GAPIMNY Diaries

December 18, 2020

Dear Diary,

Prisoner Express has a new address to cope with the pandemic! A Post Office Box! So now Gary can respond more effectively and efficiently for my journal entries. I had received it today so the entries I had sent went to the Library that I had sent out on Thursday.

Well? Guess what COVID brought us? 50% of the housing unit 2B was quarantined and sent to the quarantine unit! And on the 10th of December an institution lockdown. Man that was scary!

The c/o had a paper in his hand visiting the infected inmates and I was like not me please! I have pre-diabetes, and hypertension! I don’t want to die in prison.

But there was AWESOME news from Charles my penpal that he sent a book on game development! and I received it this evening! And I read it and still reading it! OMG! It cost my pen pal $47.99 from CollegeBooksDirect.com and it’s called Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development Second Edition written in 2018!

I should give my pen pal the Bargain Books site and mention it with my next letter.

Ok time to switch pens and ink so I don’t use my only blue pen and use the state refills I get for free.

December 19, 2020

Dear Diary,

Ok it’s way past the 18th as the next shift is here.

Anyways when looking at my new book I had read the parts that was of interest to me about the graphics part of the programming and it seem it gives me references to find up the date library of functions in C# that exists which I really need.

Then secondly I had went through the book and looked at the pictures and screenshots. Now I am able to update my source code for my drag races and re-write them in C# to C++. My first car to put to code was my aunt’s ’86 Mercury Sable/Taurus! Very slow vectors! LMAO in my drag race class.

What I like about the book is that it combines the gaming industry and managing your workers in a gaming development project. That is what I lack when it comes to any industry. Perhaps I can work on the communications w/others through studying the NDOC programming literature.

This is my 5th time being tested for COVID-19 with 0% affection rate. Now I am waiting for showers.

It seems that COVID is spreading to Unit 3A again! The old unit I was in so another unit have to take over culinary duties. For the past 2 days 23 have been having cereal and milk but hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner! YUCK!

I still have (31-19) days till I can get $$$ for my phone time and I am holding on and starving like a kid on a candy diet! LOL!

Ok the new address for Prisoner Express is:

PO Box 6556 Ithaca, NY 14851

Make sure I send my entries to the PO Box right diary? We need a safe home for you rather than risk censorship, and confiscation. All right my friend :-)

OH I just wrote 2 cards for my pen pals Ayami and Angie. Guess what Angie sent me? A doggie Christmas Card/Birthday Card from Hallmark Expressions. Oh it’s so cute.

Ok will read for the rest of the day and relax.

December 20, 2020

Dear Diary,

I slept all day in attempt to catch up on my sleep. Now I am ready to go.

All right. Since I skimmed up my new book well it is time to read it in dept. That is what I shall do today. Yes, I want to learn more about the human side of making games before I get to the technical aspects.

December 22, 2020

Dear Diary,

I haven’t actually read the book of Game Design book the past few days because of sleep and rest of my one day of non-sleep.

But today I had spent the day reading Intro to Game Design and read through the non-technical aspects of game design which was so boring! OMG! But I persisted and got a better aspect of what a game designer does which I am better off hiring another to do!

The art of game designing is not what holds my attention holds my interest! When it started to get a little more interesting is the chapter on testing the games and Math and Game Balance from Ch. 10 and 11.

What is constantly frustrating to me about the book is the authors’ lack of screenshots and illustrations! And talking about technical aspects of the nerdy/mathematical aspects of a game like a game engine, digital prototyping beyond coding! Even when he starts to discuss it he says it’s beyond the scope of this book. Or he switches the discussion to boring Paper Prototyping. -.-

Perhaps my reading of Part III of the book on Digital Prototyping will make up for it? I do hope so!

December 23, 2020

Dear Diary,

I haven’t slept yet as I was reading my game design as I continued on to Digital Prototyping! And eyes diary it did make up for all the Paper Prototyping idiosyncrasies I had complained about in the book!

I am now on Ch. 18 on C# computer language explaining C# and how it is better than C++ and/or JavaScript but it gives me the hibby-jeebees because it is a managed code language! How secure is C# code vs C++? I shall ask my friend/penpal Charles on this!

OH; and I filled my state (free) pens to my $1 Bic Cristal Pens because my $3 Pentel RSVP pen finally broke! While filling the state pens in.

December 24, 2020

Dear Diary,

Merry Christmas Eve Diary! Tomorrow is that day where we eat ham and sweet potatoes w/ Pecan Pie! It’s our annual Christmas meal! Can’t wait!

I haven’t slept yet diary! 24 hours and counting of no sleep. I think I am in my mid-manic states. My eyes are droopy but not my mind/brain.

OH. Yesterday we got new masks that look like surgical masks. Only problem is that I fit it like H20 and oil! The masks covers the bottom of my eyes when I put it on.

I put some celebrity art on my walls this early morning. Got Justin Bieber, 5 Seconds of Summer, and Curren Caples on my walls and Pg. 1 and 6 of the celebrity catalog! :-) Plus I got Angie and her dog and my past 2 ex-boyfriends on the wall as well.

February 19, 2021

Dear Diary,

I don’t really understand “social media” these days and I was thinking/guessing that The Gaysian Diaries is a “blog?” Showing my age! LOL. Do they even call it blogs and vlogs anymore? I am starting to notice that some things don’t really matter to me anymore that I used to care about; like social media, celebrities (of who is whom, etc.); and I am really trying my hardest to include what people view me as, think, feel, etc. but it’s a struggle.

Most people here are like social media part “in your face” as I am constantly surrounded by insignificant noise that do sometimes affect me and I have to constantly remind myself of who I am. Earplugs help but it is semi-dangerous to use it? And to me it feels unavoidable.

But that is where The Gaysian Diaries come in to help me stay grounded and be there as a reminder of what is really important and what is simply noise. And, especially; it always reminds me that I am not alone and thousands/millions are going through the same things and worse! What is inspiration for me is those that face death! And live fruitful and satisfying lives the most.

Most times than not I lose sight! And sometimes distraction works and I think to myself or notice how I lose sight of what is important. When I do it? And I think it comes from my environment; and things I am not in control of and learn to let it go.

Sometimes? Pleasurable distractions like food and porn helps A LOT! But I think if I do this? Do I lose sight of what is important when I do this though? As it’s temporary?

I think that sleep is also one of my favorite distractions; one that I use most! Am I hiding from circumstances that would still be there when I awake though? When I start feeling hungry again? Or when pictures and catalogs start getting old? And ultimately lose sight?

I see many manifestations of this daily in my environment. But I also have to realize that each is unique and the escape or coping manifestations of “unpleasants” are numerous. However? Each is temporary!

Well, diary? These are my struggles at this point in time.

Eight years ago, I lived in Flushing and had recently learned the ways of Korean drumming. One day, I was recruited as a drummer to go to Washington, DC to march and raise awareness about immigration legislation. We left New York City at around 6 am and got back in the evening.

I have a habit of making stupid mistakes that get me into a bit of trouble all the time. When I’ve been tired, hungry, cold, or thirsty, I've been even prone to unintentionally cause myself harm. That evening, I was tired as I was walking home alone after all the activities with the contingent. There were around 5 Black or Brown kids hanging around that I had to pass by on my way home. I took a glance at them but avoided eye contact.

What you should know at this point is that I'm also trans and at that time I had a fraction of the confidence I have now. There was also no man in my life that had ever thought to teach me how to physically conduct myself.

Maybe it was because these kids also needed to assert themselves physically, or that I am always in disbelief when I'm chosen, but when an arm came out in front of me to block my path and I heard a demand for my phone, I resisted. One of these kids punched me in my face hard enough to break my glasses. Then they lifted me off my feet. I was wiggling to get free of their grasp before they dropped me. I heard something like "it's a girl" as they ran away in a panic.

I didn't go to the police from a knee-jerk reaction for safety.  A friend nagged me to go to the police precinct until I did. A detective took down my statement and gave me a card in case I needed any follow up. I also avoided the scene of the crime for a time out of fear. I didn’t feel like the cops provided me any resolution. Occasionally I would get a sinus headache that I could relieve myself from if I put pressure on the left side of the bridge of my nose.

