Sometimes people ask if I drink coffee.
The answer is yes.
But very rarely.
I drink coffee approximately four times a year.
And never on a day when I’m going to work.
I’m a 100% recreational coffee drinker.
*
My coffee is an eight- or twelve-ounce mocha.
So hot chocolate, basically.
With coffee hidden inside.
I drink it for one purpose and one purpose only.
It’s a weekend morning.
And I have a book I want to read.
*
I sit down with my book.
I start sipping my mocha.
The book is fine.
The morning is fine.
I’m fine.
Then the caffeine hits.
*
My scalp tightens.
My toes tingle.
My nostrils flare.
I hear the thrum of distant highway traffic up and down my chest.
*
All of a sudden the book is really good.
It’s amazing, actually.
This may be the best book I’ve ever read.
*
I’m thrilled.
I drink more of my mocha.
Before I sipped.
Now I gulp.
Only two or three times, though.
Because I am focused on my reading.
*
The caffeine surges.
I’m a wizard.
I narrow and squeeze the energy.
I channel it just where I want it.
Everything the coffee gives me goes to my page-turning fingers.
My word-snatching eyeballs.
My idea-and-story-swallowing brain.
*
For the next hour, I’m an absolute reading beast.
I can read poetry.
I can read philosophy.
I can read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
I can read Anna Karenina.
I can read some Einstein special and general theory of relativity shit.
Nothing is beyond my interest or ability to understand.
I gulp my mocha and I read the fuck out of that book.
*
Then something happens.
It takes me a minute to realize.
I haven’t stopped reading.
But I’ve slowed down.
A lot.
*
I look down.
My cup is empty.
I fill it with water.
I swirl.
I suck in the dregs.
Too little.
Too late.
*
I double-blink at half speed.
My head drops.
My jaw slackens.
My fingers slip and the pages flutter around the spine.
I crash.
*
When the caffeine goes, it’s like an out-of-body experience.
For me and the book.
Everything I’ve been reading leaves my mind.
Concepts and narratives float like fog.
They fill the air.
I don’t have to understand them.
I can breath them.
I can be them.
Words and world merge.
Let me tell you.
The crash is the best part.
*
God knows what I do the rest of the day.
Drool, probably.
I stop thinking.
Arms droop.
Legs loll.
Any movement feels like walking underwater.
Human speech is now as beautiful and incomprehensible to me as bird song.
It’s like I’m dead.
But in a good way.
I’m wide awake and completely drained.
*
That’s why I drink coffee only four times a year.
If I tried it more often I worry it wouldn’t have the same high.
And afterward I have to make sure my schedule is completely clear to crash and burn.
I don’t want to panic anyone who knows, loves, cares for, or relies on me.
I don’t want to piss anyone off.
It’s why I don’t dare try drugs either.
I’d be too good at them, I’m afraid.
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Reads like stand up! 🤣
Good one -- frank and funny.