Five Bucks of Cool
(While I wrote this piece a few years ago, I know you Substackers like a bit of writing with your morning coffee so here’s a little mug of warm nostalgia. Enjoy!)
I didn’t really understand coffee until my second year of college. My freshman year was a whirlwind of laughter and excitement and billiards in the student union and concerts in the park, but it only took a few semesters for life to catch up. By my sophomore year I was a full-time student working twenty hours a week for the university and forty hours a week for Pizza Hut. I stole naps when and where I could, sometimes in the journalism darkroom and sometimes at traffic lights on my way to and from school. Halfway through my sophomore year a fellow writer found an old metal coffee maker at a garage same and, without cleaning it or the pot, hooked it up in the back of our journalism lab and started making coffee.
I didn’t understand coffee yet, the way a man doesn’t understand whiskey until he buries a friend. The coffee we brewed was thick and black with both the consistency and odor of burnt motor oil. We drank it black because we thought we were supposed to; that coffee, like a flu shot, was punishment. Over time the machine itself turned the color of coffee and the sides of the pot became so stained that we could no longer tell if it was full or empty by looking at it. The closest the pot got to being washed was whenever someone refilled it with water and half-heartedly swished it around. Somehow, none of us got sick from drinking that sludge. Either whatever was growing in the pot had built up our immune systems, or all other germs were simply afraid to mingle with whatever lurked in our mugs and gullets. Nothing about that coffee was palatable. We drank it to keep going. One of my classmates called it her “wakey juice.”
And it worked. Cup after cup allowed me to carve a few more hours of productivity out of each day. When I think back to those days of staying up late editing stories and tweaking the school paper’s layout minutes before going to press, the taste of that coffee stained my memory the way it was staining our teeth.
I can’t imagine anyone graduating from that program having an affinity for coffee… which is why I was surprised a few years after graduation when an old college buddy of mine — the one who had bought that old coffee maker — contacted me and suggested we catch up over coffee.
“Coffee? Who the hell still drinks that stuff?”
The following Friday my friend and I met at the Grateful Bean, a small coffee shop in downtown Oklahoma City. The Bean was located in the older part of town — not “east coast” old, but “older than the suburbs” old. Like all the buildings surrounding it, the building was concrete, with oversized doors and tall windows with thick, old glass that warped everything viewed through it.
At a small table next to one of those windows the two of shared memories and laughs while the sidewalk oblivious passed by, their images warbled by the old glass. Long gone was the syrup-like coffee we had last shared. That night I was introduced to the exciting world of lattes and Frappuccinos. The Grateful Bean didn’t smell like burned motor oil; it smelled like milk and steam and sweet heaven. Over the soundtrack of an Espresso machine and music being played so faintly that I was never sure if I recognized the songs or not, I learned what people enjoyed about coffee. I felt smart and cultured and cool and connected to the city.
This will be my life, I thought to myself on the way home. I will sit at coffee shops like this one with my wife or my friends or by myself if I must, sipping coffee and doing whatever it is cultured people do. I’ll sit in the middle of the room where everybody can see me. “Is that Nabokov you’re reading?” they’ll ask. Then I will look at the cover of the book, as if to remind myself and nod. I’ve never read anything by Nabokov but if I’m going to become a sophisticated coffee connoisseur, I had better get started.
That never happened. Before long my son was born — the same year our suburb got its first Starbucks. Those late night latte dreams got traded for early morning drive-thru coffee. By the time our daughter was born, slow trips to Starbucks became streamlined runs through McDonald’s. Whatever cool points I had remained left when I sold my motorcycle. Nobody looks cool with a half-empty McLatte in ne hand while digging through the McDonald’s playground ball pit searching pit for their kid’s shoe.
One afternoon while dropping off Christmas cards at the post office I ran into my old college buddy again. I asked if he would like to catch up over coffee at the Grateful Bean again. To be perfectly transparent, catching up was not my only motivation. I missed the Bean. I missed the vibe. I missed the cool. I missed that sweet, sweet coffee.
“That place closed five years ago,” he said. “Let’s do boba instead.”
I said that sounded great, with no idea what “boba” was. My friend is still single and has time to discover new and interesting things. My free time is spent repairing things my children have broken and monitoring their internet traffic. He knows what boba is. I know waht toys are being offered in Happy Meals this week.
Deep in the heart of the Asian District, I met my friend at a small cafe located between a convenient store covered in Asian signage and a vape shop. The cafe is owned by a young Chinese couple, and my friend casually notes that boba was actually invented by the Taiwanese. I counter with the fact that Chinese fortune cookies were invented by the Japanese. Once the recipe is out, all things are fair game.
My buddy handled the order and our drinks arrive quickly. Mine appeared in a tall, opaque glass with a straw so thick it reminded me of the pencils I used in kindergarten. The straw’s hole was large enough to suck a marble through — which was, essentially, what I was about to attempt. I tried to hide my concern as I felt the straw stir something around in the bottom of my glass. My buddy smiled and took a drink. I closed my eyes, and did the same.
Boba tea is a sweet mixture of milk and tea that includes chewy balls in the bottom — “pearls,” I believe. The consistency of the boba balls is not unlike pre-chewed bubble gum. The owner of the cafe stops by our table to make sure we were enjoying our drinks. When I ask him what was in the bottom of my glass, he said “tapioca balls.”
“Funny,” I reply. “That was my college nickname.”
My buddy laughs. The Chinese man does not. At first I flatter myself into thinking something got lost in translation although the more likely scenario is he’s heard it a thousand times from middle-aged suburbanites like me.
My friend and I traded stories over another round of boba as we watched people through the window and tried to guess which were headed to the convenient store and which needed vape shop. I sip my drink slowly, chewing each tapioca ball one at a time to make it last as long as possible.
For five bucks, right then and there, I felt cool again.
(Reposted with apologies to
and whose thoughtful comments I lost after mistaking the reply button for delete. That’s what I get for pressing buttons after seven cups of joe…)
I had similar experiences around the time my oldest was born. I felt like I was on the cusp of coolness, only to have to step up and do all of those uncool things that come with being a responsible parent.
D'oh!