The Devil's Cup

by Stewart Lee Allen

  “You should keep that, it’ll be handy when other police search you.” What, I thought, you need a receipt to avoid getting searched nowadays? Hoppe shook my hand. “Now, you make sure and get that brake light fixed, hear?

  I WAS PLEASED TO SEE THAT HOPPE’S HAM-HANDED SEARCH HAD not damaged my ancient 486 laptop computer, which, with a wireless modem, was my link to the Internet. The Net is the latest manifestation, or equivalent, of the coffeehouse as a social institution, a place where anybody can gather, regardless of social standing, and exchange intelligible opinions. The Net evolved from scientists sending notes to one another to sites divided according to subject, just as London’s coffeehouse conversations had become Richard Steele’s Tatler, which in turn spun off into separate specialized magazines.

  It’s no coincidence that the oldest image on the Net is of a live coffeepot in a Cambridge computer lab,3 or that cybercafés, where people can “meet” and chat, number in the thousands. So as Meg and I rolled along the highway we were also cruising the Net, creating what can best be described as a café-on-wheels with over a hundred million customers, to whom I immediately dropped a note about Officer Hoppe.

  “That’s prohibition for you,” wrote proffs@tcsx. net on the alt. psychedelics discussion group. “They are scum shit bags who are driven by their abominable addiction to fucking over people of this nation, this world, are going to rise up and smite prohibitionists from the face of this earth. They’re a plague on freedom, and justice, and there will be no weeping for them when they’re gone.”

  The Net is as full of paranoid babblers as was any eighteenth-century café. Hoppe’s antics quickly gave birth to a theory that the government was planning to treat coffee like tobacco. “Next it will be Coca-Cola, then sugar, then water, then air,” wrote one. A nurse posted that her supervisor ordered her to “seek counseling” for her caffeine habit. Other late-night nurses reported that they now needed their bosses’ clearance before they drank a coffee or Coke. In one hospital, the administration had removed all caffeinated drinks from the vending machine. Double-Jolt Cola, containing over a hundred milligrams of caffeine, is apparently illegal in Australia. One of the alt. coffee discussion group’s recent debates was whether or not baristas are morally obliged to ask customers’ ages before they pull them a double espresso.

  It isn’t all Net gossip. The federal Food and Drug Administration now monitors products with caffeine, and drug-testing companies are offering preemployment “caffeine abuse screenings” on Net bulletin boards. The Olympic Games Committee now classifies caffeine with steroids as an illegal doping agent and, in 1993, stripped the European breaststroke champion of her award when she tested positive for drinking the equivalent of six cups of coffee.4 Within the last five years, a twelve-step group called Caffeine Anonymous was created in Portland, Orgon, to help junkies throw away the coffee crutch.

  “We were all standing there twitching in line at a Starbucks,” said one Net posting from a group member. “Everyone was saying, ‘Come on, let’s go, let’s go. What’s the holdup?’ We were like heroin junkies.”

  A report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse says five thousand Americans are killed by caffeine each year, the same number as die from all illegal drugs combined. By comparison, alcohol kills 125,000 (not including accidents), and marijuana zero. Coffee’s status as an addictive substance was recognized by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1994. It now categorizes coffee and other caffeine-containing substances with socially unacceptable drugs like heroin and nicotine. The APA’s Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders states that “subjects can be intoxicated with the excessive use of caffeine and…subjects can become clinically dependent on caffeine.” According to the APA, 94 percent of coffee drinkers suffer “Caffeine Dependence Syndrome,” whose symptoms include an uncontrollable temper, vomiting, exhaustion, paranoia, and, apparently, delusions of being a computer modem.

  “After the day was over, I’d consumed so much coffee…I lay in bed completely convinced I was a modem—this is no joke,” read a Net posting that flickered onscreen as we cruised through Little Rock, Arkansas. “I was lying in bed, concentrating very hard on taking incoming calls and making sure I gave out all the correct tones. It was like the caffeine had completely twisted my mind.”

  “Caffeine is a psychoactive drug…so it’s not such a far stretch that he thought he was a modem,” added mthorog@webtb. net to the above message. “I’ve had it with people treating caffeine as if it were as harmless as water.”

