You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Adulterated Coffee.
What is adulterated coffee?
To me, it’s nectar of the Gods. It is cream and sugar saturating something so pure, so dark, so primal.
America’s addiction to coffee. It’s a crime without a punishment.
Coffee is the global drug of choice.
Coffee is crack to the masses, a liquid cocaine sold in Mapcos and Donut shops.
From Posh zip codes to truck stops along the interstate, coffee is America’s beverage of choice.
The rich bean, flushed with steaming hot water, creates a liquid lusciousness.
Few life moments are as memorable as the snort of the coffee pot, belching air and hot anticipation, pushing water through the basket filled to the brim with ground coffee beans.
Pouring the liquid into a mug creates a wispy tail of vapor that rises from the cup like a genie granting a wish.
The savory steam floats on air, waking up your nostrils, like an aromatic fire alarm.
How do you like your coffee? the Barista asks, breaking my day dream.
I like coffee, but only if it is drenched in sugar and cream. I need my coffee to taste like a warm milkshake. I need my coffee to be thick and viscous like melted ice cream with a caffeinated punch to the brain.
“How do you like your coffee? Black?,” the barista says eagerly, again.
I shudder. Black coffee? That would be like licking tree bark off a wood nymphs ass-crack.
I’m less about the coffee and more about the adulteration.
I suddenly realize I don’t appreciate the bean that much. I understand how much of a junkie I am in Starbucks. I’m 10 people deep in line and I’m staring up at the big board over the baristas.
“No. Never just black,” I say checking the menu.
Café Vanilla Frappuccino. Caramel Cocoa Cluster. Caffe Mocha.
It’s like a foreign language. Short. Tall. Grande. Venti.
I’m almost embarrassed. It’s like staring at a dictionary and trying to inhale all the words on the page.
“Large Adulterated Please.”
The woman looks at me with big eyes.
“excuse me?”
“Large Coffee. Room for Cream and sugar please.”
She pauses, her brain searching my face for answers.
Is this man retarded? her face seems to question.
” You know, the secret sauce that adulterates the pure brew,” I say adding fuel to her retarded theory.
She smiles and begins pouring a black coffee into a to go cup.
It’s then that I wonder why I’m paying top dollar for a Starbucks coffee.
I like coffee. But I really don’t like coffee. If you handed me a cup of black gold and said here you go, I would stare at it and grimace. I would quickly scan the room and look for cream and sugar.
“Here you go, sir.”
Some orders at Starbucks take 5 minutes to prepare. Some orders take an engineering degree. Some orders are more complicated and use more ingredients than KFC’s 8 special herbs and spices.
My order requires nothing more than splashing liquid gold into a cup.
I walk to the coffee station on the side of the restaurant. It has cream and milk and soy and 1/2 milk and 1/2 cream and 1/2 soy. It has brown sugar and blue sugar and white sugar. Starbucks has cream; real cream, but no fake cream.
There is every kind of cream, but the kind of cream I like. The wrong cream. The fake cream. Cream that would last forever, through a nuclear blast. Cream that would take over the world with the cock roaches when the half life of destruction finally wanes.
I reluctantly pour milk into my coffee cup. It changes the black gold into a brown slush. I don’t want slush. I want adulterated brew. I want to watch that powdery creamy talcum powder of mystery swirl into the black rich saturated bean juice. I want to watch that enigmatic filth swirl, and twist and create a spider web of adulteration, disappearing into the sink hole of caffeinated delight.
People in Starbucks act like they are regal and royal and deserving. They will pay an exorbitant amount for their hand crafted coffee.
But I don’t like It. I don’t want real cream. I like fake cream. The kind that you buy in the supermarket in a big gallon jug. It is powdered, dry, dehydrated concrete mix that functions as a coffee creamer or a spackle paste for home construction. I want a coffee elixir I can get at Publix or Home depot.
What is it made of? I see corn syrup and dehydrated something written so small on the package I need a magnifying glass from the inspector Clouseau Collection to know.
It’s probably killing me slowly like a Captain and Tenile song. But I love it and need it.
I taste my coffee. It is anything but black and pure. It is adulterated, but with the wrong adulteration.
It is some version of 1/2 soy. I stare into my coffee. It looks sick and pale like a Guantanamo Bay victim being released into the Cuban sunshine.
I just paid a house note for this cup of joe. And I once again wish I was buying my java in a Mexican truck stop knee deep in non dairy creamer.
Where is it from? Who cares? What is it made of? Who cares? What is it doing to my intestinal track? Who cares?
I take a sip of the 1/2 soy, 1/2 cream 1/2 adulterated drek and I wish I had some coffee to add to my sugar and powder.
I curse you Starbucks.
Until you can put my cockroach dehydrated adulterated coffee creamer, I will boycott you like a Black Lives Matters fist in the air of defiance.
Life’s Crazy™