Hey you. Come here. Come a little closer.
Wanna know a secret?
I’m gay. Imagine dramatic silence, crickets, maybe a cell phone going off at the worst possible moment.
What?!
Fine, you got me. Not exactly a state secret. If you’ve read my blog for more than five minutes, you’ve probably done the math. Even if you just skimmed the parts about my family being a mess or my brief, shining moment with ecstasy, you’d get the picture.
And after some thought, no, maybe it really isn’t a secret. My friends know. People who read my weblog know. My dad knows, although it’s an uncomfortable subject ever since the trip to China, where he tried to set me up with a girl. And on a subconscious level, I’m sure my Mom knows. She’s not ready to deal with it at this point in time, but trust me on this one.
As far as strangers are concerned, if they bring it up, I’ll tell them. But usually they never bring it up. Stereotypes suck, and I don’t consider myself feminine at all anyway. Well, there was that one time I answered the telephone and the telemarketer thought I was a chick. Stupid bitch. Incidentally, my voice isn’t that high, is it? No comments from the peanut gallery, por favor.
So, do you really wanna hear a secret? Okay, maybe not so much a secret as it is an unusual fact about myself.
I was in a book. Flash back around six or seven years ago. Seventeen years old, out of high school, living in the dorms, away from parents. I was the kind of guy in high school with no friends. You know, the type of guy that hung out by himself, daydreaming about the school bursting into flames. I was the one whose name would be brought up at a lunchtime crowd, and someone would say, “Ernie? You mean the guy who got crapped on by a seagull in 11th grade?” True story, by the way. No comment.
I knew I was gay, but telling anyone? Not happening. Growing up gay is bad enough. Growing up as the gay freak? No thanks. You couldn’t pay me enough to do high school over.
So, leaving high school, I was gonna change myself. You know, the whole “you’re out of high school, you get to start over” mentality. And that’s what happened, with mixed results. It was easy to make friends in the dorms. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as good at finding gay friends. Other people like me. Add that to a mixture of internal hang-ups and the college environment. Davis was known for having queer activists and closet cases, with not much in between. Times may have changed since then, who knows?
So I did what any Asian college freshman with internet access would do. I went on IRC. Don’t laugh. You’re online right now, probably talking to some Asian girl typing in alternating caps. I see you.
On the newsgroups, there was a woman who was writing a book about gay teenagers. “If I asked you a couple of questions about growing up and parents and religion and such,” she wrote, “would you be okay with answering them? You can even be anonymous.”
Why the fuck not.
So I answered her questions. Did I always know I was gay? Yeah. Did my parents know? Absolutely not. Religion? It was there, somehow. Was I happy? Not really. I was more detailed than that, but you get the idea. I typed for four hours, editing, re-reading, overthinking. For once, everything was out there. Me, flaws and all, staring back from the screen.
Then I did something that even surprised me. Instead of being anonymous, I used my real name. Ernie, insecure about himself, his sexuality, his relationship with his parents, just about everything, used his real name in a book that would be available in queer bookstores around the nation. All my cards are on the table. What was I gonna do? Was I going to call? Or was I going to fold? Call or fold? Call or fold?
I clicked on the send button. Call.
Then I waited. And waited. Four years. That’s how long it took her to finish the book.
So when I was told that there was a book in the mail, I was shocked to say the least. And when the book came in the mail, a book called In Your Face - Stories from the Lives of Queer Youth, with my name in the table of contents, I didn’t know what to make of it. I read it cover to cover that night and the morning after. It’s a strange feeling, reading something that’s been forgotten about for years. Kind of like finding a yearbook from junior high, seeing girls with teased hair and hot-pink LA Gears. There was a mixture of feelings swimming through my head. Wonderment that something I wrote was actually in a book, horror that I could reveal so much about myself at the age of seventeen, happiness and yeah, a bit of jealousy because other teenagers profiled in the book were comfortable with themselves in a time when I wasn’t.
But mostly, I was relieved. Relieved that I could look back four years and realize that I had grown a bit. Slowly, I had become comfortable with myself during that four-year period. I had a solid group of friends to rally behind me. Most of them weren’t gay, but that was fine by me. I’m more comfortable with being plain old dumb-ass Ernie rather than Ernie, the gay-Asian-Chinese-Insert label here-guy anyway. But they didn’t kick my ass when I told them I was queer, even when I was drunk as fuck off half a wine cooler, even when I couldn’t bear making eye contact. My friends were cool with it. Even the macho wannabe ruffneck guys. Imagine that. Didn’t even talk shit behind my back… about the gay stuff, anyway.
Am I completely comfortable with my sexuality? I’d be lying if I said I was. My dad isn’t too thrilled that I won’t be pumping out grandchildren. “I will never be happy again,” he told me in a busy Shanghai department store, after I wigged out under constant attempts to “just talk” to the pretty nurse who was conveniently living in the same apartment where we were staying.
But it could always be worse. He could have disowned me. You know the drill. I try to be pretty careful revealing myself in certain situations. But then again, coming out to a bunch of ghetto ass lowered-Civic riding Asians says something. Although what it says, I’m not quite sure.
Cards on the table, took my chances, and didn’t lose too big. Not bad, if I do say so myself.