In pre-Harvard days, I only drank coffee after Sunday brunch at my grandparents' house. My mother would pour me half a cup of coffee, half a cup of cream, and dump in five tablespoons of sugar.

But this was Harvard and no one put five tablespoons of sugar into anything. Ever.

I still feel no affiliation with the coffee generation. Clearly, I am not a natural member of this group. When the chips are down and the four papers are due in 10 hours, my inclination is to turn away from the Maxwell House toward the Diet Coke.

But right from the start of freshman year, my present roommate, well-versed in Cambridge, sophistication, and Joyce, taught me what I already intuitively knew. If I really wanted to be grownup, I would have to drink coffee. Often.

And I would have to like it. Or at least pretend to.

Thus began a series of outings. She liked to try different cafes around the square. I did too, but when it was my job to decide where we would go, I always chose Cafe Algiers because it was the only one whose name I could pronounce correctly.

We began to frequent Algiers. In my All-American mind, Algiers and coffee and smoke and foreign languages and the Middle East became all mixed up. Algiers was a world I had never known. I knew my mother would hate this smoke-filled cafe, with dim lighting. None of the people there looked like they had grown up in a fifties-style neighborhood, with a back yard and little leagues and barbeques. None of them had ever played badminton.

I learned just how worldly and sophisticated Algiers people were one winter day, when my friends were engaging in a very Radcliffe conversation about Harvard Men And What They Want. I asked my friends in desperation, "Do any men anywhere really want women to be equal?"

The intense woman alone at the table next to us sighed deeply, looked at me knowingly, and spoke: "No. There are no men anywhere who want women to be equal. I'm not eavesdropping on your conversation, but I can't help hearing what you're saying and it sounds so much like things I've said before, a long time ago."

I stared at her in wonder. Here was a woman who knew the world. Here was a woman fit to drink coffee.

I tried to become better at drinking coffee, more deserving of it. I began to eliminate sugar altogether.

The final step was on a date. At the end of the evening, we stopped at Algiers. He was cool. He was sophisticated. He was from The City. For the first time I drank my coffee black.

I winced with each sip. I vowed never to drink black coffee again, even if Squeeze did sing a song about it. And despite my effort, he didn't ask me out again.

Several weeks later, I saw him waiting in line at Tommy's. He was with some girl named Cindy. While I waited for my coffee, he ordered for the two of them. "I'll have a Coke," he said, "and Cindy will have a hot chocolate."   --Terri E. Gerstein

It is spring reading period. I haven't slept in at least two days. The pile of laundry in my room has become a health violation. I've left the computer only twice in the past 24 hours--to buy sandwiches and iced tea at Au Bon Pain. My final Expos paper is already overdue and I have another 20-page paper to write as soon as I finish this one.