I can testify to my brother Michael's obsession with oil slick coffee. I didn't know this about him until we started to do road trips with him within the last five years. We're on the same page about many, many things, politics, dinosaur bones, and thrift shops to name a few, but not when it comes to coffee, my fabbies. Not at all.
Still, when you read his account about the many challenges of living La Vida Road-a, maybe you can understand why the oil slick coffee is a thing. Read his account below, along with some musings about writing.
February 4, ‘26
I am lying in my motel room bed in Port St. Lucie. It is late morning. At the moment I am conversing with myself, reviewing elements of my life’s trek (an apt synonym for “journey,” an oft used term of which I have grown weary and suspicious). What has caught my attention and will soon drive me out of bed in the direction of the in-room coffee maker is the elephant in the room directly above me. Again. Just like last night. I’ll get back to Mr. Big but I must first address the coffee maker issue.
I don’t drink my a.m. brew for the caffeine. I’m naturally pretty wired even in the morning. I don’t drink multiple cups. Just the same one. For hours. My studio and most of the motel rooms I occupy possess microwaves, handy because if one doesn’t drink all the Java in a compact period of time it becomes cold and requires re-heating. No part of my understanding of coffee includes the word “cold.” (Find the six inch thick Merriam Webster Dictionary you inherited from your great grandparents, published back in 1880. Look for the word cold in the definition. It is nowhere to be found. Get it?). So I respect and appreciate the microzaps in my life. Fresh brewed coffee is too hot to drink. There’s no joy in singeing the hair on my tongue. But, you say, In Room Coffee? From that lame ass countertop contraption with those little packets of CINY (Coffee In Name Only)? Heresy!
Many motels these days offer a Continental Breakfast (whatever that means) as a perk of occupancy. Their coffee is invariably concocted from some commercial grade grind such as Folgers or perhaps Boyd’s. Not great but perfectly adequate for a connoisseur such as myself who is absolutely content with what the local gas station serves. Definition: Coffee. “Black water with an oil slick and bubbles.” Do we understand each other?
On the day of my arrival here I filled my cup with the motel coffee from their dispenser. The moment it hit my tongue I wondered what the coroner would report as my cause of death. I thought it through and arrived at a plausible conclusion: the oil slick on the surface of my coffee was no doubt the work of an exterminator who had been treating the area for ants, or perhaps coating a body of standing liquid with an oily solution intended to prevent mosquito larvae from hatching. I went to the sink and spit it out. In Room Coffee, I knew in that moment, would be just fine. Better than fine. A palliative.
Climbing out of bed and searching for my underwear on the way to the coffee maker I looked up at the ceiling for any signs of impending collapse in the area where Mr. Big was prowling. To my relief no plaster was flaking down upon me. Not in the moment, at least. Not last night when I was attempting to drift off to sleep and thankfully not now. But was this simply a matter of not if but when? He piqued my imagination.
Much of my writing involves third person accounts of fictional characters. I’m not a short order cook. A story properly told is not well served by bones alone. I am not able to treat people who visit my imagination in any cursory way, largely because I’ve known or encountered or observed them in one context or another in my life. To write about anyone in the third person. I need to have had some first person contact with them - perhaps to have worked with or around them or encountered them. I habitually watch people. Especially interactions between people. I can’t help but wonder who I am watching. I talk to strangers, after which they don’t seem so strange to me. Fiction is, if nothing else, an act of projection. Projection involves experience and, often as not, judgement - both quite normal human enterprises.
It is said, I believe correctly, that one does not become fluent conversationally in a learned language until one has evolved from converting words and syntax from one’s native language to thinking in the new one. I believe this is true as well of good descriptive writing. One doesn’t need to know the anal little clerk behind the convenience store counter, demanding proof of age from a seventy four year old man (who could be his grandfather) as a precondition to purchasing a beer. His propensity for ignoring common sense in the interest of controlling the interaction speaks of something. But of what? No matter. Imagination can fill in the blanks. Imagination, as it turns out, is a necessary (albeit not a sufficient) ingredient of fiction.