Today, I’m living through a pandemic disproportionately impacting Black and Brown folks. Black Lives Matter protesters are demanding we defund the police after the Obama-era police reform failed to stop the death of George Floyd. The list of names of Black trans women who have died continue to get longer and longer at a speed that disturbs me deeply, while I’m still trying to make sense of the senseless death of Layleen Polanco in New York City’s prison system from a year ago. I badly want this crisis to stop and I want to be able to advocate for necessary changes. I’ve read up on the argument to defund the police and learned how much the demand also requires that we collectively build what a real safe society looks like. I attended a Zoom session where they asked us individually to think about a specific time we needed community safety, whether or not the police provided it, and how we would re-imagine what that would look like without the police.

This prompt made me think of that incident from eight years, and how much the incident is still unjustly unresolved.

If we could live beyond the constraints of reality and time travel, I would go back to the time of the mugging with more strength, courage, and wit. Most of my life, I’ve come off very non-threatening, so much so that people think they can take advantage of me until I lash out. I think I’ve developed some ability to set boundaries to avoid an outright lashing out. But even if I could somehow find and confront my muggers today, I’m not sure I could truly resolve all the problematic gendered questions that came up for me in that incident.

In a just world, we would respond to this incident among many as a call to change society so men would be less violent. When men don't have to prove their masculinity with physical dominance or conditioned to fear being perceived as weak, we can also slowly stop the cycle of physical violence in society. When there’s less harm, then there’s less need for protection. And the police rarely successfully provide protection for people because these situations can escalate anywhere and they can’t be everywhere. It would also eliminate the need for us to physically (and violently) remove members of our society to stop the violence by putting them in prisons. It would also eliminate making judgments of whether or not any person is deserving to be part of society, as if they could not change to become better.

I believe that we all have to participate to create this better world. I’m willing to be part of the solution. Wouldn’t you?

Since my dad passed, I had never had a dream with him in it until now. He used to run a business on the side where he built and supported a point-of-sale system for pawnshops. When he passed, the pawnshop owners were hoping I or my sister would take up his legacy. One of the owners had a dream where he “visited” the shop owner... I just didn't know if it was "real" or not because it could’ve been a projection of herself. My aunt and my dad had stories that makes the case that the spirit world is real...and there is the coincidence that my dad did pass on my grandma's death anniversary.

This dream probably occurred because of the same reason my dad and grandma have the same death anniversary, because this dream came to me on his birthday. Tradition asked me to be at the food offering ceremony to pray for his birthday. My mom arranged the ceremony on the same day as the Starfruit Summit hosted by GAPIMNY's Trans Justice committee. I chose to attend the GAPIMNY event.

In my dream, I had a cock that grew the length of my thigh and turned golden while I was trying to hide it from my dad! If my dad were alive, he would have probably questioned what I had been doing to myself. I had told my mom about starting medical transitions. Was I supposed to have visited my dad at the cemetery instead and have told my dead dad that I’m growing a cock? My mom has been worrying about my health as if I'm potentially harming myself...she gets prompted to think about it as my voice deepens and cracks.

I feel like another iteration of myself might've found having this dream a little bit disturbing, but maybe I'm just so high from attending a 50 person summit that centered trans / gender non-conforming Asian and Pacific Islander people that I just don’t feel sorry. I've been grappling with desires to center my trans identity as the source of my activism, charity, and involvement in community. I might also just be burnt out from my ex who is cis and has been financially weighing me down and whose allyship I’m starting to question...

I have been going through a lot the last two years. A relationship of 6 years has come to an end..at least the romantic and sexual aspect of it. Since I have more time to reflect, I also have been thinking about how I should use that time and to whom I should share my time. While I was in a romantic relationship with my ex, I prioritized all my time around her. Now that it would be unhealthy to continue spending that time with her, I don’t get to use it to cheat in making decisions about how to spend my time. My dad’s death showed me that I needed to also prioritize those who would prioritize me. Some life events only happen once… like my dad’s funeral. And it matters if you are there or not.

Since this entry is supposed to be publicly shared, I don’t think it would be appropriate to actually talk about specific people, but I want to mention how GAPIMNY was there for me. GAPIMNY is a volunteer-run organization I have been involved with since 2013. The leadership of GAPIMNY immediately asked me what I needed when my dad passed. I suggested that they contribute towards the request by my aunt to fill the room with floral wreaths. GAPIMNY actually bought one!

After some time, it seems clear that this organization was able to accommodate my needs over the years. Maybe the organization and I grew together… Whatever the reason, I knew what it meant to me, and there was no question when it came to paying my membership dues that I would pay as a lifetime member.

New York City is such a fast-paced city. I think there’s a lot of lonely people here because things change so quickly that it’s easier to socialize in a transactional manner and it is way harder to maintain relationships. Sometimes it’s confusing or discouraging about what it means to build a life… that looking on dating apps doesn’t seem to help. Physical pleasure also seems to be overly fleeting for me. It seems like helping and being helped goes a much longer distance. As long as there are some boundaries, I think community can give a sense of abundance.

I’ll still continue to explore more ways to fight off a sense of discontent… probably with more decisions that of which my parents would not fully approve.

Dear Diary,

I recently found myself at the Asian American Writers' Workshop, a community space I adore. I'm usually there on a weekday night for a talk or film screening, but this time it was a Sunday afternoon. The elevator doors closing behind me, I walked in and noticed a new configuration of the space: in the center where there would be rows of chairs, there was a large rectangular table with chairs evenly spaced around. The lights were dim. Crayons, coloring books, little stuffed animals, and essential oils inhabited the table top. I sat down, took a deep breath. I wondered what the next two hours would be like.

I used to think that my experiences were unique to me. As a kid, I didn't understand why my parents would fight when I didn't see my friends' families fight. Could I be the only kid in school who didn't want to invite my friends over in fear that my dad would explode at my mom? I understood vaguely that there were other troubled families in this world, but where were the kids from those families? Did they exist, or could I not find them?

School, violin, video games, books, anime—those were my routine as a kid to pass time even when my soul was unsettled. I would get repeatedly hurt—the emotional kind of hurt that lasts far longer than the physical—and each time I would end up in my room, trying my best to ignore the disturbances and do my homework. It was hard to sleep sometimes.

Toward the end of my first year in college, I fell ill after a traumatic family episode. I decided to see a therapist for the first time. I was relieved to finally be able to pour out my story, and my immediate self felt better, but I knew that such relief would be temporary.

New York 2015-2016: I made new friends with other queer and trans Asians. GAPIMNY, the queer and trans Asian Pacific Islander organization that started these Gaysian Diaries, took me in at a time when I was lost.

New York 2016-2017: I would lean more into GAPIMNY's arms and into the arms of the wider QTAPI NYC community. As I became closer to GAPIMNY folks, I would hear life stories similar to mine. Each time I heard an experience that reminded me of my own, I would make a mental note, but there were so many. I saw parts of my life in many of the lived experiences of my queer and trans Asian friends, acquaintances, and people I’ve dated. They were the people who I thought as a kid were nowhere to be found.

New York 2017-2019: I've been piecing together a personal understanding of trauma, especially trauma in the Asian American community. I believe that trauma is rarely a singular event nor does it occur in a vacuum. I discovered that a lot of traumas in the Asian American community stem from common themes and shared experiences: displacement, war, being refugees, chasing the "American dream," language barriers, societal upheaval, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, racism, loneliness. When I found out that my friend’s organization, API&, was hosting a three-part "Healing Across Generations" workshop on intergenerational trauma, I signed up. The workshops would be held at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.

I was sitting on the couches where the speakers at the Asian American Writers' Workshop would normally sit, listening as members of my small group shared their family traumas and stories. My small group discussed how common themes around domestic violence reverberate across generations and how similar types of traumas manifest themselves across different families. Though I have shared my traumas with therapists, friends, and family members before, sharing them with this group felt more healing: I was among folks who understood the gaps of silence between my sentences and who shared my desire to heal in a community of kinship.

I would say I’m a dreamer. I dream of a world where, when each of us are ready, we can share our stories honestly with each other. I dream of a world where people don’t have to feel lonely. I dream of a world of plentitude. I hope that by sharing my story honestly, I give others space to share theirs, too.

Binh Hoang

About API&: We are a small group of queer Asian Pacific Islander (API) folk who came together in 2015 with an objective to center API identity(s) through community building and healing. Our community spaces build bridges across the different API heritages, reflect on internal conflicts and issues that have taken root in our communities, and uplift care culture as a powerful act of resistance.

