I stepped up. I ordered a black coffee.
Like Kafka, I transform, but I am also on trial. The queue is the jury. The barista is the judge. The espresso machine gurgles like a prison pipe.
What I transform into, however, is a pretentious man.
I do not want to be a pretentious man.
I am a woman.
I am a woman.
I am a woman.
I plead not guilty.
I just want caffeine so I can stay awake for the next twelve hours and finish this essay. But I swear I hear whispering. He thinks he’s sophisticated. Tryna be like Nietzsche being stoic and allat.
I am a woman.
I look up at the menu again. A latte? No. Too approachable. First-year. Basic. I swear I’m an adult — not just performing one. Oat milk feels too political. Almond milk screams posho from Richmond. Decaf is weak. Regular milk? How do I know these people aren’t woke enough to milk furries they mistake for cows?
I think about the English students wanting me to pick up the gluten-free, organic, non-creamed, non-pasturised, freshly-squeezed-behind-the-counter macadamia nut milk, or the engineering guys who just chew the beans raw, despite not being able to find them in other contexts.
The barista offers a new cinnamon bun latte, apparently “in production for two hundred years or something.” It’s “for UCL”. I don’t support big companies — except Pandora. It’s the bracelet, isn’t it? They look at it, accusing me not just of consumerism, but of cultural appropriation, of failing to understand the legacy of the bean (the coffee bean, that is).
I order the coffee anyway. The humanities students can deal with legacies when it actually comes to it. I do more real work than them anyway.
I sip. There really is no taste to it.
The jury looks away.
I don’t know whether I’ve been acquitted or condemned.
I’ll find out tomorrow, in the same queue.
With extreme contemplation and an excessive amount of thinking,
Fran Krazka