It should come to no surprise to my close friends that I am very fond of tea, a connoisseur if you must.
I am about to introduce you to something that will make the rest of your life drab by comparison. Tepid. Bland. Vapid as dry white purgatory.
It is this: Vanilla Bergamot.
You may be wondering why I would do such a thing to you good people. Simply stated, it is not my fault that human nature compels us to judge the highest of the highs against the qualities of each experience hereafter. And "hereafter" is the appropriate word - what this seemingly innocuous capsuloid contains will hurl you towards your new understanding of what we wish to be awaiting for us in the World Yet To Come. Yet an interesting pre-afterlife is definitely involved here. Because this stuff is God Damned Delicious!
Where can such ecstasy be procured? I first came into contact with the Vanilla Bergamot in Costa Mesa, California at a place named Milk + Honey on Bristol Street. During my short stay in Los Angeles, this shop was the only thing that did not suck! Before you call me a blasphemer for verbally excrementing on one of this fine country's landmark cities, understand that after tasting paradise, everything else is bland by comparison. The Bergamot, the citrus substance that gives Earl Grey and his mistress Lady Grey their zing, is of perfect amount as is the vanilla (and not any trace of extract) and has just enough flowery aroma, but not too flowery like the scene from the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy falls asleep because it is Too Damn Flowery. And speaking of flowers, the tea leaves are laced with a tiny bluish flower that resembles what my imagination has created to be a smurf penis. Flower or penis, either way I want it inside of me.
The Milk + Honey also sells an Plum Oolong and White Peach which are fantastic, reliable, and affordable. The Vanilla Bergamot on the other hand? With no exaggeration intended, I bet you could steep, consume, and relieve yourself of the substance and it would still be delicious during round two. While I'm not necessarily inclined to try it, my stash is running dangerously low.
Hot, cold, with cream or sans, Vanilla Bergamot makes me desire eternity. I've never rolled around in a giant mound of angels' breasts, but I know this is what it would feel like. Had I known of this concoction of awesome before recent days would my life have changed? Would fate have taken me in a separate direction? To what ends would I find my hands? Which direction would my feet take me?
Perhaps a far different one than this. My journey now betrays no doubt or hesitation; directly to the dedicated tea cabinet of my own to plunge myself henceforth into a world that is, in some way, better than the one that came before it.