Early on in therapy, my shrink told me to read about "learned helplessness," a condition in which a person suffers from a sense of powerlessness, arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed. This failure is conditioned, meaning that a person learns to "give in" or "give up" because he/she lives in conditions that create pain and adversity, and that there is no logical solution to make such pain/adversity stop. This helped me understand how systems of oppression are designed to oppress you, and that the status quo cannot, or will not change, to improve your social conditions because it is willfully, and intentionally, created to bring you down and "keep you in your place."'

Learned helplessness was studied on animals--dogs and rats--with certain control groups that were taught (or helped) to avoid suffering--shock, or drowning--while other animals were randomly made to suffer, and conditioned to not fight for life, because their pain would not have a logical solution, or only end on random terms.

I have learned helplessness from all kinds of abuse--domestic violence, bullying, racism, homophobia, xenophobia--what have I not experienced? By this point, I know my life didn't, or won't go, the "easy way." But therapy did help me become aware that despite all the hardship, there is a way through the suffering, and unlike helpless animals, I can ask for help and usually help does arrive.

Knowing where the pain/hostility/adversity will come from, I have also learned how to confront it--to not be surprised or beaten down by the system, but to expect the system to work the way it was designed to work, and to know that the system can be subverted, or denied of its power, if you have the courage to stand up for yourself and say "no."

Sometimes, "no" is the most powerful statement I've learned to make, and when certain situations are not only oppressive, but entrenched in a culture of dominance, I know that I have the freedom to walk away. I do not need nor desire to be dominated and whoever asserts power, control and authority with the language of domination is an automatic warning that this environment is dangerous for someone like me, and my loved ones.

My world has become smaller, and tighter, because these days, more and more places feel entrenched in this dictatorial, alt-right insanity that makes me feel like I'm witnessing the rise of a new Nazi-like nationalism in America. It also makes me feel like I'm witnessing the tipping point towards cataclysmic climate change. Or as Marx described, post-late capitalism where the system exploits and destroys its own.

It is scary out there, and enraging, and it is unveiling to us all how little it cares about changing the way it is. Like a helpless dog, or mouse, I've felt like this is the time to be quiet because there is nothing to do to make things change. But I know that this is not true. And I know that so many are so actively taking action to make a change.

For those who are getting tired of all of this, I guess I just wanted to say that this "learned helplessness" is a condition that after ten years, I have not been able to shake off. But it's a condition that I've learned to become aware of, and to address in my life, by challenging myself to make better choices that help me prioritize my own safety, well-being, and ability to enjoy life with gratitude, and love, for the people I choose to be with. It has helped me regain my agency by realizing that I never needed the system, the system needs us, and alternative systems are out there to replace the old status quo.

I've also learned to find my own voice, to be authentic by embracing my origins, my ancestry, and bloodlines. Undoing the male privilege in my life to connect with my emotions, my feelings, and subjectivity. I've learned to connect with people based on values I believe in, and to go beyond "agreeing to disagree," in order to actively find community that I can be fully on board with. These days, "liberal tolerance" is my second-choice as I prefer to be holistically, and fully present, in my life.

And while this journey has felt like survival, the truth is that I've never been closer to being exactly who I wanted to be, doing exactly what I dreamt of, trying to be my very best self, everyday, while recognizing that the wounded, hurting parts of me require the kind of love, self-care, and healing, the system would deny me if I were a part of it.

It took me time to believe and understand my learned helplessness. But by learning how I felt helpless and depressed and hopeless, I found ways to be truthful, and honest to myself, about how I wish to live with freedom. And this, truly, has been a blessing I am most grateful for.

--

Dear Diary,

I really wonder if I am truly my only kind around here.

It’s rare being able to find other people who are gay and Asian like me. But it’s even rarer to find someone who is gay AND has asperger’s like me. I thought it was tough dealing with asperger’s throughout my whole life. But when I found out I was gay, it started to get even more complicated.

I grew up in a culture where the topic of homosexuality is usually avoided. Even though I come from the Bay Area, one of the most progressive regions in the U.S. of A., it was not easy to talk about being gay. I thought it was easy at first before I found out I was gay when it came to talking about legalizing gay marriage and ensuring gay equality. But when I found out I was gay I found out that this issue was way more personal now.

I am also a Christian, who was accepted into the family by the grace and mercy of my loving God. However, I also grew up knowing that homosexuality was considered taboo. I refused to believe that this was true considering that God loves everyone equally and that we are all one under his eyes. I have done research about the issue between Christianity and homosexuality for so long because there was no way that God would have hated someone like me.

There was no word for “homosexuality” back then. It was only used in the modern English versions of the Bible since 1946. Before, the word used to be “effeminate”. However, since the original text was ancient Greek back then, it had an ambiguous meaning. The literal translation of that word was “soft-hearted”, which also meant being lazy, incompetent, giving up to unhealthy desires, etc. But when this was written, the ancient Greeks used to despise the “effeminate” as “soft-hearted”, believing that pure masculinity was a high virtue. As a result of this poisonous idea, it has caused a misunderstanding that led to LGBTQ+ being targeted for almost two millennia.

For me, I feel that my issue with that is resolved. However, there is another issue that continues to haunt me: being neurodivergent.

When I mean neurodivergent, I mean that people who have personality traits and behaviors that don’t fit in with the neurotypical norm. Neurodivergents like us are reclusive when neurotypicals are outgoing, neurodivergents have special interests, talents, and quirks while neurotypicals tend to focus on more mainstream stuff, but neurodivergents also struggle with issues like depression, anxiety, and difficulty communicating with others that most neurotypicals don’t have to struggle with.

I grew up with asperger’s for most of my life. People like me usually call ourselves aspies. I function like a normal human being on the outside, except that I tend to be more reclusive and more disinterested in many activities and prefer being alone and doing my own thing. I have struggled to relate myself to others since most people don’t share my personality. I live in such an extroverted world, where people are attracted to those that show off and chat the most while people like me tend to be ignored.

Having to deal with loneliness throughout my whole life, I have struggled to be optimistic when most people wouldn’t care if I disappeared from the world. Despite what most people would think, aspies like me actually do want human connection. The real issue is that we struggle to find people who would relate with us and struggle to develop human relationships. For us, we live in another different world where introversion is a norm and we prefer to center our conversations around our own interests. Most people are way different than us personality-wise, and as a result it’s a struggle being able to find a community for us to belong. It can be hard understanding social norms, as most of us prefer to go by our own rules; something that has caused misunderstandings and problems between peers when we do something that makes them feel confused or ticked off. We also have a hard time understanding people’s emotions, personalities, responses, and behaviors, which makes dealing with social situations even harder.

Not to mention aspies like me and others struggle to deal with the ups and downs that happen in life. It was hard for me dealing with stress as I would get easily agitated, which has angered or confused my peers for most of my life as they didn’t know what to do about it. We don’t like change as we prefer our world to be as stable and consistent as possible, and anything that throws that out of the path feels like the end of the world. Despite this, we are not inherently violent creatures despite what the media would say, as in the case of Adam Lanza, an aspie most notorious for the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. We just struggle to deal with life’s struggles. Not to mention, most people with asperger's and autism suffer more from bullying, harassment, and violence than they do against others. People like us aspies have been stigmatized as being mentally-ill or having a mental-disability, which makes us even more uncomfortable being open to others. When people on the internet like to bully others, they call others “autistic” or use the “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” screeching associated with autistic people. Our placement into this “other” category that pushes us to the sidelines for not being in the norm has damaged our self-esteem and our confidence to do well in the real world.

But during 8th grade though, I couldn’t explain myself about my feelings somehow because at that time I thought being called “gay” was a slur. But as I grew older, I realized that I really was gay. I denied myself that for so long because I thought it was not possible because of the stigma attached to being gay. I even tried pursuing a girl for a while to prove myself. But eventually I had to come to the realization that yes, I am, indeed gay.

I came out to people about my sexuality over the years: my parents, a few of my friends, my 10th grade English teacher, and two of my pastors. It was never easy being able to come out as the guy I am. However, even with that, I still struggled talking about my asperger’s, which for me, is even more difficult than talking about my sexuality. It’s easy talking about my sexuality since it has become much more acceptable to do so. But it’s harder to talk about my neurodivergence since it is still stigmatized by society in many ways. I am afraid to reveal my condition to other people since I fear they would abandon me and make fun of me if I did so. All I want is to make long-lasting friendships, and yet I fear the rejection and failure that I usually get.

