking clearly and rationally and it's only 11am. I haven't had a drop all day. Or yesterday. Or all last week. My heart is bleeding and my spirit is sick with grief. Really.

Coffee is more than just a beverage to me, it is a part of my soul. And I know that it's trendy to say things like that, but I've been saying it for the past 21 years. I've been drinking coffee since I was three years old (Dad was in charge of me during the mornings and only a man would give coffee to a three-year-old child for breakfast) and it's as much a part of my day as a shower and eyeliner. Or more like wanting to shower and put on eyeliner but opting to sleep an extra 12 minutes instead. More like that.

I would never, ever advocate giving up something that you love just because it (or he/she) is bad for you. I find the world to be a joyful place, but only because we create joy when we love something. Coffee, boys, babies, eyeliner, Christmas lights, and gossip all conspire to make the world a beatific place for me, so giving up my daily cup isn't just removing a vice, it's taking a physical toil on my soul. And if I didn't get massive migraines every now and then from my soul stirring love of coffee, you can be sure I would hook up an IV of Illy right into my left arm and go from there. But the last two weeks have brought two 26-hour migraines on me, and what with being up and down with a crawling baby all day it's just not worth the misery. I think.

When I was in college I was a 9 Cups a Day girl. I weaned myself down to three when I graduated, and then after a really weird day in Krakow I gave it up completely. I was backpacking at the time and was living off of coffee and gummi bears, the other choice being authentic Polish food, which would have been fine had it not been prepared in authentic Polish kitchens (complete with cockroaches, Fat Commie Shirtless Chain Smoking Cook, and stale ketchup), so I think it was just a combination of stress and shit coffee but I had these crazy heart palpitations one night so I just gave up the stuff completely. I was so amazed at my own willpower that I was done with it until just last summer, when I fell madly in love with this guy in Napoli and had to make a daily cup of coffee part of my daily routine so that I could stalk him properly. I never had migraines at all last summer, either, but that could have been the combination of being so in love that I was literally prancing everywhere I went that I was just too insanely, retardedly, stupidly happy to have headaches, or it could just have been that Italian espresso is less acidic than American coffee, but, really, who knows? Or cares?

Today we went into our fave cafe and bought a cup of coffee, and to make it worse our favorite baristo (the hot stupid one, naturally) came up and hugged me and told me that he missed me last week and that I was the best part of his day. I'm assuming the best part of the day is based on looks alone, as we never speak beyond "small coffee to go, please", so that's even more flattering as I am nothing if not vain and narcissistic (in case that's not glaringly obvious). Now we're back home, baby baby is napping, coffee has been transferred to my favorite mug, and it's just sitting here, looking at me...

Well, it was. After that last sentence I downed half of it. Mamma mia that stuff is good. Fuck it, as of my encounter this morning coffee has a whole nother meaning, because now it involves boys and if I'm actually on hugging terms with Hot Baristo it might also involve gossip. That's three soul stirrers all in one, migraines be damned, coffee, you and I are BACK.