🍩 Help Wanted Nights 🍩

It was 4am, off the New Jersey turnpike, a doughnut shop, and, an off-duty cop with a cliche moustache was jabbing his finger into the chest of a trucker. This loud altercation was something about amphetamines. But it was none of my business. The sign in the window said HELP WANTED NIGHTS - I thought to myself, ain’t that the truth, whether jetlag or insomnia, I had been awake all night, again.

I looked down at my doughnut, simple, glazed, greasy, reflecting under yellowing lights that flickered incandescent, humming like angels, and my coffee, black, lukewarm, burnt, filter, just like I like it actually.

The cup was the strange thing, I had it to go, so it was a real nasty cardboard one, and on it, an ornate Greek inspired, but not really, pattern and amphora. I stepped out of the warmth of the doughnut shop and slipped immediately on black ice in the parking lot.

My coffee liberally scattered across a wide area, but also poured neatly in to my crotch. The cop helped me up and made a joke about fining me for jaywalking. At least I thought it was a joke. I’m not so sure.

And, as I think back.

That cop stole my fucking doughnut. Jord - New Jersey 1998

0.5% coffee and doughnut stout. Not a dessert stout, not too sweet and cloying, but the canned experience of a filter coffee and a doughnut.