  None of this is news to the Pentagon, which has been using coffee to enhance violent behavior since 1832, when President Andrew Jackson replaced the army ration of rum with coffee (six pounds of coffee for every hundred soldiers). This made Union soldiers in the Civil War the first officially caffeinated warriors since the Ethiopian Oromos, getting wired on a brew resembling “the Missouri River on a bender,” according to military documents. Soldiers became so fond of the fuel that while officials occasionally cut the food ration, they doubled the coffee supply. The South, hopelessly decaffeinated by a naval embargo, went down to inglorious defeat.5

  The Civil War proved that coffee enhanced a soldier’s physical performance. But more intriguing to the Pentagon were indications that it possessed powerful psychological uses. “In some cases, extreme delusional states of a grandiose character appear…usually of reckless, unthinking variety,” wrote J. D. Crother in a 1902 study. “A prominent general in a noted battle in the Civil War, after drinking several cups of coffee, appeared on the front of the line, exposing himself with great recklessness. He was supposed to be intoxicated. Afterward it was found that he used nothing but coffee.” Coffee, it seemed, was a general’s dream drug—a few cups, and his troops would be rushing to the front line, regardless of the danger. This impression was supported by later military studies like one on “Caffeine-induced hemorrhagic auto-mutilation,” which indicated that caffeine made rats so hyperaggressive that they bit themselves to death.

  The army began developing a “militarily practical” coffee sometime in the 1800s, according to Coffee for the Armed Forces, a document released by the Office of the U.S. Military, Quartermaster General. There were three requirements: it had to be lightweight, long-lasting, and easy to ingest. The first version was an “extract that came in a dense and solid cake, ” which Congress authorized for military use in 1862. This was thought to be ideal, because it required no pakaging and you did not have to brew it, only “mingle” it with cold water to produce the “psychological effect.” In a pinch, a soldier could “brew” it with his own saliva, like chewing tobacco. According to militarly documents, each half ounce “mixed with the saliva [was] as restorative to the system as half a pint of coffee.”

  If it sounds horribly familiar, it should. What we’re talking about is the world’s first instant coffee, a military development which would set back American coffee brewing for decades.6

  The “coffee chaw” disappeared at the end of the Civil War. The army pressed on and, building on a version used by Captain Baldwin on the Zeigler Arctic Expedition, produced a “militarily successful” powder in 1903. Its first battlefield test came in World War I. Fifteen factories produced six million pounds a month. Military consumption jumped 3,000 percent. By WWII there were 125 field roasting plants and twenty-two domestic plants churning out instant for our boys. The daily ration tripled to two ounces (about six strong cups). Even parachutists carried little packets when they dropped behind enemy lines. These were later replaced with the notorious “358 Magnum” capsules, containing about three hundred milligrams of pure caffeine.7 After the war, the Joint Army–Air Force Chiefs of Staff held blind tastings to find the most lethal blend for nonfield use. They deadlocked, and the blends sampled remained classified. In 1999 the government gave the military $250,000 to develop a new and improved type of caffeinated chewing gum.

  Unlike the “coffee chaw” of the Civil War, instant coffee did not disappear at the end of WWII. In
stead, millions of soldiers and nurses returned with Proustian associations linking the taste of instant with some of their most vivid life experiences. Domestic consumption skyrocketed, and by 1958 one third of America’s coffee was instant. The trend continued until the Vietnam War, when veterans tasted only the bitterest of dregs in a mug of Taster’s Choice. The stage was set for a coffee renaissance. Coincidentally, two years before the end of the war, Starbucks opened its first café.

  1 This eventually led to the infamous “Opium Wars,” in which the British government invaded China to ensure that its population remain addicted to opium; for the first time, one nation of junkies fought another to ensure the security of their “stash.” The temporary tea shortage brought on by the war also lead to an ill-fated attempt to commercialize the ancient Ethiopia coffee-leaf beverage kati. A Dr. Stenhouse marketed it to Britain’s lower classes as an alternative to tea, describing it as “a very tolerable beverage…going for twelve pence a pound.” According to the London Critic, the experiment failed because “Dr. Stenouses knowledge of chemistry seems superior to his acquaintance with the habits of mankind or he would have commended tea-coffee (kati) to the higher classes and rested assured” that it would spread to the lower classes from there.

