Coffee. For so  many, many people in this world, it is their lifeblood, the spark in their eye, the bounce in their step. It is all things wonderful and beautiful in the world in liquid form.

But not for me.

I’m never liked the taste of coffee. It’s bitter and tastes like I’m chewing tree bark. The concept of drinking coffee for the taste makes about as much sense to me as sitting in a locker room for the fragrance or smashing oneself in the face for the pleasant sensation. And I know that (supposedly) just like beer, it’s an acquired taste that you’ll learn to like as an adult. I acquired a taste for beer. (Boy howdy, did I!) I have not acquired a taste for coffee.

But my disdain for coffee was more than about just the taste. For me, the need for coffee was a sign of weakness in a person. In high school, I woke up every morning at 4:45am, often after less than 5 hours of sleep, and managed to get about of bed and going without caffeine. In college, I looked at my peers, many with a physical dependence on caffeine, and smugly announced, “I never drink coffee. All I need in the morning is my orange juice and I’m good to go.” And working early morning load ins I watched follow stagehands stumble through the morning incoherently, unable to function at full capacity, until 11:00 break when the coffee and donuts showed up, and felt superior. In my eyes, if you needed coffee to get going in the morning that just meant that you didn’t have the strength or willpower to wake yourself up. Coffee was for the weak.

But things have changed. Slowly at first, so I hardly noticed that anything had changed at all, but they did.

It started with caramel iced lattes. Once in a while, and only if I had to get up for work earlier than 7am. The caffeine helped get me through my 40 minute commute, but it was more about allowing myself a treat and giving myself something to look forward to. I may have had to wake up at 4am, but goddamnit at least I was going to get to drink something that had caramel in it!

Then came the iced coffee with a shot of caramel and skim milk. A riff on the latte, really, but with less calories. Which also meant a stronger coffee taste. This acclimated me slowly to the taste; I still didn’t like it, but I could tolerate it. This tolerance opened the door for hot lattes, hot caramel coffees, and cafe au lait. Each drink a little stronger than the last, my tolerance for the taste built slowly, all in the name of enough caffeine to get through those painfully early mornings.

Painfully early mornings that have grown more and more frequent. No longer once every month or two, these mornings have been coming at least once a week, if not more. And there’s no grace period where I get to come in and spend the first half-an-hour or so to sit and stare at a computer screen; no, I have to drop my shit and head down to the loading dock and unload a 24′ truck full of gear. It’s hit the ground running, balls to the wall, let’s do this shit!

Which is how I found myself the other morning standing backstage, holding a coffee, and saying, “What the fuck, this shit is weak. Lame.”

Let’s just say that enough desperate times calling for desperate measures will cause those measures to seem less desperate. And enough long sleep-deprived days have driven me to crave the caffeine I once scorned. I know coffee isn’t the answer. That the real answer is enough sleep, regular meals, and plenty of water, but in a world where those things are a luxury I’ve found that caffeine is a workable substitute for any of the three.

All of a sudden, I’m prowling around backstage to see if anyone has made coffee, and if I can swipe a cup. I’m bugging Kyle to let us take a 15 so we can go downstairs to the coffee shop. I actually have an opinion about what dairy tastes best and know how much shit to put in my coffee to make to taste okay. I still don’t like the taste of the stuff; with a metric ass-ton of dairy and sweetener it’s tolerable, verging on “not bad.” But I like the way it seems to make my blood pump a little more briskly and my synapses fire a little quicker, so I’ll gladly drink the vile cup of liquid weakness.

But just because I’m drinking coffee at work doesn’t mean I’m like the rest of the addicts. We don’t own a coffee maker, and at home I only drink tea. And at work I don’t need coffee, I just like it.

Besides, I can quit whenever I want to.

(I just don’t want to.)

So, after the epic failure of last weeks’s Project Ridiculous (and subsequential decollation of my hair,) I decided to hold off on planning a challenge for this week. Not that I wasn’t still going to do something terrifying this week. I just didn’t want to necessarily plan anything. I’d leave it up to the universe to give me an opportunity to step up.

And damn if the universe didn’t give me a doozy. It presented me with a fear that I hadn’t even acknowledged yet: the fear of sitting at the bar by myself without looking at my phone.

It was Wednesday, and once again, Kyle and I were skiing. Well, trying to, anyway. With the temperature up around 40 and intermittent rain the conditions were complete and absolute shit. We knew that this was likely going to be the case, but with season passes we figured it didn’t cost us anything but the gas. So we made a go at it. And failed miserably at it. It was like skiing through mashed potatoes. I actually felt my body travel faster than my skis on more than one occasion because the snow just grabbed my skis and wouldn’t let go. After five runs, I was ready to call it a day.

Kyle, on the other hand, had something to prove was holding out faith for the far side of the mountain and wanted to give it a go. I was having none of it, so I told him to go ahead and do a run and I would meet him inside. He agreed, and we split. I went inside, peeled off my many wet layers, packed up my gear, and waited a bit to see if Kyle would appear. But after 20 minutes, I’d had enough; the lodge smelled like wet dog, the cafeteria chair was hurting my ass, and a person can only disappoint the Cut the Rope monster for so long. I didn’t know how much longer Kyle would be out; some runs can take as long as 20 minutes to get to the bottom, and he might have decided to go more than once. And there’s a lovely bar at the end of the lodge that has Shock Top on draught…

So I left him a voice mail that said, “Hi honey! I’m at the bar!” And I went to the bar.

