On the Merits of Coffee
Note: I did not write this. This was written by my college roommate, Heather Burris, in late 1992 or early 1993, after she moved to Boston. My love of coffee is well known to my friends, it just seemed appropos to include this here.
I've made my diaphragm into a spoon rest, given up on men and pledged my eternal love to coffee.
Coffee never gets all sulky if I decide to spend the night with Pepsi or tea, and it never gets insecure because it wasn't the first drink I ever had. Coffee makers never wake me up in the morning with something I don't want, and if I don't like what my coffee gives me the first time around, it is able to do it twice in a row.
Coffee gives me what I need, as hot, strong and rich as I choose, with no fuss, never makes me get up and go out to get ice cream after and it never acts as if it were giving me the biggest favor of my poor little life (and it doesn't insist that I act that way, either).
Coffee doesn't mind if I scuffle around all day in mis-matched sweats, or dance to Madonna in my underwear, and it never gives me the dead fish look if I don't shave my legs for a while. Coffee is never going to leave me for someone whose breasts defy gravity and who has a tinier butt and thinner thighs.
Coffee will never whine in a cranky little voice that I shouldn't drink so many men. I swallow coffee only when I'm in the mood. I have never had to spend an hour and forty-five minutes convincing a mug that size doesn't matter and I'm good and damn sure that I'll never have to sit far into the night trying to convince a mug of coffee that everyone has handle problems sometimes. Coffee has never put me in the position of having to say "It's fine. Really. Sometimes it's nice just holding you."
Coffee and I are at our best when we're bitter.