Mugs

I got the mug from a show at the Corcoran. Childishly, I wanted to make a statement. I have taste, I go to museums. The mug says that I am not Number One Grandpa, or an habitué of Dunkin Donuts, or a customer of Jack Luck Chevrolet: Meeting Your Driving Needs Since 1948. My mug has snob appeal – it was bought one day after the exhibit opened. It should be numbered, like a lithograph.

It is only slightly less obnoxious than my James Joyce mug, which a friend brought me from a conference. James Joyce: Meeting Your Stream of Consciousness Needs Since 1904. Now that is one cup of java: “I go forth to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” No wonder people at work hate me.

It’s not that others don’t have impressive mugs. A friend told me about the one her son keeps at the office. “Fuck Cancer,” it says, ‘cause he did. And recently I was served coffee in what is probably one of the most sophisticated mugs in all of greater Richmond: it commemorates a speech by Mikhail Gorbachev at VCU in 1993. Since the person who offered me the mug is a gracious southern hostess, it really was a bottomless cup of perestroika.

I have a secret mug, a comfort mug, with a Peter Rabbit-like design. But it is ersatz Peter Rabbit. I bought it for a nickel in a Lutheran thrift shop. It is not elegant; it is not literate; it does not convey that I move in select circles. It is my little cup of home, and family. The me before I even drank coffee.