still drinking coffee

it's got me. coffee shenpa. my feet are tapping, my fingers tingling, my teeth gnashing. it's chemical stress and i'm a coffee achiever! i used to hate the way it tasted. i had my first cup on a hot summer day in silver plume, colorado. i'd not had a drink of anything for hours, my parched lips begged me for cool moist anything, my head ached with the kind of pain that can make you cry. why i'd not asked for water is now a mystery to me. i was a nervous teenager obsessed with the illusion of self-reliance. i came across a kitchen-service-sized percolator in the back of a dusty general goods store, the kind with the glass tube on the side that shows you how full it is. some cups next to it invited me plus no one was watching. i drew a cupful, drawing the black spigot tab toward me, watching my cup fill. an acrid steamy smell filled my nostrils. i had my doubts but took a swig anyway. i gagged. it tasted terrible. in fact, it probably was terrible in the scheme of coffee these days, but i didn't know that then. i added lots of powdered creamer, so much that it became sludgy. i couldn't bring myself to finish it. i don't recall how i found water later, but i'm sure i thought it was nirvana.