Korea has one gay celebrity. If you Google “Gay celebrity in Korea,” the only result will be “Hong Soek-cheon.” For many Koreans, homosexuality is a lurid, outlandish concept. One Korean American who returned to his ancestral homeland said that Koreans “completely ignore the reality of gay people who exist. They pretend that it’s just this fairytale from the West.” Many Americans view Korea as the same kind of uncanny, alien place. Maybe you are one of the 10 million people who saw Conan’s recent video, where he swam in pools and sat in close proximity with old, naked, sweaty Korean men, while they commented on each other’s bodies. This sauna was in New York but it was still a mostly accurate representation of the Korean sauna experience. It was, however, sanitized for American audiences. They missed the part where old naked Korean men soap up each other’s plump, glistening buttocks. This is usually done between friends, but it is also acceptable to ask a stranger “could you please suds-up my buttocks?” (Or some approximate translation if your Korean is up to par.) In Korea it is completely acceptable to caress the dimples on a strange man’s lower back. But, sadly, if you kissed that same man on the lips, you would be met with stares, shock, and likely even shouts of profanity and reprobation from old men who weathered a regime that once arrested men for having long hair or women for having short skirts. In cultures where homosexuality is taboo, heterosexual men can experience a level of comfort with each other that people in more “progressive” cultures cannot.

Homophobic societies consider homosexuality to be so improbable that they are completely comfortable with being physically affectionate and intimate with other heterosexual men. Many straight, relatively progressive Americans can’t put their arms around another man because they fear being perceived as gay. Most Americans would consider it unthinkable to hold hands with their friends, as my students do when a game of English Grammar jeopardy can be won or lost by just a few points. Many straight, relatively progressive Americans will never know the comfort and closeness that comes from participating in a massage train. Many will never experience “the [platonic] love between a man and a man which is more powerful than that between a man and a woman,” that a Greek friend of mine described.

My time as a Protestant Christian missionary in Greece taught me a lot about how much homophobia obstructs the function of healthy, male friendship. Growing up in the states, I remember, at the age of 8, feeling a distinct sense of shame that I still gave my Dad a goodnight kiss on the cheek. I remember my friends returning from a bible distributing, house building, sightseeing trip to Ethiopia and hearing the shock, wonder, and lurid excitement in their voices when they recounted school boys walking hand in hand on dirt roads. When I flew to Greece and started working with a Christian nonprofit that catered to Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi, Moroccan, and Syrian refugees, I remember talking with a friend and trying to hide my discomfort when he gave me a friendly neck message. I tried to smile when an Albanian friend would rest their hand on my thigh while we drank coffee together, and I tried to forget the violation of a coarse beard against my cheek when an Afghan would greet me with a traditional kiss once on my left cheek, then my right, then my left, then my right again. But, once I got used to it, I found a sense of almost delirious happiness in constantly being close to other people. I felt closer to people with a single digit English vocabulary than I have with some people I have talked to for years. I became comfortable talking about my doubts and fears rather than repeating the same jokes, rating the same women, and rehashing the same games and matches and fights. But, when I came home, I found that when I would laugh at a friend’s joke and pat their thigh, the look in their eyes would be like someone who had just seen a huge wasp land on their nose. In their eyes I saw that feeling love or connection with another man was something to be feared. Behind those eyes lay an American mind that perceives the enjoyment of another man’s touch as intrinsically, irretrievably “gay.” And, even if we profess to be progressive, as long as we think that feeling gay or being seen as gay is something to be feared, we continue to give homophobia control of our affections.

In the 4 months I spent in the U.S. after returning from Greece, the first man to say “I love you” to me was my partner. My beer pong partner at a frat party near Union Square. He was clutching my shoulder in one hand and a PBR in the other. It turned out he was from New Jersey too. We had met in line for the urinals, talked for a bit, then our conversation stopped until both of our respective penises were no longer visible. “I fucking love you man, we should definitely hang out in Jersey sometime,” he said, before leaving to meet up with a Tinder date, never to be seen again. Drunken “I love yous” are the only time most American males get to express affection for another man, and they are a poor substitute for a true, deep male friendship. These friendships require throwing off the feelings of shame and latent homophobia that still run in supposedly progressive minds. They require the boldness to shout, as Jonah Hill and Michael Cera say in the privacy of their tent in Superbad:

EVAN: I love you. Why don't we say that everyday? Why can't we say it more often?

SETH: I just love you. I just want to go to the rooftops and scream, "I love my best friend, Evan."

[...]

SETH: "Boop."