Since high school, I have struggled with porn, trying to maintain friendships with straight guys, depression from college, and understanding my faith in God. It was only during my second year of community college that I started using apps like Jack’d, Surge, and Tinder, trying to find dates, friends, and chats from other gay guys like me. Unfortunately I don’t hear back from many no matter how hard I try. I can never be as charismatic or talented as others, and as a result I am pushed to the backburner.

Nonetheless though, I try living my life by focusing on academics and my part-time job, as I know that there are more pressing issues to deal with. Yet I can’t help but think about my life throughout the years and how my identity as a gay aspie has shaped it. Honestly, thinking about being Asian has never really touched me since I live in an area with lots of Asians. But the more I learned about gay Asian-American life, the more aware I have become about the issues that affect gay Asian-Americans including the stigmatization of Asian American males in dating, our perception and depiction in media, and many others as well. I can only hope that I can continue to learn more about the community that I belong to and be able to figure out how to fight these issues.

That’s me right here. Someone who’s not afraid to show who I am.

As I turn 21, I think deeply about my life and how the person I am today has developed throughout the years. Just as people have inspired me to overcome societal taboos and my personal insecurities, I hope my letter can do so, too.

Sincerely,

Dear Diary,

I stared at my reflection in a tall standing mirror. I wore a floor-length, sheer, black qipao that barely obscured a red lace push-up bra and matching thong – buoyed by three inches of foam padding around my hips and ass.

This was a signature look for Lychee Minnelli, my part-time-creative-outlet drag queen persona.

To be clear, I’m not Chinese. I’m Vietnamese American. The outfit I wore that night was for a special performance with my all-Asian drag queen troupe the Rice Rockettes, where we acted out scenes from the Joy Luck Club set to the music of “Cell Block Tango” (video).

While my outfit and the performance itself felt innocuous at the time, our current social climate has me questioning my original intentions. In a world of Scarlett Johanssons, I wonder where the line is drawn between cultural appropriation and appreciation? Can culture be loaned out to other communities in the name of art? If I’m Asian, but not Chinese, is it OK for me to don a qipao?

A few months ago, these questions swirled as I stared at a photo on my phone: a white teenager wearing a beautiful qipao to her high school prom – she and her group of white friends posing with their palms together in the bowing position.

Social media backlash was swift, accusing her of cultural appropriation. And her defense was immediate. She saw the dress in a vintage shop and thought it was beautiful. She appreciates Asian culture. Her best friend is Asian. (OK, I made up that last one.) The internet debate raged on for weeks, and folks of all colors, even other Asians, defended her choice.

My own view on QiPaogate is complex. When I wore a qipao on stage, it was to make a statement and to entertain. We took a musical that is inherently American and put our own Asian slant on it – and the outfit was a part of that story.

But when I wore a qipao or geisha outfit or Thai fon lep-style finger nails at other times, I wore them because I thought they were beautiful. I admit that I wasn’t thinking about the deeper cultural significance of pieces I borrowed from other Asian cultures.

I’m reminded of a scene from the most recent season of RuPaul’s Drag Race where Chinese American drag queen Yuhua Yamasaki responds to a question about her drag name. It went something like this:

White drag queen named Miz Cracker: “I thought you were Japanese.” Yuhua: “No, I’m Chinese, girl.” Cracker: “Yamasaki…?” Yuhua: “Well, you’re not a real woman either!” *cue laughter

It was a funny moment. Like Yuhua, I’ve taken liberties with other cultures just to draw a laugh. For a Disney-themed night a few years ago, I took “Just Around the Riverbend” from Pocahontas and transitioned it into a Bollywood-style number complete with Bhangra dance moves. It was a wink to how people confuse “Native American” and “Indian.” It was meant to entertain. It was probably a little offensive, but good drag takes risks in order to be subversive.

But maybe I’m given more leeway to do this because I’m a person of color. Why were people more upset when Katy Perry did a geisha-inspired performance at the 2013 American Music Awards, but less so when Nicki Minaj donned Chinese-inspired garb for her song “Chun-Li”? Why is there more outcry against white rappers than Korean ones?

The debate between appropriation and appreciation is nuanced and complex, especially when the accused individual is non-white.

In a 2012 Jezebel article, Fordham University law Professor Susan Scafidi said that appropriation is “most likely to be harmful when the source community is a minority group that has been oppressed or exploited in other ways or when the object of appropriation is particularly sensitive, e.g. sacred objects.” Maybe minorities are more readily given a free pass with appropriation because there is acknowledgement of the history of oppression and exploitation they’ve already experienced.

But a tide shift seems to be happening. The recent #whitewashedOUT hashtag had thousands of Asian Americans protesting the casting of Scarlett Johansson and Tilda Swinton for characters who were originally Asian in the source material. It’s reported that actor Ed Skrein backed out of a role playing an Asian character in Hellboy after receiving heavy criticism.

Perhaps we’ve reached a critical point where Asian Americans are no longer complacent with having our culture represented and our stories told by other folks. In order to demand for proper representation in media, we should continue to speak up against appropriation and whitewashing when it happens. Maybe people shouldn’t get a free pass anymore.

I know that I’ll think more deeply about my intentions the next time I decide to don a qipao. I welcome the debate and conversation. Just don’t come for me when I put chopsticks in my hair. That shit is universal.

Maveric Vu

--

Dear Diary,

Being a transgendered Korean adoptee has meant a life-long process of coming to terms with identity issues related to gender identity and sexuality as well as to racial, ethnic and national identity. Just as I have always known that I was an adoptee, I have always known that I was transgendered; but precisely what that meant to me and to the larger world would take me decades to understand and articulate.

While there are obvious differences between the experiences of those lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people who grow up in Korean American families and my adoptive family – my Norwegian American father and my German American mother and grandmother, all devout Lutherans – the patriarchal heteronormativity of Korean and Korean American families is strikingly similar to that of the German American culture of Milwaukee in the 1960s that I grew up with.

My parents were not merely ‘Sunday Christians’; they were as devout and committed Christian fundamentalists as are to be found in most any Korean American church in Koreatown in Los Angeles or in Flushing or Skokie. I knew I was transgendered as long as I can remember and certainly by the age of four, though I didn’t have the vocabulary to express it; puberty brought about a realization of my attraction to other male-bodied creatures; but I also realized at a very young age that gender identity and sexual orientation were not topics I could discuss with my parents.

Around the time of my confirmation, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod was taken over by its fundamentalist wing, coinciding with a change in minister at our home church. The likable and theologically moderate pastor I had grown up with and who had confirmed me left us to lead an LCMS congregation in Iowa and was replaced by a fundamentalist minister who preached fire-and-brimstone homophobic sermons from the pulpit just as I was trying to come to terms with same-sex attractions that began with puberty. These developments hastened my exit from the mother church when I moved away to go to college.

I came out as gay in my first semester at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but I understood even then that my first coming out was incomplete one, as it addressed my sexuality but not my gender identity. I spent my fourth year at the UW in a study abroad program in London and stayed for a second year to do my master’s degree at the London School of Economics. In that second year in London, I began going out regularly in public dressed as a woman for the first time, and it was one of the most liberating experiences of my life. But when I returned to the United States after my two years abroad, I also went into a period of denial about my gender identity. However, my mother did come to accept my sexuality just before her death only a few months after my return from London, though she never knew about my transgender identity. (My father died just before I turned 13, and so he and I never had the opportunity to discuss – or argue about – sexuality and gender issues.)

After a career in public relations and another one in academia, I came out as an openly transgendered woman when I moved to Queens in 1997. And while my first coming out was a huge step for me, my second coming out was bigger still in its implications for my life and work. It is not an exaggeration to say that I came out as transgendered through my activism and advocacy work, co-founding a number of organizations, including Queens Pride House (the LGBT community center in Queens) and Iban/Queer Koreans of New York (Iban/QKNY) in 1997 and the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA) in 1998.

I also came to see a parallel between my identity as a transgendered woman and my identity as a Korean adoptee: just as I came to realize that the sex/gender binary constructed an artificial and ultimately false dichotomy between ‘man’ and ‘woman’ (heteronormatively defined), I came to understand that I had a set of experiences and a life history as a Korean adoptee that was distinct from that of Koreans or Korean Americans just as it was different from European Americans, despite my having grown up in a white household and in an all-white neighborhood on the south side of Milwaukee. What had impeded the resolution of both identity complexes had been a false discourse of authenticity; the authentic identity was to be found only through an articulation of the true self and its ultimate expression through advocacy on behalf of those communities of which I was a member.

