The Mug Mug

The first week of lockdown, I bought a mug. A dual-tone, soapstone glaze, dishwasher safe, handmade in Brooklyn, 10% of proceeds go to charity, subscribe to our curated newsletter kind of mug. It took five weeks to ship and when it arrived at my doorstep I thought, “I have no idea what this is.”

But I love it. It has a nice heft to it. When I load it in the dishwasher improperly, I hear feeble glasses of lesser creed clanging against my mug during the wash cycle with a thump, thump, thump. I can’t even look at other mugs, their thin ceramic like plastic in my palm. Will you keep my coffee hot? Can you handle the microwave? What a joke. This mug is so heavy it could kill someone. I imagine someone gripping its squat handle, bludgeoning in a soft skull. They would have to pause and marvel at the mug’s durability, as if it were made for murder and not warm beverages. “Don’t you agree,” I hedge to my boyfriend, on the second day of glorious new-mug drinking, waving it around like a nationalist with his country’s flag, “this mug could kill someone?” He considers me for a moment, sipping coffee from a chipped cup. He tells me to stop reading the news. This mug is so great I find myself back on the website, reading the About page. I’m mesmerized by phrases like stoneware clay and panna cotta glaze and slight variations should be expected & embraced. Wow. Do I want an espresso cup too? Maybe a ramen bowl. Free shipping on orders over $100? I realize I’m being influenced, the way Instagram’s ads have tried and failed to influence me over the years. I want to give more money to the queer duo behind this pottery team; I’m happy to pay for quality. I imagine filling my kitchen with these weighty dishes, pointing to the different glazes and saying, this one’s called amaro, this cream-color is eggshell, and do you like this shade of blue? It’s lapis, a new installment in their production…Yes, I’ll buy a dinner set or 12: Bowls over plates over larger, decorative plates in Santorini-style azure and white, the rough edges of each dish a nice, complementary beige. My dinner guests float around the table, buzzing pleasurably like mosquitoes on a hot day. I’ll wear a gauzy linen dress and hull strawberries above the sink. I’m a gracious host. My plating is flawless but unpretentious. We dine al fresco, of course, and the dinners I serve on this stoneware could easily be splashed on the cover of Food & Wine, where I’ll talk about hygge and the importance of buying “really good vanilla extract.” And maybe the photographer will catch me mid-laugh, perched over the dining table staged with a bowls of lemons, wooden spoons brushed with mineral oil, and a dainty vase or two of wildflowers, clutching the speckled mug that started it all.