Don, when I was young (18 or 19) I drank my coffee with a bit of sugar in it. No cream, though.

One night I was out to dinner on a date and the coffee was AWFUL. (Shouldn't have been; it was a reasonably classy place, at least in my limited experience. Hey! Tableclothes!) Anyway, over the course of conversation, I ended up drinking it and the waitress came by to replenish the cup. It was from the same pot, by the way. I didn't object to the filling, but I wasn't going to bother adding sugar because I didn't intend to actually DRINK it. But, as my date and I continued talking, I sipped away at the coffee. And guess what...it tasted better black than with sugar in it.

I've drunk my coffee black ever since -- polluted with extract of neither cow nor cane.

At home I mostly drink tea, and I prefer THAT with nothing in it either. (Used to put lemon in when I drank it at my early morning breakfast spots in Kennebunkport and Cape Porpoise.)

I DO like cream in iced coffee, but that's a different creature all together...

Linn