image: espressos on the Barcola, Trieste
Two months ago, two weeks before my fourth-year PhD Qualifying Exams, I woke up, put water on to boil, and scooped coffee grounds into the French press that Judy bought her daughter years ago, and that her daughter left with me. I steeped the coffee as usual, and re-whipped the heavy cream; poured the steaming black liquid into the tall black Heath mug that was a gift from PQ, and spooned a large dollop of thick cream onto it, where it promptly melted and swirled down into the drink. So far so obvious—it was only after I sat down at my desk with my computer and the mug that I realized, looking up from my email, that I could not drink it. My whole body revulsed, and the No was loud and clear—ringingly.
I pouted at this, and began to ‘reason with’ (bully?) myself—she just went to the trouble of making this for you, it cost money, there were steps; you’ve always liked this; you need this to function; you are… but, No. I do not have the best history of Listening To My Body; I have the requisite pileup of traumae come from that; the funny workarounds of chronically-frayed nerves and disconnection. So when I heard a No this loud and ringing, for the first time “maybe ever,” I obeyed it. I felt a little bad for pouring it down the sink, but I felt more the grip of dread that said, How are you going to study and pass your QEs? But this is just today’s stomach, I figured; tomorrow, all would be as it has been.
But ‘tomorrow never came.’ I lost interest in and capacity for coffee-drinking as simply as if a light (on, unfailing, for fourteen years) had been switched off. I managed the headaches that came over the next five days by dosing black tea and limiting my exposure to bright lights and loud sounds. As for the major upcoming exam, culmination of three years of study (ok, treading water), I told myself, well, if you don’t know it by now, it’s not for you to demonstrate mastery over during this three-hour window next week.
The days went by, and I continued lacking the desire for coffee, and wondering at this curious lack. I felt better, whatever that means; softer, dreamy, less anxious and mean. I drank black tea at some point each morning, feeling or fearing the recurrent withdrawal headache, and dreamily reviewed my printed notes, and counted down to the exam.
On the day of the exam, I panicked, and picked a fight with my partner, and stormily got on the road to make the commute from Oakland to Santa Cruz. The first half is ugly and painful negotiation through Silicon Valley traffic. After you clear that, you pass through the town of Los Gatos, where there is a Philz (the best coffee, once only found in the Mission, now a chain, in the Bay), right before you go over the mountains and things start getting beautiful (the forest takes over); and Los Gatos is their closest location to Santa Cruz.
I placed my order with their app and stopped in to pick up my regular: small Dancing Water (a bright light roast), no sugar, extra creamy cream. I figured there was no way she wouldn’t want this—it’s her absolute favorite, it’s the day of the most important academic and professional milestone of her life for fuck’s sake, these coffees kept her alive in the van and got her through her finals as an undergraduate at Berkeley… but, you guessed it: No, said the now-new-heard Body, even the smell of that gunk makes me dizzy and sick. Thanks for the gesture!
I’ve spent probably $30 since that day on subsequent gestures of this type. I keep assuming I can’t face life without caffeine; and it keeps not being true. When my best friend had her baby, I brought Philz to her and her partner in the hospital, where they’d been overnight, and I ordered myself one too, and let it rot in my fridge over the next four days.
I remember a time when I played a similar weaning routine with chocolate bars; would buy and hide them, ‘just in case,’ and then forget about them, having lost the taste but not the compulsion, and end up throwing out tons of chalky, whitened chocolate. I lost interest even in black tea after I passed the exam, and have been going without caffeine now for six weeks. The headaches have subsided. I drink (brace yourself) cacao now. It is wonderful. I “take my waking slow” (Roethke). It is a pleasure to work and live in a way that allows this. I mention as much to MEQ last night on the phone, talking cash flow and creativity. Being rich is being free to set your days and hours. I have stopped worrying, since stopping coffee, where the energy is going to come from (to last me through any given task, day, or deadline). I just (sorry) ride what is.
I got coffee, before all this happened, over the summer with YPS. We had not seen each other in five years. He asked about the strike and what it’s like to be at UCSC, and I said something in this vein of taking what comes, working with what’s there, trusting; he surveyed me, as he used to, askance, and appraised, “You sound very Californian.” I smiled at this, and was not embarrassed, for a change, and let a silence build and hang between us on that note.