Poured Over: Sylvan Esso’s Recipe

You will need:

Water.

Fresh Ground Coffee.

Remember the first date with Ryan where he took you to Blue Bottle, back before it became what it is now? He asked if you knew what a siphon was, pointing to the blown glass exhibition. You did, but couldn’t spell it if prompted by that follow-up. Someone probably tired of cleaning the brown film from inside that coffee-marble-run, all its loopdeloops. The bow, the dip, the woo. Dating him was like that. First crushing on someone in the sunshine, at a day-date, down an alley, inside a place that echoed hissing steam and young engineers’ pipe dreams. Sober consumption, dilated eye-contact, caffeinated honeymooning. Dating him sounded like the background music at cantinas on Valencia. Being dumped by him felt like being siphoned out.

Coffee, fresh like that.

Pour over cone.

A new day, a new filter.

Like you had when you dated Henry, naked arms dressed in full sleeves of ink. Rehabbed bartender, now California sober. Enigmatic. For him you drank exactly one glass of wine before, but never anything during. Silly, how filters can get it so wrong, seeing as how he met you when you ordered a drink from him. He knew. You knew. But you were young, doing the dance. He could taste your white wine breath, but was too polite — low baritone and in so deep — would never say so; you were turned on by his scruff, consumed by his heft, his height, all of him; too polite — in your soprano and lost in his embrace, a fore-drawn conclusion — you would never share: that he left you with some burn, dry upon the skin. Dating him sounded like being inside Zeitgeist on a rainy day, like a tattoo gun humming your name on a man’s skin for the first time, like a lighter flickering upon ignition. Leaving him felt like falling off the wagon. Contused, somehow not broken. Rocked you.

Kettle.

Gonna get all steamed up.

Pour you over, tip you out.

Mug.

Never forget JRK Jr. Should’ve known better; those patronymics, those legacies, those tall sons of somebodies who learned to have shameless smiles and cocky swagger and not one single fuck those juniors ever gave. They all, always, put the mug in smug, them being a second and coming first, and all. Not one of your better chapters, but indulgently fun nonetheless, like being somewhat of a super senior yourself, choosing the ease and ongoing party in Neverland over the mediocrity of growing up and knowing better on your horizon, where the shadows lurk. With his old money, new condo, wicked ways; you made the first move, even though you both knew. Knew the moves. Dating him sounded like a nightclub in the dark: another high school prom, another frat party, another bar at the Marina, the state of white people dancing to hip-hop on the floor before going home together. Old news. Being ghosted by him felt like not realizing the man behind you on the dance floor isn’t the one you came with. Oh brother, no bother where art thou. Mugs are a dime a dozen. Don’t leave the dance floor, don’t ever be sad about some junior.

One spoon.

You are ready to make coffee now.

Steps:

Do the dance.

Pour the water in the kettle, watch it boil, as seasons and pastimes and jobs and bodies and habits and patterns and maybe even your interested ins deviate. It all comes back, back to watching the water yearning to boil, waiting for matter to change. Liquid becomes gas, two singles become one pair. You remain an incomplete puzzle, trying to find pieces, because somehow you learned that’s what it means to be you. A game, a puzzle, something to be completed. And then?

Watched water eventually boils. Steam rises.

It’s not a recipe if something doesn’t get hot and bothered. Changed. Chemistry. Hanky-Panky.

Prepare your filter.

The online dating chapter of your late-twenties. Sounded like laughing with roommates on the couch inside, with the urban lullaby cooing out there — like cabs rolling down the hill below, like foghorns in the distance, like gaggles of younger versions of you — pub-crawling in ugly sweaters and togas and costumes they raced across the city in earlier — pit-stopping on your roof and on your sidewalk and in the unit below you and on your six, of course. So many people out there. Dating online sounded like greeting cab drivers, butterflies and you in the backseat, Felt like scrolling, tasted like well drinks and mediocre make-outs and like saying goodnight on your stoop to him and him and him. A few teases.

