MUSE MAGAZINE
THE POWER OF DECAF by Maddy Wintermute I’ve been trying to pinpoint why I started to drink coffee. I can’t remember if I actually liked the taste or if I just wanted to feel the effects of caffeine. What I do remember is the ironic timeline: shortly after the addition of coffee to my life was when we first spoke, prompting another habit I let into my life too quickly and too carelessly. In the aftermath of our many experiences that followed that first conversation, we met over coffee to discuss our past. Bitter broth permeated my apprehensive words, which after a while became redundant; each additional cup began to taste the same but I continued to want more. We spoke two different languages and tried miserably to use a hot beverage as a mediator to understand one another. Despite all the burning liquid I drank, so many things were still lost in translation that morning. Post-café, I evaluated what the commitment of getting coffee with someone entails in our generation’s socialized caffeine-culture. It is a middle ground of consumption between starvation and sustenance, inexplicably allowing us to express feelings we would not express upon eating takeout side by side. While I was training as a barista at work, I made espresso drinks for Table 3 who then proceeded to break up. It was the first time I felt powerful since that coffee date of my own. I had become the vehicle for those conversations to take place. I felt sure the couple wouldn’t have broken up without the cappuccinos they were holding. I tried my best to compartmentalize my caffeine-saturated heartache, but I quickly realized it wasn’t confined to the four corners of that coffee shop—it was everywhere around me. Its thick aroma pervaded every street as coffee was capitalized on, modified, and served in different sizes and sweetnesses. I tricked myself into thinking I could leave it in the past but, in my cardboard 58
PHOTOGRAPHY BY LUIS MAGUBAT
to-go cup, I held that conversation in the palms of my hands as I walked to class, to work, or to meet friends. The more the caffeine soaked into my bloodstream, the more I understood that I had been drinking what could kill me all along. Slowly, I emerged from this dark-roasted hole. The longer I worked as a barista, the more I saw the drink for all it really was: wet paper filters, espresso grounds, clanking machines, and granules of sugar fallen on the floor. The power it once had to redirect my trains of thought dissolved. I enjoy cappuccinos the same way I hope the non-couple from Table 3 can now enjoy them as well. Certain rare sips remind me of that distinct acerbity of the past but mostly I just enjoy the taste. Still, I can’t quite remember why I started drinking coffee in the first place. I’m grateful for the bitter habit now—without it, I wouldn’t be able to detect when things are sweet in comparison.
