Would you like to have coffee with me?

So I had a brief chat to someone on Facebook the other day. I’d met him once a couple of months ago and we’d never got around to following up. During the course of our exchange, he suggested we “go for a coffee some time”.

I found this interesting. Coffee is quite clearly intended to mean “conversation only”, which is just as well. It struck me then how significant these rituals are when it comes to negotiating an encounter with somebody we don’t know very well and whose intentions are unclear. (In the past, I would have said “member of the opposite sex” but this is completely meaningless now, not to mention insultingly heteronormative.) When you think about it, liquid refreshment as a framing device for social encounters is of considerable strategic importance.

The semiotics of “coffee” as opposed to “a drink” are complex. In Joburg culture (and, I would imagine, a lot of other places) the latter invariably signals an alcoholic drink rather than, say, a glass of Oros. The beverage we ostensibly choose to consume establishes the circumstances for a meeting and signals our intentions to the other party. The whole idea is to communicate a great deal without having to say anything at all.

As a strategist, I feel most comfortable with coffee as a pretext for an encounter. It’s nothing if not safe; too much espresso might give you palpitations but there’s no inebriation involved. Whether you’re meeting with a colleague, a friend or somebody who might potentially be a more special sort of friend, coffee implies both conviviality and neutral ground. It is difficult to construe it as an obvious come-on. This is why meeting a de facto date over a cappuccino is perfect: it allows you to have a conversation with someone without worrying about whether you’re going to have your heart pulped and sent for recycling.

Coffee is as appropriate at the crack of dawn as it is in the middle of the night. Drinks, on the other hand, are invariably consumed in those ambiguous hours between daylight and nightfall. Context is everything. If it’s a friend or a co-worker, a drink usually implies a stressful day at work. (My rule of thumb: drink is for venting, coffee is for skinner.) If it’s a business contact, a drink is capitalist lubrication. If it’s somebody you might end up getting to know a little better, then a drink is effectively a date. Alcohol may have the ability to affect one’s judgment but its power is as much symbolic as it is physiological.

A drink with someone whose intentions are unclear is asking to be misunderstood. Or am I reading too much into this? I asked my Twitter followers what they thought. Drinks, @merrystrwberry, argued, means “I want to jump you”; coffee says “I’m interested in what you have to say”. “At least coffee implies some intimacy,” offered @CathrynR, who appears to be a cynic after my own heart. “A drink means the person dislikes you so much they need booze to make you interesting.” “Or themselves less nervous because they like you so much,” countered @mattduplessis.

Whatever your take on the matter, it’s clear that coffee vs drinks is not a decision to be taken lightly. But that’s not where it ends. If you’ve decided to go the booze route, you still have to think carefully about exactly what kind of drink you order. There is a world of difference between beer, wine and tequila, and what the choice of each communicates, but my ruminations on this issue of pressing importance would take up too much space here and merit an entry of their own.

Till next time then, na zdorovia.