coffee tummy

It was 1993. I had just graduated college and taken the very first job of the rest of my life. I was so happy to be a dishwasher at Zachary's, a hip breakfast spot in Santa Cruz.

My ascent up the corporate ladder was blessedly swift. I spent little more than three months scraping egg smegma from dirty plates, breathing in bacon grease as it wafted up from the soaking pan that I was surprised came clean every day. The pork and sulfur smells were actually a welcome distraction from the olfactory cocktail of body odor, halitosis, cigarette smoke, and last night's booze bender that oozed from the pores of Zachary's only resident dishwasher, Bhakti. Bhakti looked like every other troll you might encounter in this beach town - his bushy, unkempt beard caught flecks of food like velcro, his wrinkled soiled clothes were shabby, never chic, his weathered skin reluctantly held his organs inside. But Bhakti differed from the homeless in that he was employed. Truth be told, he was a pretty good dishwasher, happy to anchor the team, barking orders only occasionally, sometimes pretending to eat what our diners had left behind.

Still, I was delighted to leave his side, returning to my destiny as a waitress. I was making more money and smelled more of food than refuse. Even better, I no longer had to help the kitchen crew remove the gigantic pot of boiling potatoes from the burner each morning. This pot, I kid you not, was easily 2 and a half feet tall, filled within two inches from the top with scalding water. At 5'4", I towered over my potato partner and we shuffled together, in careful terror, across the back kitchen to the sink. The fact that I was never injured and never caused injury to anyone else is proof enough that miracles exist.

The only downside to my career advancement was that I had discovered coffee and with it, coffee tummy. I was loved and hated for my dedication to topping off my customers' coffee cups. Caffeine addicts named me their queen. Others blamed me for ruining their fragile balance, shaking their fists and scowling as they reached again for the cream and sugar. One amongst them, I'm quite sure, was well practiced in voodoo for I have been ever since cursed.

I was given a thirst for coffee, an amazing tolerance for consuming entire pots at a time, volumes that exceed my body's metabolic capacity. I know the feeling as coffee tummy, that shaky loose grip on reality, the racing mind and pulse, that is accompanied by a twisting, turbulent, bloated burning in the depth of my belly.

Coffee tummy joins sugar throat and onion head as personal tortures I visit upon myself. Sugar throat can be cured with dairy products, onion head requires improved hydration - only coffee tummy has no known antidote. Like so many other vices, my attempts at abstinence are tragic, laughable. Now, as yesterday's coffee tummy hangover finally fades, I find myself moments away from brewing up another. Like an addict, I am at once disappointed, disgusted and more than a little excited. Each time I convince myself this time might be different, foolishly believing that voodoo curses have expiration dates.