title: Coffee and Sugar
author: McGee, C. Sean
description: This is the story of Joao, an uninspiring country boy who moves to a slum in the city with his drunken, violent, preacher father; The Bishop and falls for amiable prostitute named Charity. Like life, the perfect drink should be bitter sweet and coffee is the resonance of existence in that; like the perfect coffee, life has many grains of bitter days; the type of days that might rot your stomach if they are all that you have. But every now and then, one has a few sweet moments that make the tough days easier to digest, meaning one can take the learned lesson from life; the good and the bad and then strengthen their resolve and return in the morn with an eager thirst for more. All João ever wanted was to be of some use. All he ever wanted was to belong. And far away from the molesting lick of the sun, where his brothers and sisters toil upon the arid earth, in a dank café in the very worst part of town, and working as a barrista, João will himself, inside the sediment of a city, at the bottom of a ceramic cup. And a minister, a chef, and a whore, they will all taste him on their lips, long after he is gone.