In February 2000, NYAGRA launched the public campaign for the transgender rights law ultimately enacted by the New York City Council in April 2002. Leading that legislative campaign was the honor of a lifetime, and since that campaign, I have found many other opportunities to speak out on behalf of queer Koreans and other Asians and Pacific Islanders (APIs) and the LGBT community at the local, state, and national levels.

In June 2005, I was honored to be the first openly transgendered person named grand marshal of the New York City LGBT Pride March, the oldest and largest pride march or parade in the world; and in June 2015, during my first trip back to Korea since my adoption at the age of seven and-a-half months, I was invited to be the keynote speaker at the Queer Korea Festival/Seoul Pride Parade, addressing an audience estimated at over 35,000, the largest and most successful event in the history of the LGBT community in Korea up until that time.

Last year, I spoke at LGBT conferences in Oslo and Madrid as well as giving a talk in Oslo last June about my participation in the first US LGBTQ tour of Palestine in January 2012. And I continue to serve as coordinator of the transgender support group at Queens Pride House, work that I know is helping to empower people from many different demographic groups and from across the gender ‘spectrum.’ As the Mahatma Gandhi so aptly put it, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

Pauline Park

Dear Diary,

I’ve had a lot of emotions and thoughts since my father’s death. I don’t even feel that my last entry was emotionally authentic enough.

A year now feels both long and short. Long because a lot has changed. Short because the sh*t I was forced to deal with just kept me busy.

My father had been allergic to paperwork. The English language had taxed him but not enough to be helpless, so he had never asked for help. He also had felt uncomfortable planning his estate because the mere suggestion of death felt like a threat. When he died so suddenly, my mother, sister, and I had to make last minute arrangements for his burial. There was an overwhelming amount of physical things that my father left behind that felt more like responsibilities than treasures. My sister and I took an inventory of all the loose ends. Since my mother wasn’t working, we were particularly nervous around getting my father’s benefits to my mother and handling all the paperwork for the estate. While handling that paperwork, I also had to handle my own.

I guess my legal name change was also a cathartic reaction to the lack of my parents' arrangements. I don't regret doing it but I found out that changing your name is actually quite a pain in the a** and potentially financially costly. I went through a bunch of bureaucracy required by the legal process – including getting the required paperwork in order, getting a court order, putting an ad in the newspaper stating that I was changing my name, notifying Social Security and DMV, and then paying more money to get official copies from the court clerk. They don't give you a checklist of possible records you may have that you would want to change after court but I had a long list. I still had to go to a Social Security office with the court order to change it on my records there. I went to the DMV and paid for a new card. I had to apply in person for a new passport. Then I informed my employer. My employer’s record keeping systems aren’t centralized, especially when it came to benefits, so for a while I didn’t even get it changed on everything. Actually there were even some hiccups with my name misspelled. And I ended up resetting my whole credit history at all three bureaus.

I also changed the gender marker on my passport because it only required a doctor’s note and I wanted affirmation. But, between the keen awareness of how hostile the TSA and officers at the borders can be, and the frequent misgendering I was experiencing, I started wondering if transitioning on paper was enough.

The political climate had only made me more morbid. When I thought about my mortality, I realized that I wouldn’t be happy dying with the way I had my body. I started to physically train to defeminize and/or masculinize my body, but because I’ve been past the physical peak of teens and twenties, it takes more effort to lose weight and gain muscle.

A frustrating pattern had started emerging in all aspects of my life. I’ve been able to invoke change but I kept feeling dissatisfied with the outcome or the pace of progress. This feeling  even showed up at work. They put a manager in charge of that new project I worked on and the only way he could manage the project was to actually get a dedicated team. I agreed to be on that team. However since switching, I have found that the effort demanded by the primary responsibilities on the new team were high, the risks for visible mistakes were high, and yet there didn’t seem to be much appreciation of the work.

This made me feel unsettled. And when I am unsettled this way, I end up deciding on doing something. So I did.

Since I’ve felt relatively safe being authentically myself at my workplace (as I described even in my 2016 entry), I realized that I could start physically changing without being troubled my employer. After talking to friends about testosterone and surgery and the accessibility of all those options, I determined that hormone therapy was probably the best next step.

The only thing that held me back about hormone therapy was my mother. I didn't want to add to her grief, so it was my responsibility to at least communicate my decision. I really didn’t know the technical terms in Chinese and she had known that I live socially as a man, so I simply said I mean to really start becoming a man. She understood and raised concerns about health risks.

I made an appointment with APICHA to start hormone therapy and I asked about the health risks. The health provider was fortunately assuring that I wasn’t going to increase my total risk... I started my regimen of a low dosage shortly after.

My muscles reacted first to the increased testosterone by becoming tighter, then I noticed that it was easier to build muscle from exercising. There has been some changes in fat and weight. Slowly some of my facial hair is coming in darker. My voice is changing, but so subtly such that when I talk on the phone with my mother, she hasn’t seemed to notice.

A part of me gets more impatient the more I reflect on it...but I see that this is also part of my pattern. I could continue to react the same way by accelerating changes -- by taking a larger dosage -- but I don’t think that will address that discontent.

I turned 36 just recently. My partner managed to really surprise me for my birthday and my foresight has been humbled. Perhaps it’s time to embrace the fact that most of life is the journey itself and that there is really no map. At least I can share this journey with this diary.

Until next time,

Dear Diary,

They say you never forget your first love. There’s a reason for this. When you first find yourself taken with another you’re taken by surprise. So, when you fall you free-fall and usually to the bottom of adolescence’s hormonal wishing well. You don’t go in guarded because you don’t know that falling in love is a thing to guard against, at least at first. This is especially true when you’re queer: no one tells you that the feelings you feel for your best friend might be more than those of friendship. You have to parse the pain to figure that out, and the trauma of this first romantic drama will co-author your love stories for the rest of your life.

Simply put: you never forget your first love because, if you’re lucky, your first love is also your first nonconsensual sensual relation.

Mine was, and it wasn’t my last either.

This is what I have to tell you.

He was my best friend, he insisted he was straight, and I’d fallen for him as the leaves fell for the ground around us on the day that everything changed. Teenager that I was, though, I didn’t know I’d fallen at the time. Not for certain. What I knew was that my desires were at war with each other. On one side, the desire to be normal made its last stand from a foxhole dug by the promises of state recognition, family acceptance, biological children, and privilege, pure and simple. On the other side of the war, the stronger side, the desire to touch and to be touched by this beautiful boy marched unstoppably over the battlegrounds of my mind.

We sat in his parents’ driveway that day, my car our only privacy. He spoke first: “what do you need from me?” My engine was running, the heat was on. I said, “I need you to kiss me.” If I’m being honest, dear Diary, I didn’t need him to kiss me to know how I felt. I wanted him to kiss me to know how that felt. (What is the difference between experimentation and instrumentalization?) There was a long pause before we held hands. It wasn’t the romance of laced fingers but the too-tight grip of two arms wrestling for safety. Then, with our eyes closed, we kissed. Our contact was as fleeting as it was infinite and Dashboard Confessional sang along the whole time.

We were two lonely brown boys just trying to survive the small minds of a small town. Our friendship was our only sanctuary from structural stupid—at least until the armies of my desire decided to raze it to the ground. Eventually I told him, “it hurts too much to be your friend.” His reply felt like a lie but I let it be true because I so badly wanted to: “What if I said that we should be more.” What followed were flashes of something just short of sex: mouths met moments that were once just fantasies; hands held tight to things that seemed too good to be true. And were they? Was he expressing a queer impulse even more impossible than my own, or was he simply so in need of a friend that he would give his desires over as hostages to mine?

I probably don’t have to tell you that whatever we had between us didn’t last.

Months later, having fled to college, I gave what was left of my gay virginity to the first cute-enough boy that would let me call him “boyfriend.” We did it in his basement dorm room and by “it” I mean...well, something. I remember wanting very badly to get all the below the belt stuff under my belt; I needed to be finished with firsts. So, bluntly, we took turns getting fucked. It felt like pain and pooping; we announced as much to one another as it happened. It was his first time, too. Looking back, we could have used some more lube and a lot more sex education. Still, it was fun—in the way that trying and failing to swim across the Discovery Zone ball pit was fun. I never imagined that my sexual fantasies would be less fantastic in reality until I actually tried to realize them, you know?

