So I’m "reading" a recent issue of GQ (one doesn’t really read a magazine like GQ so much as absorb its ambience and feel badly about not being able to afford the beautiful clothes in the advertisements and not being as good looking as the androgynous men who populate them), and there’s a short bit on how a real man makes coffee. This is of interest to me, naturally, as a maker/drinker of coffee and as a theorist of masculinity. The author of the article, some fuckwit named Luke Zaleski, writes:
Coffee is not something that begs for improvement, but if you want to sweeten yours, a little sugar–not more than a teaspoon–should be added to your cup before you pour. Same goes for milk–less is more.
To which I respond: Why? Why is less more? Why is one teaspoon better than than two? Why is even one teaspoon a compromise of coffee’s integrity? Why is milk a problem but water isn’t? Maybe every real man should only drink espresso, with its low-coffee ground-to-liquid intensity, or just gargle the grounds with a few scalding hot teaspoons of water.
I mean, what law of the universe decreed that coffee is appreciated best when it’s least mediated by sugar and milk? Somewhere along the way it was decided that drinking your coffee black was the manliest way to go, because black coffee is strong and uncomplicated and bitter, like men should be, and milk and sugar are ways of making it soft, sweet, womanly. Well, not for this man. I’ll have mine with two or three teaspoons of sugar, and a healthy dollop of cream.
That’s all I wanted to say. Good morning.