  2 Prophetically enough, the term Golden Cadillac is Alabama prison slang for a cup of coffee with milk and sugar.

  3 This unprepossessing drip coffeepot was first put online in 1991, years before the World Wide Web existed. It was the only coffeepot the hackers at Cambridge owned and appeared in the corner of the lab’s computer screens so that people in remote parts of the lab knew when fresh coffee was being brewed. The Trojan Room pot has now been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, making it without a doubt the world’s most famous pot of coffee. It is best appreciated in cyberspace. The appalling quality of the joe inside is legendary.

  4 Tests indicate that drinking two cups of strong coffee enhances athletic performance in 75 percent of the population.

  5 It seems the Confederates attempted in vain to mitigate the lack of joe by adopting a traditional Native American caffeinated beverage called dahoon. Derived from the cassina plant, Native Americans in the South had used it as a drink reserved “for their great men and Captains who have been famous for the great Exploits of War and Noble Actions,” according to historian Ralph Holt. At one point a caffeinated wine was made from the plant.

  6 The term Cup of joe appears to have military roots also. Admiral Josephus “Joe” Daniels, Chief of Naval Operations, not only outlawed booze on U.S. Navy ships but banned the sale of alcohol to soldiers in uniform (he also ended the practice of handing out free condoms). He made coffee the “official” drink of the U.S. Navy, apparently giving birth to the term cup of joe in his honor. There is, however, some dispute on the matter; the other theory is that the nickname is a contraction of mocha-java to mo-jo to joe.

  7 The Air Force kept pace by inundating night pilots with Vitamin A (supposed to improve vision). It also handed out Vitamin Β supplements, because it was believed to make people less sensitive to noise, and so, less likely to become shell-shocked.

  White-trash Cocaine

  Sleep? Isn’t that some inadequate substitute for caffeine?

  rave@bleach.deamon.co.uk

  BY NOW WE WERE DEEP IN Oklahoma and doing serious research. I won’t torture you with descriptions of what we went through: the endless Stuckey’s, the Cracker Barrel Coffeehouses, the Pojo’s, Hardee’s, and Denny’s; the faceless chains that have erupted across our nation like pus-filled sores, oozing a joe weak, bitter, and vile. “You’re in coffee hell,” e-mailed one man, but he could have left out the word coffee. We were driving across a plain greasy with heat, broken only by clusters of sagging trailer homes trembling with the vibrations of their ancient air conditioners. Yea, verily, we had come to the Land of the White Trash, where methedrine is the morning pick-me-up of choice. Those of you who take offense at my use of the term white trash, by the by, should be aware that I speak with authority, having a pedigree (on the American side) of three generations of moonshiners, striptease artists, and check forgers from South Carolina.

  Meg, being a native Manhattanite, thought it all ties romantic. “You know, I sort of like it here,” she kept saying. “I think this is real America. I bet these people are just the sweetest things.”

  “Cupcakes,” I said, “every last one of them.”

  We ended up crashing in a hotel a few miles off the main highway—I have no idea where—called the Western Sands, a one-story, L-shaped motor hotel with a gravel-filled parking lot. As I walked up to the registration office my feet crunched on hundreds of semiconscious locusts.

  “Rooms are thirty-three dollars, but it ain’t no Holiday Inn,” said the man at the desk. He seemed to be in his underwear. He reached beneath his waistband for a hearty scratch. “I’ll give it to you for twenty-five.”

  And I hadn’t even asked for a discount. Yet I hesitated, for it was true that the Western Sands lacked a certain panache. The teeny lobby was covered with cigarette butts—on the floor, on the counter, on the couch—scattered about like leaves blown in by an autumnal wind. The carpet, what I could see of it through the Budweiser cans, and crusty-looking milk cartons, was polka-dotted with burn holes.

