Why Coffee is the Vampire of Hot Drinks.

I have a bit of a love-hate thing going on with coffee. On an unrelated note, I also have a bit of a love-hate thing going on with vampires. But as nothing is completely unrelated when you are searching for a topic about which to write, I allowed these two seemingly random facts to commingle in my thoughts and came up with what I am certain is a fairly brilliant conclusion (or at least more brilliant than my alternative topic of: What I Ate For Lunch Today). And that conclusion is that coffee is the vampire of hot drinks.

To help you understand my shiny new hypothesis, let me first explain my feelings on both the subjects in question. My love-hate for coffee is fairly straight-forward: Love the smell, hate the taste. The only kind of coffee I can stomach is one to which obscene amounts of chocolate and/or milk & sugar have been added, giving it the taste of coffee ice cream. Which, incidentally, I think delivers much more accurately on the promises made by its smell.

As for my love-hate with vampires, well, on that score, I defer to the immortal words of Joan Jett: I hate myself for loving them. Disclaimer: As will become painfully obvious in the paragraphs to follow, almost everything I know about vampires I learned from reading Twilight and Charlaine Harris’s Sookie books.

Here is my rationale for why coffee and vampires are kindred spirits of the night.

Coffee and Vampires Both…

1.    Are Masters of Seduction.

Vampires take the form of ultra-beautiful, witty, sexy, and charming creatures- all to entice and draw their prey near. But they have nothing on coffee when it comes to seduction. The smell of freshly brewed coffee is intoxicating in its own right. It is at once strong and sweet, swarthy and verdant, rich and luscious.  Now, I hate the taste of coffee like poison, but that smell gets me every time. I always think that this time it’s gonna be different -better – this time the taste will match that heavenly smell. I pour myself a cup, like a moth to a flame, only to be bitten by the nasty dark liquid within. It’s a cruel, soul-sucking letdown. And who else delivers cruel, soul-sucking punishments? Yep. You guessed it. Vampires.

2.    Have Serious Bite.

I know that some of you reading this will disagree, but for me taking a sip of black coffee is like having my tongue scrapped with a metal instrument dipped in a combination of rubbing alcohol and pure vanilla extract. Bitter in the extreme. And while I can’t be 100% certain, I truly believe that being bitten by a vampire would be a more pleasant experience. At least Sookie seems to enjoy it.

3.    Have Celebrity Status.

Coffee and vampires have been around forever, but only relatively recently have both been elevated to legendary pop culture status. These days, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a designer coffee shop or a vampire book/movie/tv show/dvd/poster/t-shirt/anything-else-that-can-be-screen-printed-with-Robert-Pattinson’s-face-on-it.

4.    Seek Metamorphosis.

Both coffee and vampires strive to make converts out of their victims. Vampires feed off people’s life-force in order to add them to their blood-thirsty ranks. Coffee companies have a similar goal. Read the above sentence again, replacing ‘Vampires’ with ‘coffee companies,’ ‘life-force’ with ‘hard-earned money,’ and  ‘blood’ with ‘macchiato.’ I think you will see the undeniable symmetry.

5.    Keep You Up All Night.

Self-explanatory. (And don’t try to talk to me about decaf. I’m pretty sure “decaf” is a sham. I’ve always secretly believed that the word decaffeinated must be an anagram in some ancient language for “See you at 3am, sucker.”)

6.    Leave You Feeling Drained.

While I’ve never personally been sucked dry by an unholy creature of the night, I can only imagine the feeling is similar to what I feel like about two and a half hours post venti mocha latte: Drained, tired, irritable… and much to my dismay, hungry for more.