From native American vision quests to Harvard professors' experiments with LSD, the desire for altered states of consciousness has characterized the coming of age. Though today's playing field has changed from my own college days, when we sought enlightenment via streaking and late-night games of contract bridge, freshmen still get by with a little help from their friends.
I am talking, of course, about drinking coffee.
As youngsters ripen into adults, they begin naturally to leave behind the toys of childhood. Although recidivists can still buy soda on campus, it is coffee that gets you through an all-nighter in style, coffee that socializes you to this brave new world, coffee that cures you as tobacco is cured.
Coffee has a long and beautiful history. From 10th-century Ethiopian nomads, who ate the beans to keep themselves awake on tedious drives across the desert, it spread to Arabian gourmands in the cities. Its success assured by repeated religious prohibitions and denunciations, coffee had swept the Moslem world by the 15th century, and the Crusaders brought it back to Europe in time to addict Addison and Johnson, Swift and Dryden, the original coffeehouse performers of London.
In Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach took time out from reinventing Western music to pen his Coffee Cantata: "Wow, this coffee is sweet! And lovelier than a thousand kisses, milder than muscadine wine. Ah, I must have coffee! If anyone wants to restore me, ah, pour me coffee, ah, ah, fill er up." [Note: translation not sanctioned by the German Department.]
The 1940 Warner Brothers classic, "Java Jive," rephrased Bach's words without improving on his harmonies: "Oh, slip me a slug from that wonderful mug, and I'll cut a rug 'till I'm snug in a jug. A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup-boy!"
This gibbering enthusiasm will seem familiar to you within about two months as you begin to recognize that only long hours of lucubration, liberally fueled with coffee, can preserve the illusion of your academic competence. By the time you enter graduate school, coffee will have made you completely inarticulate.
Not that the story of coffee is altogether one of sweetness and light. "Taken in excess," admonishes the morose 1950 Columbia Encyclopedia, "it is said to cause irritability, depression and indigestion." Oh, sure, and next I suppose they'll announce that red meat is full of carcinogens.
My own relationship with coffee started as a teenager working in my father's Adirondack diner, where I learned to associate the smell of coffee with tips. I also discovered that at five in the morning, no one notices you're serving yesterday's warmed-over dregs.
By my sophomore year in college, I had learned to walk the tightrope between falling asleep over my own prose and the caffeine-driven hallucinations that pulp-fantasy writers love. I so managed my habit that during the composition of my senior thesis I stayed awake for 44 hours at a stretch and, after handing it in, went off to play softball. Since I struck out as usual, I knew that caffeine had had no effect on my hand-eye coordination. I have never, however, been able to recall the subject of my thesis.
On my campus, unless you brewed your own java, you were stuck with a vile concoction from the cafeteria, made by mixing cold syrup with hot water. Happily, Duke does better, and so does Durham. Despite recent incursions at the Bryan Center Cafe by the overrated Starbuck's, which displaced a better and cheaper product at some administrator's whim, you can still get good coffee at The Perk in Perkins Library on West Campus, at Francesca's on Ninth Street and at the Mad Hatter's in Erwin Square, within easy walking distance of East Campus.
Oh sure, I tried giving it up once, tired of the night sweats and quaking hands, first switching to half-caff so I wouldn't get the bends. But some well-meaning pusher offered me a bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans, and when they peeled me off the ceiling the next morning, I was hooked again. Yet night sweats seem a small price to pay for the joy of a legal addiction.
Besides, my mother taught me never to be a quitter, and in the end I know I did her proud.
Paul Baerman, Fuqua '90, is a Durham resident.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.