I started with Maxwell House. Hell, everyone started with Maxwell House coffee. And liked it. It was “vacuum sealed.”

Then we started going to Dunkin’ Donuts and we thought we were in heaven, sitting at the Dedham Circle five nights a week, drinking great coffee and waiting (in vain) for the local girls to fall in love with us … or at least notice that we were alive.

Then we wanted the good stuff at home and went with the carafe with freshly ground coffee, filtered through a paper towel. That was the height of sophistication for years.

Now if you go into Whole Grocer in Portland or Rock City in Rockland (get it?) you are faced with a bewildering array of foreign and domestic coffees, both decaf and high-test, in a frightening array of flavors, priced from $9 to $12 a pound. Now, in addition to everything else, you have to make sure they are “fair trade” beans, whatever that means.

I always get the darkest, most pungent smelling coffee bean, then dilute it with Half and Half, just to make the brew potable.

Naturally, I grind the beans just before making the coffee to capture the peak of flavor. (That’s what it said on the grinder.)

Last week, I took the ultimate step. Through the magic of the Internet, I ordered the sacred bag of Kona coffee from Hawaii. I am a certified idiot with money (I have the knives, books and flashlights to prove it) and the price of $25 a pound did not phase me a bit.

The package from Hawaii came within a few days. With great ceremony I opened the package, which was sealed with the cutest gold clasp. (For $25 a pop, that was the least they could do.)

Finally, the taste test.

I admit the smell was intoxicating and the taste was pretty good. But $25 a pound? Twice as much as Rock City’s best? I don’t think so.

Now, I find out that I am a coffee piker and that Kona (ptui) is actually a low-rent blend compared to Kopi Luwak from Indonesia. Honest to God. Experts tell us that no coffee in the world is in such short supply, has such unique flavors and owns such an incredibly weird background.

Kopi Luwak, Indonesian for “coffee sucker,” sells for $75 per quarter pound. That’s right, quarter pound. If my Roslindale High School math is correct, that’s $300 a pound.

I may have 35 knives, 50 flashlights and 400 books, but even I am not stupid enough to spend $300 on a pound of coffee. Wait until you hear of “the process.”

On Indonesian islands, there is a small marsupial called the paradoxurus, a tree-dwelling animal that is part of the sibet family. Long regarded by the natives as pests, they climb among the coffee trees eating only the ripest, reddest coffee cherries.

Now pay attention.

The beans go through the paradoxurus and “the process’ virtually unchanged. History has not recorded the first native who was crazy enough to pick up the “processed” beans to make a cup of coffee. But someone with a terrible, terrible coffee jones did.

The fans of Kopi Luwak claim that the enzymes in the animals’ stomachs appear to add something unique to the coffee’s flavor through fermentation. Let’s just take their word for it.

The total crop of about 500 pounds a year goes mostly, thankfully, to Japan. They eat raw fish, too.

Now you just knew that Californians would fall for it, too.

Richard Karno, former owner of The Novel Cafe in Santa Monica, Calif., got a flyer from Mountanos about Kopi Luwak and told The Associated Press that he “thought it was a joke.” But Karno was intrigued, found it was for real, and ordered a pound, then organized a tasting at $5 a cup.

Karno is the latest convert to Kopi Luwak. “It’s the best coffee I’ve ever tasted. It’s really good, heavy with a caramel taste, heavy body. It smells musty and junglelike green, but it roasts up real nice.

Caramel.

Yikes.

I may go back to Maxwell House.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.