Coffee Thoughts

I don’t want to call you back.

That’s not true. I do want to call you. It would be lovely to talk to you, but I feel a mounting pressure in my chest when I look at your name on my phone. It’s like if I owned a cat who was sitting on my shoulders. They would be compassionate – the type that would wind between your legs and bump their head against your ankles, but in this instance, they want to remind you of their presence by planting themselves in the most inconvenient spot.

As the waiter approaches with my drink, I wonder what type of cat you would be. I would say black cat because of how you look – dark hair and bright eyes that are always alight. I hoped, with a naïve ghost of desire, that it was because you were looking at me. But black cat didn’t fit your personality, and the weight was still there.

I turn my phone off and take a breath while the waiter brings me a cup of coffee. I smile my thanks and wonder if you would be a ragdoll instead. Not because you’re scruffy (and there would be no issues if you were), but because you’re friendly. When we met in person, you came right over and wrapped your arms around me. It took me back – introducing oneself with a hug was what I did, and most people usually responded with awkwardness (as was the way of the English). But it wasn’t bad – in fact it was exceptionally endearing.

The drink is more plain than something I would usually go for. No vanilla shots or caramel drizzles, just regular hot coffee. I wanted something more bitter today. If I were trying to be pretentious, I would say it was because I had mature tastes, but in reality I hate it without sugar. The liquid in the cup is dark and viscous, the steam is sharp in my lungs. I can almost feel your eyes on me again, just as piercing.

A cat indeed, which is a bit ridiculous considering I’m a dog person.

I also got a little jug of warm milk. I wanted bitter but not too bitter. I pour it into the coffee and watch as the cream billows out beneath the surface. I pick up my spoon, and while I’m stirring the drink, I’m reminded of a story my mother would sometimes tell me and my siblings. It was about how she never had any real milk in her house as a child.

“My mom was a terrible cook.” She would say. “She would use the microwave for everything, and when she didn’t, the only meal she would cook was baked liver in orange peels.” One time in my mom’s childhood, my grandmother made her eat liver out of the trash can that was covered in coffee grounds. Mom hated it so much that she threw it away in secret, but grandma found out and taught her a lesson about wasting food. That’s why mom never forced us to finish stuff we didn’t like.

They never had real milk in the house, only powdered. “Because it would keep longer. She could leave it in the cupboard for months and it would still be good to use.”

“That’s gross.” My young self would say to her.

“It was!” The way she spoke was very distinctly American, with how she would raise the end of the sentence with a sunny tone of voice. The bright cadence could also have been because I was a child and she was agreeing to placate me. “And the worst part was that everyone knew that my mom served powdered milk, so no one wanted to come over to my house after school. They always refused when I offered. So, I made a promise to myself, that when I had kids, my house would be the one that everyone wanted to come to.” She said this while pouring me a glass of real milk. “And that I’d never, ever, make you guys drink powdered milk.”

The memory of my little giggles echoes around in my head as I sip the coffee. I forget that I don’t like the plain taste – I knew it would be bitter, but my brain is so used to the taste of sugar in my drink that the sharpness of it surprises me. I take another sip.

Her mother’s terrible cooking was the catalyst for my mom to learn how to be a good cook. It was so she could let us enjoy a liver-free childhood, populated with moments where I sat on the kitchen counter since I was too short, just so I could eat her cookie dough.

She kept that promise. She hosted dinner parties as often as she could. I was encouraged to invite friends over whenever I wanted, and we had a big space in the basement that was the designated ‘kids area’. Whenever one of us had a birthday party, my mom made sure to pack the goodie bags full of “useful things” – her words.

“Goodie bags are always filled with junk that you use once then throw away. That’s such a waste.” She said this while laying out an apron and wooden cooking spoon for each of my sister’s friends for her cooking-themed tenth birthday party. I could tell that she cared, but I never knew why. Now, I’m terrified by how high she has set the standard for what a good mother is, and if I could ever live up to that.

I know thinking about parenthood at this point is too early, that I should be thinking about whether you would be the type of guy that would plan weekend dates, or buy me flowers whenever you went to the corner shop. My dad does that for my mom, and they’re both in their sixties and twenty-five years deep into marriage. The thoughts go round in my head as I sip the coffee. It needs sugar.

It makes me wonder if you would be a good dad. Do you know how to cook? I probably should ask that when we next meet, but knowing how to cook, and being as good as my mom are two different things. I know that you’re kind, but I wonder if you would force our kids to clear their plates, or if you would cut off the crusts for their sandwiches, as I do for my mom now. I wonder if you would pick up that I don’t eat in the mornings, so you would go get me a pastry from the shop down the road and have it ready for when I come downstairs. My dad does this every day for my mom.

The type of love that my parents have is always in the back of my mind. It skitters out whenever I try and find love for myself, like a spider desperately trying to escape the head of a broom. I’ll find someone like you, but then stop before anything real happens, before I allow myself to take the dive. Because what if you aren’t perfect?

What if we get bored of each other?

What if I don’t like your habits and you find me too nagging?

What if my brain starts fuzzing over with dementia, and you fall in love with someone else?

At least for my grandfather, my grandmother was already gone when he started to forget. But theirs was a different kind of love.