  The receptionist was fumbling through the trash on his desk.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t find the register. I’m just so tired, I swear. You know, where you get that tired you don’t jes’ fall asleep, you jes’ fall off?”

  “Fall off?”

  “One hundred percent. Gone. But I can’t, you know?”

  “Can’t what?” I asked.

  “Fall off, of course.”

  “Right.” He seemed to be getting excited. “Maybe if you just drank some coffee,” I suggested.

  “Oh, I don’t drink that stuff. My stomach’s mighty sensitive these days.” He gave me a conspiratorial grin. “Just milk and cornflakes, y’know.”

  His teeth were the color of varnished wood. Speed addict, I thought. White-Trash cocaine. That explained his fondness for cornflakes and milk (to settle the stomach) and his disjointed speech.

  “Here it is! I can give you Room 18.” His eyebrows raised in surprise. “I think it’s been cleaned not too long ago.”

  “Hi there! What are you boys up to?” It was Meg. She cast a quick glance around the room, and her eyes bugged out a bit more than visual. Fortunately, she’d traveled in Asia and took the Western Sands in stride. “You got a room for us?”

  “Sure do,” muttered the man. “Long as you’re not expecting nothing special. Like I was saying, it ain’t no Holiday Inn…”

  “Oh, no, that’s fine, y’all,” boomed Meg. She seemed to have developed a Texas drawl. “Jes’ need a place to sleep.”

  “The beds are clean, I think, or least they were,” he muttered. “And there’s HBO and cable, but I ain’t got no more remote controls, you know, I bought a dozen of them and they were gone in a week.”

  He led us outside, walking barefoot over the locusts. He was wearing nothing but cutoff sweat pants that hung so low that…well, never mind.

  “You two married?” he asked.

  “Yep,” said Meg.

  He gave her a look.

  “How come you ain’t got no rings?”

  “Lost ’em down the garbage disposal,” she said.

  “Damn! Too bad my friend wasn’t there. He can get anything out of a garbage disposal.” He fumbled about for a key. “Both rings went down the garbage disposal?”

  “His went down the toilet,” she said.

  “Shee-it, don’t you lose nothing down the toilets here,” he muttered, giving up on the key and kicking the door open. “Don’t want nothing stuck in no toilet. None of that. There you go. Like I said, it ain’t nothing fancy, no…”

  “Holiday Inn,” I finished for him. “Uh, the door doesn’t have a lock?”

  “I guess not.” There was a caved-in section near the knob where somebody had a
pparently kicked it in. “Jes’ prop a chair up against the door and you’ll be all right.”

  Dark fake wooden panels, two beds, a TV chained to the wall. But the sheets were clean. We lay down and worshiped the air conditioner. Meg watched a paranoid thriller with John Travolta. I fiddled with my computer and read a posting by someone apparently in the last stages of an overdose.

  “Water joe [caffeinated water], good stuff. I use it to make espresso and melt a Vivarin in it instead of a sugar cube or lemon peel and it really goes down smooth but a few minutes later my back starts aching and I have to pee really bad is this normal or what I’ve never tried snorting Vivarin because it would probably burn and muck up my nose…where did I put that darn Jolt Cola…my dog keeps licking my leg…”

  It went on for another period-free six pages. Typical cyber caffeinated babble. It made me too twitchy to sleep, so we headed out for a beer at the nearby Red Dog Saloon. The place was deserted except for a middle-aged woman and a few dirty-looking guys in trucker caps muttering racial epithets. We opted for Budweisers (like there was a choice) and listened to the lady complain to the bartender about her housing predicament.

  “Yep,” she was saying. “My husband really wants to move out of my parents’ trailer, only he won’t go until he finds a spot with good fishing.”

  “I can understand that,” said the bartender. “Gotta find the right neighborhood.”

  “And a’ course the kids would like it too.”

  Kids? She lived in a trailer with her parents, husband, and kids, plural? Meg and I finished our beers. This was just too depressing, especially when you considered that, despite her extended family, the woman was sitting alone in the Red Dog Saloon at midnight. As we left, the bartender warned us not to talk to the fellows in the parking lot. It was the white supremacists from inside, no doubt conducting a little methadrine deal.