It was empty when I walked in, save for the two bartenders who were re-stocking the bar. (It was 2:00 in the afternoon, after all.) I sat down at a spot at the bar where I could see the door and also have a view of the bottom of Kyle’s run, and ordered myself a Shock Top. Then I did what every single person human being who finds themselves sitting alone does: I pulled out my phone. Not that I had anything I needed to do on my phone; cell service is practically nonexistent at the base of the mountain, so it’s not like I could check my email or Twitter. I just wanted to look like I was important and not feel awkward sitting alone.

As I started to pull my phone out of my pocket, (no small feat when it’s in the deep, tight, zippered pocket of my ski pants,) I caught that scared, unsure feeling in my throat and realized what I was doing. I was trying to protect myself from feeling afraid to be sitting at the bar alone. Something about looking around the bar and potentially making eye contact with people is to acknowledge that I am alone, which is frightening. But sitting there playing with my phone says that I’m too busy to bothered by anyone else; it’s safe. I know I’m not alone in feeling this way; let (s)he who has never pretended to text in an elevator or sitting alone at lunch huck first squirrel. But this adventure is supposed to be about getting outside of my comfort zone, right?

So I put my phone back in my pocket. I sat at the bar, alone, with my Shock Top.

It didn’t kill me. That is true. It was, however, rather awkward. The bartenders were busy and didn’t really seem in the move for conversation, so we all did each other the kindness of not making eye contact. There were two tvs on, but one was tuned to ESPN without sound and the other had on the Weather Channel, so it was hard to pretend that I was engrossed in either. Mostly I just looked around at the empty bar and out the window at skiers paddling for the gondolas, and tried very hard to act nonchalant, like I chill alone at bars all the time.

After 20 minutes or so people started trickling in. Surprisingly, this eased some of the tension. It broke that almost silence and took the imaginary focus off me and my beer. Surprisingly, I relaxed. An older man, probably early 50’s, approached me with a smile and asked me what beer I was drinking.

Unfortunately for him, he walked into the bar about three steps ahead of Kyle. I thought this might deter him, and even tried to let him save his pride by pretending I hadn’t heard. Luckily, his pride apparently didn’t need saving because he not only repeated his question but proceeded to chat with the both of us for a while. We stayed a while after he left, chatting with the bartender and razzing a drunk guy for saying that he’d gone down a run that was a “blue round one.” And then we went home.

Honestly guys, it wasn’t that bad. Awkward, yes, but I think that’s because it’s not something I’ve ever done before. Usually if I’m sitting at a table alone, even if someone will be joining me shortly, I immediately pull out my phone, but it was kind-of exciting to leave myself open to the world. I’m possibly going skiing by myself on Monday, and I may even take this a step further and eat lunch without a book. Because who knows who else might find their way into my world!

And because that shit didn’t kill me. I know, who knew?

“Hey, Steph! Good to see you, how ya been?”

Walking towards me is a mid-thirties guy dressed in jeans and a tshirt, and sporting multiple tattoos. I meet his handshake with a smile.

“Not bad, not bad. How’re you doing, sir?”

That’s what comes out of my mouth. But what’s going on in my brain is:

FUCK! How do I know this guy? Shit, I have no idea what his name is!

This happens. At work, mostly. A lot. Someone I’ve worked with in the past, usually many months or a year ago, clearly remembers me, and I have no clue who they are. It’s not that I don’t like them, or I didn’t enjoy working with them last time. I just don’t remember them.

It’s not just my shitty memory, either. Well, I do have a shitty memory; I’ve been known to forget road guys’ names minutes after being introduced. (That’s why I tend to call people “Sir” a lot.) But to be fair, I’m not by any means playing on a level playing field. It’s because I’m the only vagina walking around the joint. Technical theatre has long been a boy’s club. A few generations ago, women were a rarity among stagehands. There’s more and more of us diving in the trenches everyday, and a chick carrying a wrench is no longer an anomaly, but we’re still definitely the minority. And though I have a few sister techs who work overhire for larger shows, I’m the only woman who’s there for every show. Which means that I stand out from the rest of the crew, and often, from other crews in other spaces. They may not remember Kyle the production stage manager or Tom the flyman, but they usually remember the lighting chick. Everyone remembers the one with the vagina.

I, on the other hand, work with a bunch of dudes. Usually in their 30’s or 40’s, they’re all (usually) dressed in casual work clothes, they all (usually) have tattoos, they all (usually) have a wicked and dirty sense of humor, and they all (usually) look like they need more sleep and a drink. They’re also all (usually) great guys who work hard, kick ass at what they do, and are great to work with, and I’d gladly have a beer with (most) any one of them. But when I only work with them for one day once a year (or even less!) I don’t get to know them very well. And when I work with hundreds of these great guys every year, their distinguishing features tend to blur together.

Which leaves me scrambling to sort them out in my brain, trying to place them in  my memory. Sometimes it takes me a few minutes, someone calling their name or seeing the equipment they carry, for the light bulb to snap on and my mind to scream,

Oh! Right! That’s that guy!

And then I stare at him hard, trying to scratch his face on my brain. I say his name and his company or affiliation to myself over and over. And I swear that I will never forget his name again. After all, he’s so fucking cool to work with, and it would be super sweet to work with him again, maybe even in a freelance capacity! And my brain hangs onto his information best it can, until next year when it finds itself once again saying,

FUCK! How do I know this guy? Shit, I have no idea what his name is!

So here’s to you, guys I can never remember. You road dogs, you camera guys, you maintenance men. My respect for you is boundless. I’m glad to know you and thrilled to work with you.

I just can’t fucking remember you.