Sometimes—as in your first time(s)—you don’t know you have a boundary until you’ve already passed it. A move gets made, a line gets crossed, and you find yourself standing with someone else in territories ranging from uncomfortable to unsafe. What should happen then?  

A year or so after that first fuck, my first boyfriend, now my first ex-boyfriend, would offer his help upon noticing me drunkenly stumbling to the bathroom at a party. When we got there, he stood behind me as I stood over the toilet and vomited. I was tasting stomach acid and shame when it happened. I felt his hands unbuttoning my jeans, his fingers feeling around beneath my boxers. I didn’t say no (I was throwing up...), but I did struggle to remove his hands from my pants. He persisted, though, and I, barely able to hold my head up, stopped struggling. When my stomach finally emptied I turned to face him, but before I could wipe my mouth clean and my eyes clear he kissed me on the lips and forced his tongue against mine. After a few suffocating seconds I pushed myself free and hobbled back into the party.

It might surprise you but I didn’t think much of it at the time. It didn’t feel violent; it felt annoying and even arousing. He was probably horny and one drink away from where I was. It was stupid, sloppy seduction from someone I used to know—a forgivable crime.

I didn’t second-guess this until the next morning when he texted me an avalanche of apology. Surging, heavy, cold. “Please don’t say anything.” “It will never happen again.” “I’m so sorry.” Like most men, his apology was also a confession. Like most sexual assailants—so, again, like most men—he was a cliché, defined by his evil banality.

Even then, though, I didn’t want to do anything like press charges. Partially this was practical: I had no desire, as Sara Ahmed might put it, to become a problem by exposing a problem. Mostly, though, I didn’t want to press charges because I didn’t think that what happened was all that bad. Assaulted or not, I felt unscathed and unharmed—a product of my patriarchal privilege, no doubt, but still. Certainly, I thought, the impact of his actions did not warrant the consequences he might (but likely wouldn’t) face were I to accuse him of what he had done (and, as a good abolitionist, I didn’t much believe in that kind of punitive consequence anyway). Of course, some will say that my shame or masculinity or yet-to-be-unearthed trauma is causing me to misrecognize my own experience. They might be right, I guess, but I bet those same people would say that it’s my right to narrate that experience and to have that narration respected as truth.

Sometimes a boundary you know you have (or should have) gets crossed, but you find yourself feeling, like, fine or whatever. What should happen then?

I ask because the problems posed by my first love and my first ex-boyfriend are problems that I still confront all the time in gay male (queer masc?) contexts. Consider, for example, a gay bar. It’s happy hour and someone wraps their arms around me. I don’t consent to this, but they seem tipsy, friendly, and harmless enough so I giggle and wiggle away. That same night, someone, I don’t see who, grabs my ass. This act in a straight bar might cross a line, but does it here? Does the fact that I was more flattered than offended make it okay? Maybe we have to let go of hard and fast rules and acknowledge that we each draw our boundaries differently. But, of course, that’s just as tricky. If a super hot stranger kissed me goodbye on the lips I might love it; but, honestly, if a not so hot stranger did the same? No, thank you. So, are the conventionally pretty privileged (read: white/light, thin/built, cis/masc) less likely to transgress? That’s not a world I want to live in—though, duh, I already do—and this is to say nothing about what happens when new hands find involuntary hard-ons on a dance floor, or when some extra-extroverted someone backs into you at a sex party and you find yourself—surprise!—inside of them. Is that somehow not the unwanted sexual contact referenced in New York’s legal definition of sexual abuse? (I’m asking earnestly, not rhetorically.) Is this just the price we have to pay to play?

I doubt it and I have to ask: when does queer context provide for pleasures unknown to the straight world and when does it cause us to confuse sexual misconduct for something else: closeted boys being boys, a right of passage, a sloppy seduction, or a heretofore beloved form of non-normative intimacy?

My point: problems for queer sexual ethics don’t begin when one first attempts to manage multiple partners and they don’t end with the question of consent. They begin before we know they begin and they end when we die (or when our sex lives do). Let’s face it: the scripts of straight sexual ethics fit us like baseball gloves we never wanted. We don’t throw and catch on the same field or in the same way. We may not throw or catch at all. Of course, many queer subcultures have ethically sound sexual scripts, and, even when they don’t, sex without a script isn’t always a bad thing. The question, though, is this: What do we do when it is?

Let me know,

Dear Diary,

I’m claustrophobic, and large groups of people scare me. I also smoke like a chimney and have an unhealthy devotion to caffeine. All of this, made this morning’s stroll through the madness of Times Square after a hearty breakfast consisting of a) four American Spirit cigarettes, b) one large Americano, and c) an empty stomach truly a treat. It reminded me why I need quieter places to read and write.

Writing, just like living, is not necessarily as easy as being shown something to believe in. To me, living is the possibility of finding out something I don’t know. I believe the whole language of life is to discover something I might not want to find out, but something forces me to anyway.

It’s been a while since I’ve written in you, Diary.

I want to tell you a secret, this memory of mine. When we write truthfully, we cut ourselves open and bleed into the things that make us. This secret is from when I grew up, my hometown, where I spent eighteen years sprouting from the soil there, accumulating more and more of who I am as the years when on.

My hometown and I have a difficult relationship. While my upbringing here has afforded me so many privileges I would have never, ever had the chance to have otherwise, it also was a difficult time. We were amazingly awful, yet awfully amazing to each other. On good days we would laugh until we cried and on bad we would tell each other our deepest, darkest secrets. I belonged to it, just as it belonged to me.

My hometown is promising, though. It is a serene, antique lake town that begs you to bury your toes in its sand, and summers near the bay hid cold winters just behind its backs. These cold winters traveled with its residents who owned countless suitcases and impressive passports, but had absolutely nowhere to go. They stood alongside laughing families arm-in-arm, ice fishing and snowmobiling in January, neither shivering nor breathing hard, making sure to appear in-between every shoelace of every little kid’s shoe that needed to be tied, double-knotted just in case.

If you listened closely, you could hear this uncomfortable cold in the words of my hometown’s gossiping mothers, and in the rigid, hardwood floors of houses way too big for the people they housed. It swayed backward, and then forward alongside my fuzzy legs trimming the surface of plodding lake water. I remember this cold along with the low rumble of my car starting up at night, fearful not to wake sleeping parents.

◆◆◆

In high school, I had two very close friends among many acquaintances. I don’t remember exactly when I knew that one of them and I were different. This second friend was my confidant. He challenged me, yet he nurtured me. He was youthful, but more mature than anyone I had ever met. His smile made me foolish and when we laughed I could feel electricity spark between our skin. He made me believe that no matter how inconsequential and minor we were in the world, I would always mean everything to him.

A few months after coming out to each other, we became comfortable with hanging out every weekend at each other’s houses, even on weekdays. I would call them “study breaks”. I found out that he loved Queer as Folk, like me.

“I really love Justin,” he told me, “there’s something youthful about his attitude. And he’s super bold with his decisions. I love that.”

I laughed, “Really? I find him to be super unbearable, I basically cringed the entire first season, other than the last episode, of course. Who would just openly say shit like that? He has no dignity!”

“But that’s exactly it, he’s fearless. He goes for what he wants. Don’t you think it’s better to go for it and fail, than to look back in regret and see that you never tried at all?”

Our relationship was a futile exercise. I was aloof and distant while he stayed my earnest, faithful friend. After seeing each other so often, reacting to each other became second nature to us. He knew me better than I did. All of my obsessive, compulsive tendencies. How I would never cut corners, even in sports or organizing social events outside of school, as if to satisfy not only my father’s fastidious eyes but my own.

That’s why the day he told me he was a girl inside, I couldn’t look him in the eyes.

“I wish I could be your Justin, and you could be my Brian,” she pleaded.

I remember turning to look at her. Her eyes were wide and awake. I became uncomfortable. She had never told anybody something like this before, and nobody had ever told me either. At the time I didn’t even realize things like this could exist, or that they were real for the people I knew.

I was comfortable with her being any gender, any thing, I would love her the same, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t stomach what would happen if my parents and peers found out.