When I was older, during the spring break of my final year of university, I sat with my mom in the kitchen at three in the morning – both of us were jet-lagged and eating ice cream. She told me that her parents would fight all the time in front of her and her brother. The way she described it to me was like two wildcats going at it, fiery and explosive. “They would fight passionately, then make up just as passionately.” He was a pilot in the air force, as straight laced as they came; she was a nurse who smoked more cigarettes than her body weight. “They married young, because that’s what you did back then, but they weren’t right for each other in the ways I wanted as a kid.”

Then she laughed and said: “The only dating advice I ever took from my mother was that you should get the guy to buy you jewelry, because it will be with you a lot longer than the guy.” I look at my bare wrists and ring-less fingers holding loosely to the empty coffee mug. I wonder what type of jewelry you would get me, and if it would outlive us. My mind goes around this fact, but I think the more pressing matter it needs to get over is the taste of unsweetened coffee. I order another drink.

Love is never the same between different people, but I want the type of love that’s ever-present. My parents set too good of an example for me and my sister, and then they wonder why we’ve never taken a date home. It’s exceptionally shallow to think this way though: that one’s parents having the perfect relationship is the biggest struggle in the world. There are much worse things to have to face.

I get the same coffee again, still black, still bitter, still with a small jar of milk. My fingers trace the grains of wood on the table.

It’s disheartening, having never had a proper partner when everything you read and watch is telling you that relationships are the standard. By the age you’re twenty-five, you should have been in at least three relationships, blah, blah, blah. But all of the boys in high school were gross and overly sexual, saying ‘While you’re down there?’ every time I bent to pick something up. And uni wasn’t any better – it was a rinse repeat of high school, and the guys who did have any ounce of respect for the people around them were either taken or gay. But being single is especially bad as a woman – I’ve been bred to have a curated Pinterest board with everything that I want at my wedding, even though I haven’t met the groom yet.

And what about you? How do you feel about relationships? Would you be okay with me kicking you out of the house periodically so that I can have my alone time? Will you promise not to text me all of the time because I find it annoying? Is that something that normal relationships do? And what about your quirks?

This bitter coffee is supposed to quell these thoughts. It’s not working. And it doesn’t help when I go home to my mom telling me that I just haven’t met the right person yet, or how they’ll come when they come. If unrealistic romance books have taught me anything, it’s that the loneliness of the real world is suffocatingly palpable when it feels like you’re the only one that’s never had a date.

That being said, I wonder if my friend is faring any better. She lives on the other side of the world, far from any members of her family. I wonder if she has the same questions thrown at her when she comes home, and if so, does she deal with them the same way that I do? Is she more graceful? More hostile? Is she apathetic?

She’s very cagey about her dating life – I’ve never met any partner of hers. It probably doesn’t help that she’d never bring a partner home because her parents don’t know she’s bi, but she wants to keep it that way for as long as possible. I wonder how long that will last, taking into account that she didn’t want me to know.

She revealed it to me one morning (accidentally, might I add), when she called me while walking home drunk from the bar – it was the middle of the night for her. The conversation was as normal as it could be with one of us drunk and one of us sober, until she stumbled on her words.

“They’re coming over,” She was referring to her British friends that were visiting. “And I don’t want them to be weird around my gay friends.”

“They won’t be weird.” I said. “I know you, and I know that you wouldn’t be friends with anyone that was an asshole.”

“It’s just always in the back of my head, ya know.” Her words were blending together with the wind crackling through the phone speaker. “Some people don’t think people like me deserve rights.”

Then she paused, as if her mind had caught up to her mouth and she realised the information she’d given me. I breezed forward with the conversation.

“Well, those people are stupid.”

When she was back home for Christmas, I asked her about her dating life when we met up with a group of friends and people were prompting her about it. Her face paled, and I wondered if she remembered telling me.

Very quietly, she spoke: “Joan, I’m bi.”

In a normal tone, I responded: “I know. You told me when you were drunk.”

Honestly, I was offended that she thought I wouldn’t accept her. I wanted to throw it in her face that both of my housemates were queer, but no one likes that kind of person. Still, it explained why she never told me anything about her relationships, and yet I always wonder if she has the same issues that I do.

That fear of losing your independence, does it stalk her too?

The café is getting busier, the sound of voices is getting louder. More than half of the cup remains, and I know that I should just stir in some sugar, but it would defeat the point of this exercise.

The chair in front of me is being pulled out and someone is sitting on the other side of the table. I look up from my yucky coffee and see you. Your eyes are bright again. A cat indeed.

I say hello. So do you. You reach across and take the coffee cup from my ring-less hands, then take a sip. I wonder how you knew I was here, but then remember that we met in this café because it was on the street between our houses. You come here just as often as I do.

When you bring the drink away from your lips, I watch as your nose scrunches up. I thought you didn’t like bitter coffee, you say. I don’t, I say. Then you look at me, and I wonder how I appear to you. Do you see me as a dog, and, if so, what kind? Do the same thoughts of loneliness versus solitude run through your head like they run through mine?

You put the cup back down on the table, then reach over to the sugar bowl and empty a packet into the coffee. You push it back to me. All better, you say.

It’s in moments like that where I forget about being lonely.