The Coffee Cup

He likes to use me on a Monday.

I’ve noticed that. I’ve noticed that on Mondays, I’m in demand. I get reached for no matter where I’m placed in the cupboard. Behind the mug that came in his college graduation gift bag from his aunt. Next to the glasses he won at pub trivia. On the top shelf. It doesn’t matter. If it’s a Monday, he’s going to use me, because I’m the biggest without being ostentatious. He can hit the #10 button the Keurig and know that I can handle all of it and then some.

Then, he’s off to his office. He’ll wait a few minutes before coming back to get me. That gives the coffee inside me time to cool off, and it gives him time to sign into work. Right away, I hear the faint sound of a robotic voice welcoming him into the start of his week.

Queue Size: Over One Hundred Callers

He is stressed. I can feel it--even from the other room. He starts to forget about me as he signs into his VPN and then his email and then the notepad file he has that tells him how to do his job in terms he understands. The company provides a digital manual for him, but it reads like how to assemble a Hitachi stereo, so he made his own manual. At the bottom of the notepad file is a list of questions he keeps meaning to get answers to. It’s been nearly three years, and the list of questions has only gotten longer. One of the questions is “Do I know what I don’t need to know?”

He wrote that on a particularly difficult day when the queue had reached a record-breaking three hundred and forty calls, because the Internet went down from Atlanta all the way to Plano, Texas. That was the day one woman called him “a stuttering moron” and he thought of his older brother, who had a stutter when he was younger, and he wanted to tell the woman who called him that she was a bad person, but he didn’t. She was a customer. She had to be treated like a customer at all times even as she was screaming at him and over three hundred other people were waiting to scream at him.

That day he used me four times. I was worried for him. I like being used, but four times is excessive. My inner bottom was stained a rusty kind of stain from the dark roast he uses when he’s really anxious. I don’t understand why someone suffering from anxiety would use something that’s only going to make them more anxious, but it’s not for me to understand. I’m the vessel, and I am not a customer. I’m wide, not tall, and that means he can practically wrap his hands around all of me and still have a little space left over. I know this makes him feel tiny. It makes him feel insignificant. I know something about that is comforting to him, but I don't understand why.

He comes to retrieve me from underneath the Keurig. His last girlfriend criticized him for using a Keurig. She said if she ever moved in, she’d get rid of it, because it was bad for the environment, but then she never moved in, and then she stopped coming over altogether. I didn’t miss her. Her fingernails were too long, and one time, when she was pulling me out of the dishwasher pretending to help out around the apartment, she nearly dropped me on the kitchen floor. I could have broken. He never knew that happened, and I couldn’t tell him, because I can’t talk. I know he would have been so upset if I had broken. He uses other mugs on other days of the week, but I know it’s not the same for him. None of them can hold as much coffee as I do, and none of them are as wide. When his hands wrap around me, I know I’m providing a service for him that none of them can offer. My handle is essentially decorative. That’s how wide I am. When he remembers to retrieve me before the liquid has totally cooled, I know he loves the way the warmth radiates through my sides onto his palms and fingers. He leans over me and inhales the scent of my contribution.

Then, he pours liquid creamer into me.

He likes three kinds of liquid creamers, but there’s never any rhyme or reason to which one he uses on any given day. This is why I’ve gotten to experience all three kinds--Caramel Cookie, Birthday Cake, and Cherry Churro. I like Birthday Cake the best, because I’ve never had a birthday. I was manufactured several years ago and sold shortly thereafter. The man I was sold to never used me. I was kept in a cupboard that was never opened. I lived in a house that didn’t seem to have any living in it at all from what I could tell. One day, a miracle. The cupboard door opened, but the man in front of me was not the man who had purchased me. This was a new man. A man who seemed to have inherited me and all my brethren. He looked at me. I was taken out of the cupboard.

It was a Monday.

The Birthday Cake creamer feels expansive against my sides. It cools slowly, and with intention. Its flavor permeates, but doesn’t intrude. It is celebratory. Even the packaging on its side is bright and jubilant. I am always happy when he pulls it out of the fridge. The girlfriend who used to be here sometimes, but never moved in, would comment on how expensive the Birthday Cake creamer was, and that just showed me that she didn’t understand him. How can you put a price on the perfect creamer? How can you use a mug the way she did? One time…

I don’t like to think about it.

What I’ll say is that one time she used me for hot chocolate. I am not a hot chocolate mug. I am a coffee mug. The disrespect I felt in that moment was overwhelming. I wanted to explode in her hands. I wanted shards of myself to lodge themselves all the way up her arms. I wanted her to feel the way I felt as the little marshmallows were dissolving inside me. When she was done slurping up her sugary milk, she dumped me in the sink without even rinsing me out. I thought I felt a crack form near my handle, but luckily, I was mistaken.

The last time I saw her, she was yelling at him. Calling him names. Being just like the customers he has to tend to every day. He brought me into the kitchen and carefully rinsed me out and then placed me in the dishwasher the way you’re supposed to. I have no reason to go into the sink. It’s just biding time until I make my way to the dishwasher. Just put me in the dishwasher. She was squawking at him the entire time. I heard him go back into his office where she had planted herself. Barking questions at him about his future and when he would find a better job.

A moment later the questions stopped.

Later that night, he ran the dishwasher. I never saw the girlfriend again. Good riddance. I hate the taste of hot chocolate. There’s always a bitterness to it that takes you by surprise. Not like coffee. Coffee is meant to be bitter. You taste the bitterness, and you understand that the coffee is just doing its job. You’re grateful for it.

You begin to wish everyday was Monday.

He brings me into the office and places me on his desk. His headset goes on. I hear a man’s voice say--I’ve been on hold for an hour. What is wrong with you people?

He apologizes to the man and I notice him toeing a spot on the carpet by his desk. A spot about as wide as I am that darkens the carpet slightly. He runs his bare feet over the spot, but he doesn’t miss a word of the call.

“Tell me, sir,” he says, “Is the monitor going off and on, or is it just off entirely?”

He brings me up to his nose and takes a deep hit of my aroma. I know the aroma really isn’t mine. It belongs to what I’m containing. I still take pride in it. He wraps his hands around me and continues to ask the man about the broken monitor.

I wish I could bring warmth from his hands, up to his elbows, over his shoulders, and down his body all the way to his bare feet.

I wish I were more than I am and also not any different.

Every week, he chooses me. He opens the door, sees me, and decides that it’s me yet again. No matter how late for work he is, he takes a second, and he reads the words painted on my side out loud every week as though he’s performing a ritual. I heard him say--

“Mondays. Right?”

And I think to myself--

Yes, that’s right.