"Shh! Don't speak."

There’s a reason that people spend $3.65 on a drink that costs a buck at 7-Eleven. A latte is a gastronomic touchdown in the Superbowls of our mouths:  bold, light, frothy, sweet, rich.  It is clearly the most easily achieved slice of perfection in my day.  Now that our cappuccino machine is broken, I have been forced to relive the days when I squandered my hard-earned dollars on these cups of handcrafted goodness.   And I know why this gateway drink, the Starbucks vanilla latte, has plunged me into a lifetime of reckless espresso drinking.  Every day, I must have a shot.

This goes beyond The War On Headaches, which I often lose without my over-the-Starbucks-counter concoction.  It goes beyond the need to jolt my sleepy self into the fast-paced life of a mother of 3 alternately smiling and screaming children.  My trip to “the cup” is about seizing a moment of purity in my day.  Purity of taste and purity of mind.

My troubles drown in caffeine, yet resurrect as surmountable obstacles in the tiny golden bubbles of crema that entwine themselves in flirty swirls of fluffy milk.  How do they make milk fluffy?  Especially since many of these baristas are anything but fluffy.  While some are jolly, some are engaging, and some enjoy the art of coffee, most have been pierced and poached and tatted not only in body, but perhaps in soul.  Even some of those who remain unpunctured by jewels and Hepatisis-C infected ink are slowly imploding under their manes of highlighted hair or underneath their template-trimmed facial hair, and they ooze malaise and indifference.  Or they are just hung over from Monday night’s adventures. Yet, their milk is fluffy.  And they made it that way.  There is magic in these drinks.

As I sit and sip, in a café or car or on my couch at home, I enjoy the time I spend with Latte.  I sip her.  She answers back.  I hold her warmth close to my face.  She doesn’t scream that she won’t put her socks on.  I inhale her full-bodied, vanilla sweetness.  She doesn’t tell me that the dress I’m wearing is ACTUALLY quite slimming.  Latte likes me.  She understands me.  She offers me comfort and fluffy milk.

I have likened her to a female.  She is too carefully crafted, too light, too delicate to be a dude. I am not a lesbian.  Though, perhaps I am when it comes to coffee.  Come to think of it, my husband’s drink is 6 shots of espresso over ice with 3 pumps of classic syrup.  Clearly a man drink.  A drink with the psyche of a cigar.  So my husband is gay, too.  Or perhaps a cannibal.

And so go I to drop ungodly cash in pursuit of sensory perfection.  Just like the retiree with no assets to speak of.  Or the hourly employee who spent ½ hour’s labor on a cup of caffeine, sugar, and fluff.  Or the business man who practically rules the universe, at least his universe.  Or the mom who’s looking to escape the monotony of her child asking for cheese all morning long.  It costs her just one organic chocolate milk to sate the child so she can escape to the Land of the Latte.

My husband better send our broken machine to Seattle soon.  I need it fixed.  Back to the mothership!  Hence away!  And return me to my perfection priced at only 15 cents a cup.

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