The "Nice Gay" Contract: The Superpower That's Been Quietly Destroying Us
How over-adaptation became our survival strategy—and why it's slowly eroding our capacity for desire, intimacy, and truth
The conference room at 9am. I watch my voice drop half an octave, my posture straighten, my laugh become more measured. By lunch with college friends, I'm someone else entirely... looser, funnier, but still carefully curated. Then dinner with my family: another version, pleasant and unthreatening. Later, scrolling Instagram: the polished, aspirational me emerges for the algorithm.
Four different rooms. Four different people. All me, supposedly.
I built a life everyone admired and then realized no one could actually find me inside it.