Barista

My first real crush was on my tennis coach John. I was eleven and even then I knew I liked older men. He drove a beat up Porsche, wore basketball shorts, and nicknamed me pornstar on the court. He made more money per hour than most of my dad's finance friends and he never graduated from highschool. He was my preteen rebellion love.
I practiced everyday and join the junior varsity tennis team to impress him. I wore matching socks and sweatbands to impress him. I served 76 miles per hour balls to impress him. I wanted him so badly.
One day his girlfriend walked on the court wearing a full length mink coat. She was mallified gorgeous with juicy red lips and big overdone hair. What did he see in trash? I aimed balls at her head as she would walk off the court. The more I hated her, the harder I played. Then one day I saw her kiss him and I ran home to cry. It was then I dropped tennis altogether. He was my everything-- until New Kids on the Block came along.
I haven’t thought about John in decades, until one day when I was taking my first lesson as a barista at Fuel Coffee at IFC. Gabe, the grand master of ceremony was giving me a show on how to make the perfect cup. He was coaching me how to grip a portafilter, the handle that attaches to semi-automatic and piston-driven espresso machines. “Curl your fingers around the handle and place your thumb here for control.” We load fresh grounds into the portafilter then pack it evenly with a stomper. “The weight comes from the shoulder with a slightly bent, but don’t lock the arm.” As he was teaching me the elements of a great espresso: Heat, water (meticulatiously filtered water)and pressure, I had a realisation: I have no idea what a perfect brew would look or taste like. At what point do I tell him I’m not a coffee person?
Fuel, like all aficionados, is a bit Nazi-ish about quality control. Each morning the grounds and pull need to be adjusted to the miniscule change in the air. Now I can understand this Nazi behaviour. I share the same degree of obessiveness when it comes to tea, and at the moment that is Taiwanese golden oolong. They let me go through 55 bump-grind-pulling bases before getting the perfect cup. And I used up a few cartons of milk to get something that resembled a froth, not foam, in the jug. In a typical four week training session, each student could use more than 24 litres of milk before perfection. And what a perfect froth looks like is an even bodied milk, creamy, and pours in thick splitting the espresso that’s not-too-thin, not-too-thick with crema on top , but never cap the mixture with foam. Real barista don’t do that kind of nonsense.
A loud slurp with the teaspoon draws in the flavours of cardamom and peppercorns. The coffee beans they use is grown in Coorg, India, on an old estate near spice plants. And like a sauvignon grape, it takes on the flavours of its surrounding.
As I was practicing my new craft, I could imagine myself doing this. I fantasised about quitting my day job to work behind the coffee bar where I could play with the Ferrari of espresso maker s the “La Marzocco” handmade in Florence, Italy, all day long.

Here’s another thing I learnt—freshly roasted coffee is not a good thing. Coffee, according to these guys, should use used the day after roasting, and up to two weeks later, so the flavours have time to settle.
To be a journalist is to bear witness, and I am watching a master at work; two taps, a pull, a wash, a dry, an adjustment, a grind, a stamp, a spank, a lock, a press, then magic. It’s all style and Gabe makes the process look effortless. Even when Roger Federer is tripping over himself on a grass court, he looks like he is posing for page one doing it. Gabe says: “it’s all a confidence game.”
By invitation, I had invited the men of Angie’s past to come by for a coffee. This was spear-headed by guilt for never having been able to offer them a brew in the morning, mostly because I didn’t know how. But that was then.
I was ecstatic to see them after a long silence; after all our obstacles, after all the bullshit, standing in this coffee bar, I knew we were cool. Gabe, sensing the change in the air, let me take my break. I made them my best brew, almost to the exacting degree taught, Angie’s perfect one-day training espresso. Sitting at the counter we sensed we’ve changed but we're still the same, so far from where we've been before. It’s a miracle that we can sit and sip today.