We disagreed over a lot of things, and our approaches to bigotry were different. Headstrong and vigorous, I believed that I was unafraid. I thought that if I hollered loud enough, or beat hard enough, people could see what I had to show them. She believed those who caused pain and suffering were simply pained people who suffered themselves, and maybe, with just a little bit of patience they would eventually come around.

◆◆◆

Later in our junior year, we learned about a string of suicides in our school.

Nothing anyone could have said to them could take away what these children meant. What first started as frenzy quickly became a game of finger pointing and yelling, eventually shifting to mindless documenting, paper sifting, and forgetting.

A lot of people say that someone who takes their own life does not deserve to be buried in holy ground, but all I know is that we will never truly know what goes on in someone’s heart, because we don’t even know what goes on in our own hearts. None of us can definitively say why they did what they did. But I’ll say this, and don’t ever forget it, I see plenty of people who took their own lives but are still walking up and down the streets beside us, preaching the gospel and prolonging this image of unpolluted, sterile perfection. I choose to believe that if the world weren’t so filled with these dead folks, maybe, just maybe, those of us who are trying to live wouldn’t suffer so much.

Later on that year people found out about her being different and talked. People she would use to call her peers, mentors, mentees, and friends at best pretended to not notice her when she passed by them. Years of her memories with them went up in smoke as if they meant nothing, and relationships she had diligently built, or had hoped to build, now would never come to be.

Do you know what it’s like to be alone, truly alone? Maybe you do.

Let me tell you this secret, then. It’s the feeling of losing a family separated only by windows and doors. It’s awoken by the prickly sneers and threats that come with regimented, daily accuracy. It’s telling yourself, It’s alright, it’s alright, if I just hold out a little longer things will get better, but knowing at the pit of your stomach might not ever be. It’s not knowing how to go back and after splashing water on your face to wash off the salt, looking back up to the sky and asking, Aren’t I your child too?

The cold we knew showed itself on the snowy ground outside of homes. Like an old, familiar relative, it was the only thing that said welcome, when homes became houses, no longer belonging to us.

Faggot. Can you look that ugly word in the eyes?

◆◆◆

Finishing senior year was difficult. I remember our family ate dinner early. It consisted of just my father and mother, my father believing the more time we had to digest our food before we went to bed, the healthier we would be. My parents had red wine with dinner, but I usually just asked for orange juice or ginger ale. I wondered about the wine, leftover from in my parents’ cabinet, and if they knew that I had been sneaking glasses of it here and there along with all the catered food on the island countertop. I mentioned some of the things I was going to do at Cornell the next year, join the club tennis team, go gorge jumping, asking if it were possible for me to do a trip to Costa Rica in the winter. My father sat silently, twisting his glass from side to side.

Later that night, I decided to sneak out and drive us out into the woods. I remember realizing when we were far enough out, all of the sights, sounds, and feelings melted into nothingness, the trees swallowing up everything we could see. I hadn’t seen her in a few months and as I looked at her she was reduced to bones underneath her skin. The same youthfulness that made me love her a year ago now fought its way out.

I found us a closeted path in the woods, and when it felt all right, thrust into park, our car choking and moaning from the cold.

I don’t try to hold on to a lot of memories from this time of my life, but those nights out in the Minnesota cold, thinking of suspicious parents who no longer trusted their only child, bring back nothing more than crisp nights, hugging varsity jackets to human skin, flinching at the sharp click of lighting my lighter.

“The junior guidance counselor turned me away today,” she said, “he told me he isn’t comfortable with my situation.”

“What?”

“It’s not his fault, though. I make him really uncomfortable, and I don’t want to do that to him. He’s already uncomfortable helping me because I’m different. He just doesn’t know how to tackle these kinds of issues, I think it’ll be too much for him.”

There was absolutely no way she could have believed a single word she was saying to me, diary, but I knew telling me what she really thought about it was difficult. We were putting on makeup to cover up her healing scars, continually put on more and more until finally, we’d realize one day that all along the concealer was preventing the scars from healing properly in the first place.

“Why are there no gay, Asian people? Anywhere, I’m serious, I’ve never seen even one!” I asked.

“I’m sure there are,” she said, “but I think they are afraid of who they are. No, they’re afraid of what will happen when others discover who they are. I can’t blame them.”

After a few hours, we sat quietly in the ice-cold seats of my crossover, headed nowhere. Directly in front of my line of sight, the sun crept its way out over the trees. I leaned to press my face into her chest and felt the ebb and flow of her breathing, remembering in that moment while both of us held each other, hiding from everything, that she loved me and I loved her, as we’d ever loved or would be loved in this world.

“I don’t know what I should do,” she said.

It’s a really horrible Catch-22 when people bury themselves into the closet to try and live more comfortably, but what they don’t realize is that when they finally do conform like they wanted to all along, it only becomes darker and more uncomfortable. No matter how far back you lean, or how mightily you clench, this half-digested, hateful part of you always finds a way to come back up the way it came.

Every day she stayed here she suffered, and I could feel it as we drove miles and miles along the county roads and highways.

“If I were gone one day, would anyone notice?” she asked me, “Would anyone care?”

“I would. I love you. And I think that you’re perfect, but I don’t know what to do.”

◆◆◆

In mid-June of 2013 after I came back home for the summer, I remember standing and waiting for her on the long beige cobblestones of the circle driveway shielding her house. Several paces in front and behind me, two of her neighbors slowly made way toward me.

Her house was an expansive, traditional build that honored historical precedence. Wary not to cross the conservative rules of traditional architecture, large pillars on each side of its main mass were connected to two perfectly symmetrical colonial wings.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” I heard.

In a few moments, I’d either breathe through me, a soft word, Goodbye, or feel the cold blade of salvation.

I waved at two parents standing and watching us in the foyer window, but they did not wave back.

A few minutes passed, and I turned the key to start the engine. She exhaled a pugnaciously loud, silent breath, eager for me to make my decision.

“I’m ready, Jason. Where should we go?”

◆◆◆

I’m so happy to have found communities like GAPIMNY here in the city. It’s an amazing group, filled with kindhearted, intelligent people. Joining this community after moving to New York has been incredibly rewarding.

Dear Diary,

It first started when I was a child. Family is traditional and strict. Such as comparing their children to others, expect them get good grades, earn high income, give money for parents to spend, get marry early, and produce children. This is what Asian families all want. Being raised in a Western world brings many cultural conflict. For me, I was raised in New York and adopt most Western culture. Hard to let Asians parents understand what is true love and what is the truth of life. My parents are uneducated and parenting is poor. They kept abusing and neglecting me since toddlerhood. This caused me have disabilities. Such as stutter, learning disability, anxiety, and low self-esteem. During all these years, I have trouble letting people understand my speech. Moreover, have social anxiety because few of talking to people.

When I was a child, some of my relatives often fool around with me. Once, my cousin wants to play game with me so we played fighting. Then, things got weird. Such as undressing me and touched me. That time, I didn’t know what this is. Next, nothing else happens. However, this happen multiple times. Having another cousin touch me body-to-body and some family members touching my private part. That time, my mind was fuzzy. Don’t know what happen until I know after growing up.

Years later, still have no loyal friends with me. Many just talk to me during school and play sports together. I just go to school and return home; then do my homework and sleep. This cycle repeatedly occur for years. However, I became very lonely because lack of true love from friends and family. Teachers lost trust on me for not doing well. They thought I’m Asian so should be smart but we are the same as others. In addition, I dislike many random students at the cafeteria kept coming to me asking how to solve their math problems. That time, my mind feel shame because I didn’t know the answer. This is stereotype for thinking every Asian knows math. To be honest, not every Asian is smart or talent. Probably, the Asians they saw on TV; were picked actors or famous people.

As my depression and anxiety gets worse, I have no ways to recover. Nobody would come near me. So I stay in front of computers every day. Watching shows and playing games to reduce down stress. One day, browsed a video with muscular male models. That time, my heart has a strong love beat. Those models entertained me. After keep searching, end up into a porn website. That time, watched those videos for hours losing conscious on time. This continue for months. Later on, mind became aware of my own body so I began touching myself. Understand the human body. For porn, watched many anime straight videos. Then, the male body attracted me the most.

