Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Hunger
I'm sitting in a coffee shop, sipping caffeine to hasten the booze out of my veins from last night's birthday mirth. 21-year-old Constantine, the cat-twirling Greek, bought us all a round and humored us with ribald tales of his racist friends. At the end of each anecdote, his strange laugh caused his body to vibrate dramatically.Staring into my mug, the thick, gymnastic odor of stale coffee moors my nostrils, stirs my memories. Before I could ever enjoy the brown stuff, I had to conquer certain connotations: Coffee rings in my mom's office, a dreary prison where I whiled away my youngest years - the dusty, faded furniture, ominously oversized doorways, and the unbridled contempt my mother inspired in her coworkers hanging in the air ominously, like a dangling urchin. It prickled my flesh and stood my hair - a hideous bowl cut - on end.
My presence in the office only fanned my mother's infamy. "Your son was doing cartwheels in the hallway. When are you going to start parenting that child?" and "What the hell? The brat took my yogurt from the fridge" eventually gave way to worse diatribes. Once, while cleaning out a kitchen cabinet I ran across an email, printed, from Dawn - the office's obese underling - folded up conspicuously. It read: "Maybe the reason no one can get along with you is that you are just such a bitch." I was 8 at the time - I remember marveling at the word. "Bitch?" I thought curiously. "And I'm only 8 years old!"
When things finally came to a head and my mother got canned, my visits to the office necessarily ceased. The office and its trappings moved into memory, its portal lit by the murky vapors of java. A part of me still winces with every sip. But I dare not drop the habit, lest I come to forget.
MYW at 9:03 AM
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