Single Dose
The bunch at the next table are anti-vaxxers — one of them’s holding court, telling the others (and anyone else in an earshot) that covid-19 was developed by the See-Eye-Hay and the vaccine is bogus. Thankfully her companions are not nearly as learned as her and there are no major verbal histrionics in response to this devastating news that’s been kept from billions of the world’s population. I swing around to check how busy it is inside and seeing a short queue, I take this as my cue to leave the anti-vaxxers to continue on their own.
Thankfully I’d been sitting upwind of them, small miracles and all that. And that reminded me about the author who posted earlier this week about the celebrity couple who did not believe in washing themselves or their spawn too often. She went off tangentially on them so I just scrolled past. The thing is that it’s more than adequately evidenced that a regular dose of dirt is good for humans — building immunity and what what. But this is not about that, we know that and we know that cleaning the body is normal — there’s no false binary needed here.
But the Hollywood (and therefore the centre-of-the-known-universe) celebrity that I was reminded of when I saw that post about the dirty couple and their equally grimy progeny was the actor Robert Mitchum. He was a major actor about five-hundred years ago (according to the teenager) and I can’t remember which of his female co-stars said it but allegedly; Mr Mitchum had an aura around him and it was not the pleasant kind. She said something along the lines that it was always a pleasure acting with him, provided the scene called for her to be placed upwind of him. I thought it fitting that we are now being treated to a repeat for the benefit of the current teenager who was mildly surprised that I had thought Robert Mitchum was already five-hundred years old when I was a teenager myself. Which was itself about five-hundred years ago according to the teenager.
The short line is plodding today. There’s a person ordering a tall everything vanilla and milk and what what with a shot of espresso poured on top like a condiment and her male companion is loudly telling the lady next to him how they like strong coffee. I lower my head to roll my eyes in private because I’m doing my level best to practice non-judgement of any kind whatsoever. This is tricky to do — the no judgement bit, more so when you’re standing in a coffee spot and people keep coming in the door to order variations on the theme of warm, hot and foamed milk. To which they add sugared vanilla and other weird-ass shit and then proceed to dump at least two sachets of sugar into the milk drink before they sit there drinking their strong coffee and proudly being anti-vaxxers. I am reminded of the hadith a friend sent to me about the prophet (PBUH) saying that verily he seeks forgiveness and repents a hundred times a day and I keep my head bowed and beg for forgiveness for my harsh judgement of this, my people and a nation of milk-drinkers. There is also the “yes please, with hot milk and three sugars” tea drinkers but that’s a blog from another day.
Finally I’m at the scrap of a counter — the global pandemic has literally put up a perspex screen between the beautiful human at the till and me but this is of little worry because his smile, dancing eyes and creamy voice makes up for any parallax the screen imposes. I get the same thing I get every time, a short americano. Which itself takes a few minutes of careful negotiations. In general, when someone orders an americano — the response is always hot or cold milk? For someone who prefers to keep his milk drinking and coffee drinking separate, it took me a while to be brave enough to say — yes, milk please, cold, thank you.
In the early days of my life, when I had hair on my head along with unabashed happiness and hope in my heart — I often said — no to the milk. Why would I do such a thing, you might well ask and my response would be that I wanted a coffee, sans milk — so I asked for that. Ah, but then what I found was that every time I said no milk I got a cup with an abandoned espresso at the bottom, filled to the brim with steaming water. As the teenager would say, that’s as eeeewwww as the Robert Mitchum story.
So I learned to ask for a short americano with cold milk please. And learned to live with the little jug of cold milk being returned unused. Then as the days passed and I learnt the names of the beings taking the moolah, pulling the shots, cleaning the floors and basically making the whole vibe come together — I would find a quiet moment to mention to the barista that I prefer my espresso to be only mildly coddled by the steamy water and not drowned in it. I also learnt how to phrase this request in English. That would mean about little less than halfway up for a single and just a wee bit more if it’s a double shot. Which it would never willingly be. Espresso is espresso, this double shot thing is pure arse-wipery. This being South Africa, with our strange mirroring of bad American shit, there is usually a pained look to my request — well mostly because here in the holy land (as it is in the unholy one occupied by smelly celebrities) filling the cup up to the brim is normal.
This process of negotiating the making of an americano can take anything from mere minutes to a lifetime of apologetic smiles and inner dialogues. It mostly comes down to the barista and I’ve been lucky. At what have become my regular spots; my desire for a short americano with a drizzle of steamy water is generally accepted and produced if not with metronomic efficiency then at least often enough to keep me going back. I have moved way past hoping it would be someday understood. If anything I’ve learnt the request being understood is not a requirement even; it’s a basic give the sodding customer what the sodding customer wants thing.
Which is why, never mind how much I love the sheer sight of the human taking the moolah, it is the barista at the morning spot that has my heart, my whole heart and all the love this human can muster as she quietly pulls the shot and then gently adds just less than an equal amount of steamy water. Then she catches my eye and signals for me to break through the throng of milk drinkers to pick-up.
And she does this with not an iota of judgement of my patently mad coffee drinking habits. And thus it is that most mornings, my entire being vibrates with the deepest respect for how effortlessly she does what I battle with every single day. As a prophet might say, I battle with this a hundred times a day.
Single Dose is a mildly fictionalised account of real life events and any similarities to people and places; dead or alive, past and present, is entirely unintentional. Except the anti-vaxxers and milk-drinkers; you can’t make that shit up.
© Jesh Baker 2021