Actors who are truly “in character” are not at that point actively discussing with themselves what that character might say or do in a given situation. In the moment, they have become the character - the absorption has already occurred. The point here is that we observe and project. So if the seventy four year old guy (a real person I worked with at the newspaper when I was nineteen and he was in his forties) has a case of the ass for close supervision and pointless rules it’s not a stretch to imagine his encounter with the store clerk. Newsflash: it won’t be positive. If I’m writing, he’s the one I’m interested in. He’s easily aggravated - easily offended. He’s a flashpoint guy. He’s going to go off from time to time. The clerk just happens to be the trigger. But you know, he’s a person too. I need to take a look at him. Their relationship in the story is arguably symbiotic from the standpoint of character development. But the anal clerk is more peripheral. He won’t get much ink. Incidentally, the clerk is easy. We see guys like him all the time. We rarely befriend them.
Back at the motel I found myself in a situation I’d experienced before. Sometimes it’s kids jumping off the bed in the room whose floor is my ceiling. Sometimes teenage boys horsing around. And two years or so ago it was this guy, Mr. Big, (or someone like him) at a motel in Chicago. At about 11:30 p.m. last night he had arrived, the door had closed and the thumping had begun. Periodic and dense, like a sack of lead shot or a dead hammer. I turned on my lamp and read for a short time. No dice. He wasn’t going to bed. He was pacing (perhaps lumbering is a better word) back and forth in his room. He walked to one side of the room, stopped, and walked back - rhythmic and relentless. I turned on the TV. Surely he would retire soon. Nope. At just after midnight I called the front desk and explained the problem. Shortly thereafter I heard a phone ring. Probably his phone. I heard springs whining. He had gotten in bed. I closed my eyes to images of the Michelin Man, which evaporated when he began snoring.
I don’t know how many hours, actually, I slept. I do know I’m still tired. If I don’t find my underwear soon I’m going to just brew up a cup and climb back in bed with it. Mr. Big needs to move along to the next town today. His bed needs relief. I need to catch up on some Z’s.
I am lying in my motel room bed in Port St. Lucie. It is late morning. At the moment I am conversing with myself, reviewing elements of my life’s trek (an apt synonym for “journey,” an oft used term of which I have grown weary and suspicious). What has caught my attention and will soon drive me out of bed in the direction of the in-room coffee maker is the elephant in the room directly above me. Again. Just like last night. I’ll get back to Mr. Big but I must first address the coffee maker issue.
I don’t drink my a.m. brew for the caffeine. I’m naturally pretty wired even in the morning. I don’t drink multiple cups. Just the same one. For hours. My studio and most of the motel rooms I occupy possess microwaves, handy because if one doesn’t drink all the Java in a compact period of time it becomes cold and requires re-heating. No part of my understanding of coffee includes the word “cold.” (Find the six inch thick Merriam Webster Dictionary you inherited from your great grandparents, published back in 1880. Look for the word cold in the definition. It is nowhere to be found. Get it?). So I respect and appreciate the microzaps in my life. Fresh brewed coffee is too hot to drink. There’s no joy in singeing the hair on my tongue. But, you say, In Room Coffee? From that lame ass countertop contraption with those little packets of CINY (Coffee In Name Only)? Heresy!
Many motels these days offer a Continental Breakfast (whatever that means) as a perk of occupancy. Their coffee is invariably concocted from some commercial grade grind such as Folgers or perhaps Boyd’s. Not great but perfectly adequate for a connoisseur such as myself who is absolutely content with what the local gas station serves. Definition: Coffee. “Black water with an oil slick and bubbles.” Do we understand each other?
