Every year, beginning shortly after the Fall Equinox, just as Christian girls begin to don layered scarves in plaid print and Nordstrom ankle booties, cafes nationwide unveil an exclusive offering of autumnal coffee drinks. Starbucks, for example, serves its famed, ultra-sweet Pumpkin Spice Latte.
It’s a wholesome time, and a devilish time. The trees shed their leaves. The robins prepare for their V-flight formation to the south. And, because climate change is no longer a reality we can escape, we randomly get 80-degree days before the inevitable cold snap that introduces November. We eat whole turkeys and act as if the Indigenous Peoples of this stolen, occupied land were happily breaking bread alongside their Pilgrim conquerors. And, somewhere, in a bubble bath, Mariah Carey is washing her face with some of that $20 million salary she gets for writing the number-one original Christmas song the world over.
If Christian girlies who love the fall season truly knew and embraced that their bescarved, twinkly-eyed glee comes at the behest of many who suffered brutal deaths, or that their Target scarves were forcibly made by Indonesian children for less than a dollar a day, would they smile so big when sipping those tasty PSLs?
This is not an indictment of the seasonal drinks, but an imaginative retelling of how said drinks elicit not only this kind of festive cheer but sense memories, and perhaps it all connects to desires of love and belonging. Or, just plain desire. Get in where you fit in. Fall, if you haven’t heard, is also what the kids call cuffing season. And that’s what I’m focusing on. Comfort wherever you can find it, whether it comes in a warm drink or in a lover that feels like a warm drink. So, I tried a few of these autumnal drink variations around New York city, and I have stories to tell. You’ll see!
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$8.89 pumpkin pie latte from Maman – 25th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue.
One part frothy cream
A careless dash of pumpkin pie spice on top
One part dry and unseasoned whatever- you- have that could pass off as coffee
It was an unseasonably warm day for this expensive-ass drink. There was also $1 extra charged for the oatmilk. And, the grumpy barista, a tall, bearded man who spoke with an uncharming blend of sarcasm and apathy, watched as I hesitantly pressed the default $1 tip button on the Square card machine. (I hate when they do that.) I was mid-armpit sniff when the grumpy barista deadnamed me: I told him my name was Michelle, and I’m pretty sure he called out “Michael” on purpose as he handed me a drink that tasted like the disdain and lovelessness I presume lives in his heart.
I had just come from dance class, hip-hop, if you must know, my body still covered in dew from rehearsing full-out choreo for 30 minutes straight. I was due to have sex after. The man knew I’d be coming over sweaty, and he insisted that I not shower.
I took a sip. The coffee was bitter, leaving a chalky aftertaste in my mouth, and yet the whole drink was too milky.
Meanwhile, the man I was due to have sex with in approximately twenty minutes wanted me to suck his dick. I asked to see a picture of said dick. He’d already been avoidant enough, messaging me from a blank profile on Grindr, no details in his bio, and his texts carried a perfume of shame–perhaps the perfect compliment to the dirty, milky chalk now coating my tongue.
“It’s five inches hard, if that’s okay,” he said, right before he sent it. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a photo that disappeared after five seconds of viewing. It was pale pink with an interesting curve with ridges along the tip, surprising for a penis that my left thumb seemed to outsize. A dirty, bright-pink towel laid on the floor beneath his brandished member. I took a screenshot and texted a friend.
“What do I do?”
My friend: “Let me see the problem.”
I sent the problem.
(….)
(….)
(….)
I put my phone in my pocket and had another sip of the pumpkin pie latte that I nearly spat out right in front of the grumpy barista, when my phone finally dinged.
“Well, what do you think?” said the man who wanted me to suck him off. He was down the block in a Flatiron hotel, waiting, and I could already smell his shame from the cafe.
My phone dinged again.
My friend: “Tell him you have diarrhea. Wait, that’s nasty hahaha, tell him you are sick and then block him, or say you have diarrhea and block him. You’ll never see him. Does he live in New York?”
He was visiting from West Virginia, oddly, and I gathered from our conversation that he worked in tech.
“I have diarrhea I’m so sorry omg i feel so bad,” I texted the man who wanted me to blow his trumpet with a mouth full of dry chalky dirt and then I blocked him on every app and then I asked the grumpy barista for a glass of ice water. He gave me tap water with no ice.
***
$7.76 Fig balsamic latte from Joe Coffee on 13th Street between Broadway and 5th Avenue.
No fig
All lies
Too much balsamic flavor
Cold, gloopy milk that dribbles down your chin.
This drink tastes like an experience I had as I was rushing to my first class of the day, a class that closely examines America’s mass incarceration system. I was dressed impeccably in layers–button down, blazer, and silk scarf– but a glance in the mirror revealed my plum lipstick had smeared, a spot of it blotching my chin. I thought about leaving it.
I was exhausted and rundown. The night before, I was up with one of my regulars. We met months ago on the street, when I was having a vanilla ice cream cone. I wore daisy dukes, and the ice cream dribbled down my exposed thighs. He stared a while at the dribble before he licked his lips and asked for my number. I met him at a downtown apartment his twin brother lived in. (His twin brother worked a late security job and wasn’t home.)
He texted me at midnight as I wrapped an episode of Apple TV’s The Morning Show. An hour or so later, I was peddling on a Citibike to our designated spot. When I walked in, I was trying to look into his soft brown eyes, which seemed trained on my thighs again the way they were when we met. He looked and touched everywhere but my face.
There was something sweet about the way he sprayed the bed with Febreze before I arrived; something sweet about the way he didn’t put his hands on the back of my neck when I went down on him; something sweet about the way he put a pillow under my backside to enter me as my legs wrapped around him, as I squeezed his thick biceps between my thumb and forefinger like a burger I wanted to take a bite out of.
I just wished he’d kiss me, fully, deeply. As if he liked me. Did my breath stink? I had like 17 mints and three gargles of mouthwash before I came over, I should’ve tasted like a bushel of raw peppermint, freshly plucked.
Did his breath stink?
Maybe that was it.
There was nothing sweet about the way he told me, as I was getting dressed to head out into the rain, not to “tell anyone about us meeting.”
***
$6.89 Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks (literally any of them).
Just enough pumpkin
Just enough spice
A creamy blend of coffee and oat milk
Whipped foam on top
And a dollop of whipped cream, drizzled in liquid caramel
I met up with someone visiting from France who I might never see again. We met in a park one evening and we drank Pumpkin Spice Lattes. I don’t know if Starbucks is the originator of seasonal coffee, but I know that the saccharine way they taste is more closely aligned with my sense of joy than anything else I’ve tried this fall. I remember how the flavor of them went down that night as easily as this man’s sloppy wet kisses.
We hailed a yellow cab and made our way uptown to his hotel on the Upper West Side. We watched a girl sing on an MTV re-run of the VMAs. We talked for hours and listened to each other’s songs. I played guitar, he played jazz. We laid in his queen-sized bed and I asked him to give me a hickey. He did.
We went for a walk, and he held my hand. He said I was a pretty girl, and that anyone who would make me feel otherwise was a dick. Older white ladies caught sight of my hickey and gasped. He was in town for a week, and we had plans to meet again.
He canceled them last-minute to go and record a new song. I haven’t had a pumpkin spice latte since.