All of them. They'd take their big man hands, put them on your face, smothering you, covering your entire being (hey you’re the mug now, get it?) in their giant grasp, and then swipe you out of the frame. Boom. Feel the turn of rotation and stop. Brace yourself and your edited version of reality now, here it comes, here it comes. There it goes. Boom, gone.

Add coffee grounds (into the filter over the cone above the mug). By the spoonful.

More spoons more strong; less spoons, meh. Watered down. Something something, favors, bold.

Remember how Dave always let you be the bigger spoon, sleeping in his studio by the sea. Drove you to getaways where you’d stay on the ground floor, get invited to stay for dinner with the winemakers; in the valley, in the north, along the coast. Dating him sounded like being cheersed in foreign languages with a bunch of somms lit by candlelight, like chefs dicing and sauteing in apartment kitchens on their days off at dinners you’d crash — oh oui, those late night buttery circle jerks of questionable taste, like the Pacific beating the coastline. Breaking up with him sounded like jubilant little champagne corks popping, ejecting themselves from the bottle’s neck and all that pressure inside. Oh oui. But it felt like being a foreign exchange student, trapped. You were not understood, it took too long to explain and extricate yourself. Why is this so hard? Can anyone translate here, I’m trying to send it back. Believe I've already explained myself. This varietal, terminated. How do you say: corked?

Brew.

This is the hardest part, and yet, it’s the most lived in, therapeutic, learnable step.

Cover your grounds. Pour the kettle's boiled water all around, get everything saturated, watch and learn. Extraction. Same but different. Another date, another chance to pour yourself out, to steep. It won’t be right after the first, you have to keep going, to get the formula juuuuust so. Wait. Be stuck there. The waiting place. The dating place. The bow, the dip, the woo.

Repeat.

We are percolating, blooming, metamorphosing. Here it comes, here it comes. Get up. Fill your cup.

There it goes.

Repeat, sweet kettle. And you move it all around now.

Get up, get down. See the next one waiting.

Remove the cone with the used drippy soggy filter, best to rest it in the bottom of the sink, another drain to circle, another circle to drain. You can’t tell your future yet from these grounds, you have to finish the real thing first. Run through, dress rehearsal, tryouts, test drives.

You did good, as far as items go.

Time to drink.

You will want:

To determine how you’ll romance it. This Joe. This time. Go time.

Is it a slow sip, a manic gulp, a fleeting affair? Are you gentle, are you sweet? Maybe bitter? Wrapping your arms? Fruity, floral, chocolatey, nutty? Maybe a hint of wet, colored on paper, original memos diluted? Earthy. Spicy? Do you leave him waiting, wondering, a little casualty left on a surface somewhere holding place for temperature and breath to leave the body yet still linger in abandoned purgatory, as ghosts do?

Wild winters? Blazing summer?

Like scoring tickets for music in the park when they came to town, weed in the hills all around. This is where all your friends and redwoods and picnic blankets — mostly full of coffee drinking strangers, a handful with lying exes — are peppered everywhere, crowded in like seed bombs chucked into the audience. To see the show, to hear the music, to become nostalgic for the present by being transported to where the music took everyone in the past. To grow, hopefully. Everyone is in those hills, everyone is just waiting, everyone is here in this park. Funeral singers. Rooftop dancers, ferris wheel riders. Echos everywhere inside the park, where solid becomes liquid becomes gas. Everywhere in the moment, memories of how one song played in your mind’s stereo every time. Remember each time you fell? And it’s there too, the things you need and want and have to do, the recipe. Every morning, each step, each sip you take?

Sentiment’s the same.

Remember how you don’t understand any of it, really? How it could feel so different each time, but the background music, somehow, someway always stayed the same, like you’re a forever caterpillar. Stunted. Probably because your pair of feet never changed. Just theirs. A dozen stalled relationships, a hundred conversations replayed in your mind, a thousand reaching metaphors of ritual and incompletion, a million discarded sips at the bottom never taken. Never tasted.

So then. Coffee. When the mug is empty, or the contents have turned sour, dump it out and start fresh. Go heat the water again. See the next one waiting. Bubbling up, butterflies. Get up, get down.

Enjoy.