On the day of my arrival here I filled my cup with the motel coffee from their dispenser. The moment it hit my tongue I wondered what the coroner would report as my cause of death. I thought it through and arrived at a plausible conclusion: the oil slick on the surface of my coffee was no doubt the work of an exterminator who had been treating the area for ants, or perhaps coating a body of standing liquid with an oily solution intended to prevent mosquito larvae from hatching. I went to the sink and spit it out. In Room Coffee, I knew in that moment, would be just fine. Better than fine. A palliative.
Climbing out of bed and searching for my underwear on the way to the coffee maker I looked up at the ceiling for any signs of impending collapse in the area where Mr. Big was prowling. To my relief no plaster was flaking down upon me. Not in the moment, at least. Not last night when I was attempting to drift off to sleep and thankfully not now. But was this simply a matter of not if but when? He piqued my imagination.
Much of my writing involves third person accounts of fictional characters. I’m not a short order cook. A story properly told is not well served by bones alone. I am not able to treat people who visit my imagination in any cursory way, largely because I’ve known or encountered or observed them in one context or another in my life. To write about anyone in the third person. I need to have had some first person contact with them - perhaps to have worked with or around them or encountered them. I habitually watch people. Especially interactions between people. I can’t help but wonder who I am watching. I talk to strangers, after which they don’t seem so strange to me. Fiction is, if nothing else, an act of projection. Projection involves experience and, often as not, judgement - both quite normal human enterprises.
It is said, I believe correctly, that one does not become fluent conversationally in a learned language until one has evolved from converting words and syntax from one’s native language to thinking in the new one. I believe this is true as well of good descriptive writing. One doesn’t need to know the anal little clerk behind the convenience store counter, demanding proof of age from a seventy four year old man (who could be his grandfather) as a precondition to purchasing a beer. His propensity for ignoring common sense in the interest of controlling the interaction speaks of something. But of what? No matter. Imagination can fill in the blanks. Imagination, as it turns out, is a necessary (albeit not a sufficient) ingredient of fiction.
Actors who are truly “in character” are not at that point actively discussing with themselves what that character might say or do in a given situation. In the moment, they have become the character - the absorption has already occurred. The point here is that we observe and project. So if the seventy four year old guy (a real person I worked with at the newspaper when I was nineteen and he was in his forties) has a case of the ass for close supervision and pointless rules it’s not a stretch to imagine his encounter with the store clerk. Newsflash: it won’t be positive. If I’m writing, he’s the one I’m interested in. He’s easily aggravated - easily offended. He’s a flashpoint guy. He’s going to go off from time to time. The clerk just happens to be the trigger. But you know, he’s a person too. I need to take a look at him. Their relationship in the story is arguably symbiotic from the standpoint of character development. But the anal clerk is more peripheral. He won’t get much ink. Incidentally, the clerk is easy. We see guys like him all the time. We rarely befriend them.
Back at the motel I found myself in a situation I’d experienced before. Sometimes it’s kids jumping off the bed in the room whose floor is my ceiling. Sometimes teenage boys horsing around. And two years or so ago it was this guy, Mr. Big, (or someone like him) at a motel in Chicago. At about 11:30 p.m. last night he had arrived, the door had closed and the thumping had begun. Periodic and dense, like a sack of lead shot or a dead hammer. I turned on my lamp and read for a short time. No dice. He wasn’t going to bed. He was pacing (perhaps lumbering is a better word) back and forth in his room. He walked to one side of the room, stopped, and walked back - rhythmic and relentless. I turned on the TV. Surely he would retire soon. Nope. At just after midnight I called the front desk and explained the problem. Shortly thereafter I heard a phone ring. Probably his phone. I heard springs whining. He had gotten in bed. I closed my eyes to images of the Michelin Man, which evaporated when he began snoring.
I don’t know how many hours, actually, I slept. I do know I’m still tired. If I don’t find my underwear soon I’m going to just brew up a cup and climb back in bed with it. Mr. Big needs to move along to the next town today. His bed needs relief. I need to catch up on some Z’s.