Malcolm X was assassinated on this day in 1965.

TAKING UP DRINKING

The day before I started work at my new Spanish-teaching job, I went in to the Modern Language Department office to start familiarizing myself with the miscellaneous minutiae—bell schedules, textbook layouts, and the like—that I would eventually need to master. The day passed in hum-drum style, and when I was about to leave my boss asked me if I’d be nervous the next day.

“Not at all,” I said. “But I will get here at about 6 a.m. to hyperventilate and set up a coffee I.V.”

He laughed, which was the result I wanted.

Cut to the next day, 7:45 a.m.: I’m calmly going about my pre-teaching routine (double-checking lesson plans, straightening my tie, fiercely staring into a mirror and chanting “Break them…Break them...”) when my boss comes in.

“Hey,” he says, “I’m going to run down to the faculty dining room. Want me to bring you a cup of coffee?”

I stop chanting, return my eyebrows to their regular, non-threatening position, and smile at him. “No thanks. I actually don’t drink coffee.”

He appears slightly confused at this comment, which causes me to remember the previous day’s conversation. So I tell him that I had been kidding about the coffee I.V., and had alluded to a dependence on coffee purely for the humorous effect. We laughed a little at this, then proceeded with our respective activities.

I mention this by way of saying that I have weird—nay, not weird; let’s say “atypical”—drinking habits: I can tell you with the certainty of an AA regular that I gave up soda forever on February 17, 2003, after the dentist warned me that it was eroding my gum line. (My “forever” ban on soda lasted about a year and a half, and ended when, in desperate need of energy and the ability to fake enthusiasm about verb conjugation, I pounded a Mountain Dew in the privacy of a teacher’s lounge closet.) Additionally, I’ve never been a fan of beer, as half a glass typically renders me bloated and moody, and makes me more inclined to participate in activities that I am normally wary of—things like eating a whole pizza by myself, or watching Gilmore Girls.

Then there’s coffee. With a taste evocative of something skimmed off a parking-lot puddle and a scent that hangs over everything like the smell of a paper mill in a depressed town, I have never understood its appeal. (As a child, I thought that the smell of coffee on one’s breath was a weapon used by sadistic Sunday school teachers who wanted to be able to aromatically punch children in the face at forty paces.)

The catch these days is that, secretly, I do understand its appeal: Coming in to school on a frigid morning, do I really want to drink some ice-cold Pepsi from the faculty cooler? Or do I want something hot with just as much caffeine and potentially even more sugar? Plus—and this is something I hadn’t previously noticed—soda seems immature. Maybe it’s because everyone I work with is incredibly learned, incredibly well-dressed, and incredibly dismissive of attaining jittery energy through carbonated beverages. Or maybe it’s because pretty girls in Boston are always at Starbucks. Regardless, I have done the unthinkable: I have started drinking coffee.

I used to joke about taking up coffee. When trying to win the laughter of strangers, I would frequently say things like, “I want to lose weight, but hate going to the gym. So instead of joining the YMCA, I’ve decided to take up coffee and cigarettes.” (More discussion about coffee and cigarettes can be found in my forthcoming children’s book, Coffee and Cigarettes: How your parents are able to tolerate your existence.) But now that I’m actually using the substance on a near-daily basis, what else can happen? Am I so eager to fit in with my coworkers that if everyone at school were smoking cigarettes, I would crack open a pack of Virginia Slims and join them? How weak am I? What if I see pretty girls doing heroin? Will I start waking up in my own bathtub wearing torn jeans and unwashed flannel shirts? From where I sit, it doesn’t seem like a long journey from the occasional cup of joe to bloody syringes on the bathroom tile.

The only thing worse than discovering my own susceptibility to peer pressure is trying to hide it from my boss. He is still under the impression that I don’t drink coffee, and I don’t want to seem like the kind of guy who makes a big deal out of not enjoying something and then backslides three weeks later. I mean, I am that guy, but he doesn’t have to know it. So for now I’ll continue running to the faculty dining room before he gets to school, downing a double shot of arabica in the company of well-dressed, potentially attractive, potentially female coffee abusers, and then getting rid of any olfactory-stimulating evidence by using Listerine and, in extreme cases, knocking over a bottle of bleach in the Modern Language Department office.

I’m so relieved that even though I’ve taken up coffee, it hasn’t yet developed into a problem like it has for so many people.