Why You Can’t Just Ask Him for Coffee
Why many gay men believe they’re only interesting if someone wants to sleep with them, and how to recount the evidence that contradicts it.
The text sat in his drafts for forty minutes.
“Want to grab coffee sometime?”
He deleted it. Rewrote it. Deleted again.
Not because he was scared of rejection. Because he was scared of acceptance.
Scared that saying yes to coffee would require this guy to find him interesting. Smart. Funny. Worth an hour without the promise of anything else. And somewhere deep in his chest, where the fear lives, he didn’t believe those qualities existed separate from sexual availability.
Friendship requires someone to value you for reasons that aren’t your body. And if you’ve spent thirty years learning that your worth is measured in attraction, that your personality only matters if it leads somewhere, that your insights are foreplay and your humor is just lubrication for the real thing, then asking someone to want your company platonically feels like asking them to care about the B-material.
The stuff that’s nice. But not the reason anyone stays.