Annie Vainshtein

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They say the truth leaves the harshest mark.

In my column thus far, I’ve told you about the physiology surrounding my coffee consumption — the psychotic episodes, the embarrassingly sweaty handshakes, etc. Most of that stuff goes away after a moment’s laugh.

But sometimes coffee’s impact on our lives is harder to wash away than Tide to Go advertisements. I’m talking coffee stains. Coffee stains evoke a certain kind of shame — shame like wearing a Hollister shirt inside out, like XYZ in middle school, like pushing a pull-operated glass door and walking into that same pull glass door you tried to push. So without further ado, here are:

My Top Three Most Shameful Coffee Stains

1. The stain didn’t just seep through the micro rayon fibers of the Gap blouse I happened to be wearing May 15, 2014, it seeped into me. I had just driven down to San Francisco for a summer job interview. My interview was in SoMA — a.k.a South of Market Street — which is also an unnecessarily abridged way of naming South Peninsula’s coffee capital. I was nervous, of course, so I figured I would pregame. I followed the smell of Verve but landed in a skate shop that, in true yuppie style, doubled as a coffee shop. The one person working at the counter informed me there were no lattes, no drinks could be made iced and what they were really doing was making art.

I proceeded to order some sort of pour over that rounded out to about $5, which ended up being fine because the cashier’s square was broken so I just used Venmo. (I love Venmo!) I walked outside, the harsh, industrial wind a stark reminder of what was to come. Before I knew it, I had collided head-first with an advertising honcho on his company’s Segway, and the pour over poured all over me and my white blouse.

2. A second, equally important stain was marked this past Friday at an off-campus gathering. This was more glorious: I was finally named champion of something other than recess tetherball in the third grade. I took it upon myself, as a purely scientific experiment of course, to “beer pong” a bottled Starbucks Iced Frappuccino. The glass frap was mindlessly purchased while grocery shopping earlier that day, and since I couldn’t drink it non-ironically and still respect myself, I decided to bring it that night.

I’m a woman of great virtue, so, after cleaning out the Kirkland Signature Light from the funnel, I took it upon myself to take it down in under five seconds. The crowd of three gathered around me, erupting in Yucatecan Mayan chants. After 3.5 seconds, the deed was done and the corporation defiled. After a few bows, I made my way to the sink, staring at myself in the mirror, looking into the eyes of a champion. In my golden trance, I overlooked the evil drip that had made its way onto my tank top. It was disappointing, but a winner is a winner. The syrup-sweetened gremlin knew it, too!

3. Ninety-nine percent of the people I’ve encountered will probably know this fact already, but I used to work at a coffee shop. And if I may say so myself, it was the coffee shop of all coffee shops. It was basically the Internet manifest — a convoluted web of people who never actually talk to each other, except to spout software app development ideas and compare kickstarters. I tried to make conversation a lot, but because I was me — someone who barely understood the concept of computer science and had zero patents to date — I often resorted to hand motions to communicate with the customers.

And so one summer day, I was brewing a light roast for a particular mute web developer when I sensed him getting angry that it wasn’t taking less than two minutes. “Hand craft takes work,” I told him, but this didn’t seem to mitigate the situation. In an effort to help him understand why it was taking so long, I carelessly lifted up the perilous, scorching hot and about-to-break filter for him to see. And like clockwork, it exploded. Seeping into my jeans, the malevolent grinds reminded me that it was I, not he, who still had much to learn.

Coffee stains tell tales of plight and sorrow, revenge and ecstasy, and leave marks that are often more powerful than the stories themselves.