Coffee in the Age of COVID – UCF

Theres a coffeehouse not far from where I live in Oviedo. Its a chain coffeehouse, so if you know America, you know the coffeehouse I mean.

When Im downtown in Orlando, there are any number of excellent independent shops I like to support, but where I live, miles from the city, one neighbor has a horse and another keeps chickens. On cold nights, I hear the chickens clucking. On colder nights, my neighbor brings the chickens in.

Not much, then, in the way of coffee, except for the place by my house. Thats where I writeor wrotefive days a week. Before the arrival of COVID-19, I dropped my daughters off at school, then arrived at my coffeehouse by 9 a.m.

Kevin, the man who most days works the morning shift, would greet me. Kevin plays in a band. Ive never heard his music, and hes never read my books. Its not that kind of friendship. Which isnt to say that its a lesser friendship. Its a friendship that doesnt require admiration for one anothers art. Kevin makes my coffee. Sometimes I tip him extra. Sometimes my coffee is free, a perk that comes along with being a regular.

Before the pandemic, my office was the coffeehouse.

Then, most days, I get to workor got to workfinding a quiet corner, facing away from the windows and the rest of the customers, firing up my laptop, securing my noise-canceling headphones over my ears, and navigating to one of three audio recordings I keep bookmarked: bathroom fan, airplane hum, summer storm. The white noise blocks out coffee orders, background conversations, and the chug and hiss of the espresso machines. Within minutes, Im in a trance, the world falls away, and I can dream my way into fiction.

Most of my novel, Lake Life (published in paperback by Simon & Schuster last week), was written at this coffeehouse between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., before I returned to my daughters school to bring them home for the day. Now, our home is their school, and my bedroom doubles as my office.

But before the pandemic, my office was the coffeehouse. There, I would drink two cups of coffee, maybe three, dark roast, with cream and a dash of sugar. I like bitter, and Ive always preferred strong coffee to lattes or cappuccinos that tend to be mostly milk.

After weeks spent on a 2016 book tour across Europe, I returned to Florida and, for a month, drank straight espresso. But I never found anything in Florida approaching the strength of the ristretto shots I grew fond of in Venice and Milan and Palermo. (This, I recognize, is a pretentious-sounding sentence. In truth, I havent traveled particularly widely, I just got lucky with my last book. And I dont drink dark, strong coffee to feel cool. Im decidedly un-cool. I rarely drink alcohol. I dont smoke. And, as a matter of fact, the darker the roast, the less caffeine the coffee has. I just happen to have a palate that favors bitter. Ill take dark chocolate over milk chocolate any day.)

When asked why I dont prefer writing at home or in the office that UCF provides, I have several answers. First, Im undisciplined. If Im home, there is the TV. There are walls of books. Theres the bed. Any number of things are more tempting than sitting down to write for hours. Once Ive started, found my way into a story, Im good, on taskbut resolving to sit down and write for the day, thats the hard part. At the coffeehouse, theres no TV, and I bring no books. I dont even activate the Wi-Fi, so as not to be distracted by Twitter or Facebooks endless scroll. No, if Im at the coffeehouse, I have one job, and I do it. After all, my afternoons and evenings are occupied by teaching, so if I dont write in the mornings, I dont write.

Then theres the coffee. Its always a little better at the coffeehouse than the coffee I make at home. I have a coffeemaker, a French press, and an overpriced espresso machine. I order the best beans. I grind them fresh. Still, I can never match what they do there.

What I miss most about my coffeehouse, though, isnt the coffee or the gift of a place to write. What I miss most, Ive discovered, is being with people. If its true that you can be lonely at a party thrown by friends just for you, its also true that you can feel loved surrounded by people you dont even know.

At the coffeehouse, once Ive finished talking to Kevin, even after Ive plugged in my laptop and turned my back to the crowd, theres a feeling that rises from the floor and tangles up in the rafters, a security that comes from being among others, as in church, each of us struggling in a job or a marriage or just trying to finish a novel, everyone alone, but together, a body of humans, breathing as one, warm, at once, all in one place.

Its been more than a year since I stopped going to the coffeehouse, and I have yet to return. The coffeehouse is open. Everything, where I live, opened up almost a year ago. But Im wary. Even masked and vaccinated, it will be some time before Im comfortable writing among others, breathing the same air. And this is a loss.

I miss Kevin. I miss the taste of coffee made the right way by pros who know what theyre doing. Over a year in quarantine, and my home brew still pales in comparison. Though, if nothing else, Ive proven to myself that I can write anywhere. A new book is finished, and another is underway, so all is not lost.

But Id trade this, the books and my newfound productivity, trade it in a second to return to a world pre-pandemic. To sit among strangers and friends, and strangers as friends, and feel safe. To not be afraid of my fellow humans.

David James Poissant is an associate professor at the University of Central Florida where he teaches in the MFA program in creative writing. He can be reached at [emailprotected].

TheUCF Forumis a weekly series of opinion columns from faculty, staff and students who serve on a panel for a year. A new column is posted each Wednesday on UCF Today and then broadcast on WUCF-FM (89.9) between 7:50 and 8 a.m. Sunday. Columns also are archived in the campus librarys STARS collection and as WUCF podcasts. Opinions expressed are those of the columnists, and are not necessarily shared by the University of Central Florida.

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Coffee in the Age of COVID - UCF