I recently began my second decade as a coffee drinker, and yet I still can’t walk down the coffee aisle at the grocery store without feeling like I’m in an airport.
The smell of a coffee bean transports me to some very particular place — an office building, a café, the home of that one non-Latter-day-Saint family on my South Jordan block in 1995.
This is because no coffee in any form ever passed through my childhood Latter-day Saint home in the 1990s, so I learned to associate the smell with certain places where I occasionally would encounter it.
Mom and Dad were strict observers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Word of Wisdom — well, besides Diet Coke and Dr Pepper and Pepsi (which are not actually against the health code) and meat in moderation and other hot drinks that are not coffee or tea, unless we’re talking herbal tea, which can be hot or cold, but green or black tea may not be either, also Red Bull is fine, of course, obviously.
Around 2001, we had a student from South Africa stay with us for a few days as a part of some kind of exchange program. When this young woman requested a cup of coffee, my mother frantically called Mary Matt, her Catholic friend, and whispered into the phone, “Can you please help me? I have no idea how to make coffee.”
Fifteen minutes later, a groggy-eyed, frizzy-haired Mary Matt marched over to our house in her bathrobe with a steaming pot and poured a full cup for the student, like she was on a humanitarian aid mission.
Throughout my childhood, I heard Latter-day Saint friends say they wished they could try coffee because they liked the smell. This never really resonated with me — coffee always smelled to me like something was burning on a stove. This remained true for me through my 20s. I was never tempted to drink the stuff.
Cup runneth over — with sugar
Then, in May 2014, I set off on a trip to Ukraine and Poland with my friend Brandt. We had both recently begun our exodus out of the church, and I guess that’s why we were prepared to experiment with hard drugs, like a 12-ounce mocha or an iced organic jasmine green tea.
It was the day before my 30th birthday, and we stumbled into a hip underground coffee shop built into a cave, accessible only through a tunnel. Inspired by the atmosphere, I announced to Brandt that I was prepared to try coffee and, channeling my best Brigham, I spread my arms outward and shouted “this is the right place.”
Brandt agreed to join out of support, whispering to me, “but, like, what are we supposed to order? Can you just order ‘a coffee’ or is that like going to a restaurant and ordering ‘the food?’”
I didn’t know the answer to that question, and so, like my mother calling Mary Matt for emergency support, we rushed back outside and Googled “how do you order a coffee drink.” A website gave us basic descriptions of popular beverages, and a minute later we walked back in and asked for two lattes and lots of sugar, please.
We sat, sipping, and asking each other “do you feel anything yet?” as though we had just snorted cocaine. And, honestly, coffee and cocaine basically seemed like the same thing to me at that time.
For the rest of the afternoon, we power-walked the streets of Lviv, Ukraine, like a gaggle of Draper moms who just made a joint New Year’s resolution.
Looking back, the boost in energy probably had less to do with the small amount of caffeine we had ingested and more to do with the incredible volume of sugar we had dumped into our drinks, making this less of a latte and more of a melted cup of coffee-flavored ice cream.
That trip began my long, ravenous relationship with hot caffeinated beverages.
Coming out — as a coffee drinker
I don’t quite know how to explain this, but I was more nervous for my parents to find out I started drinking coffee than I was to tell them I was gay and no longer going to church. I had come out to them months before my trip to Ukraine. They were supportive — model parents, in that regard. I guess ceasing church attendance seemed justified, so that was easier to explain; I was gay and staying in the church was agonizing and unhealthy for me. My parents seemed to follow that logic just fine. But drinking coffee? Well, now I was just being disagreeable.
I finally ripped off the Band-Aid by asking for a black coffee at a coffee stand during a family trip to Disneyland as my parents stood on either side of me. It might be the only time in history a grown man has ever felt brave for ordering a drink from a teenager dressed like Dick Van Dyke riding a carousel in “Mary Poppins.”
I was prepared for a conversation — at least a few polite questions about my latest destructive lifestyle choice. But no conversation came. It turned out my parents are normal, well-adjusted people who don’t spend energy thinking about how others choose to ingest their caffeine.
As we walked away from the coffee stand, I sipped my latte and suddenly remembered watching “60 Minutes” with my family in 1996. Mike Wallace had just asked then-church President Gordon Hinckley if it was true that the Word of Wisdom meant church members don’t consume caffeinated soft drinks and Hinckley confirmed this. (The faith’s official policy does not actually bar drinking caffeinated pop, though such thinking can still be found in church culture). Hinckley’s answer must have come as a shock to my devoted parents, who, at that exact moment, had Diet Coke pumping into their veins through an IV.
They didn’t stop drinking their favorite beverage, and I don’t remember them spending any time grappling with the topic after the interview, even as many of my neighbors hotly debated the issue for the next decade.
I guess my parents had already learned what it took me until my 30s to learn: Sometimes you just have to figure out what works for you and not stress about what everyone else thinks. People’s consumption of the devil’s bean really has nothing to do with the content of their character. After all, Mary Matt drinks coffee, and she’s one of the best people we know.
(Pat Bagley) Eli McCann, Salt Lake Tribune guest columnist.
Eli McCann is an attorney, writer and podcaster in Salt Lake City, where he lives with his husband and their two naughty (yet worshipped) dogs. You can find Eli on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @EliMcCann or at his personal website, www.itjustgetsstranger.com, where he tries to keep the swearing to a minimum so as not to upset his mother.
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