Years later, the videos brought me into gay porn. During high school, bought some DVDs to store and watch. My dad also does this and he is straight. One day, my mom found the DVDs while cleaning my house. She was surprised. Then, she keeps asking me whether I’m “gay”. She said she will die if I am because she expects me date a girl to produce children with no HIV. My family was not educated so they are many things they didn’t know. Even I do tell them, they will not listen because they think their way is right. Kind of like spoiled parents. Next, I kept saying I’m “Straight”. After that, I throw away everything involves gay. This made me missed those stuff. From that time, I start to watch normal contents. Full of women and funny comedies.

During college, met a classmate at my Chinese class. He is gay and dating a Chinese man from China. We talked and go home together for months. He said “We could have been together if I was not dating someone.” This sounds he likes me. But I did not like him. Then, he kept following me by taking the bus with me. I felt annoyed and uncomfortable os him being by me. I said “stop” because the messages he sent to me is so sexual and controlling. Then, he got angered and act dramatic. He act like an actress from drama by avoiding her loved man. To be honest, I dislike dramatic people by getting too emotional and cause drama. My parents are dramatic so I dislike being with people like my parents. After that, he keeps avoiding me. I just focus on my own work and ignore him for harassing me.

Months after that classmate left, I was very stressed and depressed. I posted this on Facebook and then a random person messaged me. He is a member from my non-profit organization where we practice Buddhism. He is an inactive member. On the message, he wants to go to Spa with me. That time, I was curious why he ask go to spa with someone he doesn’t know well. That time, I accept because psychologist said I need to hang out with people. Finding supportive friends. When we went to spa, we have to strip down and go into sauna. It was my first time being naked in front of large crowd. Also, also time to spa. During spa, we went into the jacuzzi, steam room, and shower. The experience was exaggerating. While we are in jacuzzi, he wants to play game with me. Whoever couldn’t answer the question has to tickle each other. After answering few questions, we tickle each other because I answer all questions so he still wants to tickle. Then, he ask sexual question such as, “How often you masturbate?”. Later, he ask “Have you had sex with men?”. These made me wonder what is my sexual orientation.

After the game, he begins touching and squeezing my private part instead tickle. I felt uncomfortable. That time, I request to get dress and go upstairs to relax. Next, we got dress and walks upstairs to take a nap. Hours later, we went to a cozy and quiet room where people take their quiet naps. He sits close to me and touch my body. I was confounded because boys wants it but mind is uncomfortable. This is the same feeling when women were raped. From psychological research, body wants it but mind often says “no”. This made them feel unconcerned. For me, it was the same. I began touching him since he touched me. Then, I decide to tie my shorts tight so he won’t pull it down again. However, he still wants it. I just got out and try to recover my mind. During evening, we are going to leave. He goes to the restroom while I wait for him. Later, he wants me go in with him. He takes me inside a stall and pulls my pants down. Then, things got sexual. Almost had sex but I said “no”. Suddenly, people outside the stall saw us and laugh. I ran out and wash up. Later, ran downstairs; get dress and leave without him. It was the worse experience I had.

After that incident, I didn’t want to talk to him. However, he still contact me and harass me by acting he is the victim. I was too naive forgiving him by hanging out with him again. He invite me to his house and play board game. Then, said whoever lose has to strip down. Same moment, didn’t know what I’m doing. At the end, he touched me and said want to do something horny. Then, we took showers together. After shower, I said to leave because felt uncomfortable and he felt tricked. He kept acting like a victim. Weeks later, he invite me again so I give him 3rd chance; biggest mistake. We play the same same and same punishment. He lost so he was naked. At the end, he made me strip down and touch me. At time, he grab my private part and later made me come out. Body felt good but then mind is full of shame for letting him play with me. After that, I refused his other request on sex. I clean up and leave. I felt so shameful for letting him do this. Immediately, deleted his contact and off-contact him. He did this to a girl before which means he is a playboy; not looking for serious relationship.

During college, I met the same classmate last 2 years at my Chinese class. He still avoids me so I only focus on my own project. He was in my same class for 1 year. Even he does contact me to add him back, I didn’t respond. After what happen on 2016 and 2017; experience made me reject those wrong offers. I learnt my lesson from these two playboys. Same during the time at 2015, I went to a gay club. That time, family was dramatic and they argue very bad. In order to calm my stress down, I went to club and had hookup. My body wants it but mind is rejecting. Had met some guys and hookup with a guy which was a shocking experience. Fear I will get HIV. That time,I had lack of knowledge of how HIV is inject. Worries for 1 year. After testing, was so happy my result is HIV Negative.

After what happened, I took a year break. Same time, I hate those gay playboys. A year later, began to attend LGBT community to understand health and their struggles. While browsing, GAPIMNY came up. The place where gay Asians are safe to discuss their stories. After learning with them, mind gain more knowledge about Asian LGBT. Later, I attend APICHA; health centre for queer to discuss their social problems and health. After learning, I finally know how to keep myself safe and do safe sex without injecting any STDs. After so many lectures, I was ashamed for wasting my time worrying on getting HIV. Now, I would laugh at myself being so anxious.

After attending many meet ups, made new friends and safe environment to experience. Life has a fresh start. Met many kind queer friends. We hang out by attending holiday festivals. Depression and anxiety became less serious after attend many new non-profit organizations. Really thank them offering opportunity and safe space to discuss anything. Not only LGBT community; also religious community. The well-practiced religious community allows us to discuss queer topics. Furthermore, their faith is to love and bring peace. We cannot judge. There are many Christian communities who support the queer. Indeed, GAPIMNY, APICHA, and all other organizations have changed my life. Turn me from young & naive to steady person. From now on, I always observe before trusting any community or people. See if they are safe for us to be around. Many more advices received from psychologists.

Even my family is traditional, seeing me changed can let them see how good my life has become. Giving credits to the communities I’ve attend. Even today, I’m finding supportive friends because not many people want to be with me. Reasons are that I’m boring, direct, lack of knowledge on recent trends, bad memory, untalented, and not intelligent. Currently, I’m slowly learning new hobbies such as drawing, instruments, singing, dancing, and photographing. My goal is to stand up and speak out for the rights instead stay silent. This is how communities or countries kept themselves safe from someone standing up. Know what is right or wrong before speak up. For now, seeing those gay couples and muscular models; made me imagine a lovely bridge. Hope the ones who experienced similar situation as me; could find their bright side overcoming these hardships. There are a lot of stuff we have not learn. I’m also learning. After we know it, life becomes better. Not from online or opinions; from the truths.

Dear Diary,

As a kid, I’ve always been scrawny. A friend’s mother’s passing remark that I looked like a drug addict dented my self-esteem so much that nearly two decades later, it was a remark I still remember.

I had a difficult relationship with my own body. It didn’t help that I realized I was attracted to men when I was eight years old. I rationalized in my teens that I was “physically attracted to men but emotionally attracted to women”, too afraid to use the word “gay” except in confidence to Google.

But I tried. I remember doing a presentation on homosexuality in my English class in secondary school, daring myself to use the words “gay” and “homosexuality” in front of 30 of my classmates.

What was the point of it all? Perhaps it was my way trying to challenge the negativity some of my peers had around what was commonly perceived back then as a “gejala sosial” — Malay for “social problems”. One of my classmates had remarked that he couldn’t imagine why a man would want to wake up next to another man, and I wanted to scream, “Because! This is how people like me are wired to be.”

If the vestiges of my early childhood memories allow, I remember being led through the locker room of a local public swimming pool by my father while I stared with wide eyes at the nude male bodies either in the shower or drying themselves off.

I was probably four or five then. Looking back, the fact that my attractions to the same sex began so young is a testament to the fact that being gay is genetic—an immutable characteristic.

But I was still in Malaysia back then. I was a double minority (ethnically Chinese and gay), with a government that enshrines discrimination against minority races in its Constitution and makes inane remarks such as how men wearing V-neck T-shirts are gay.

Though I have great friends from secondary school who accepted me with open arms, I couldn’t help but feel alone with my sexuality. I couldn’t reconcile my own thin body with the overtly muscular bodies I see in porn — which plunged my self-esteem further.

It was by chance when I was on a video game forum when I found out that a new poster in our private group was gay. With the gay people I know numbering fewer than the fingers on one hand, I was eager to get to know another gay individual. The fact that this person was from New York made it even more incredible as we drank up stories that we told each other about our respective countries.

We were from opposite corners of the world, marveling and pooh-poohing the goings-on from our respective places of birth.

Having never been to Malaysia, Matt flew over to meet me during his summer college vacation and stayed in my parents’ home for a few months. (I had came out to my family by then, and how I managed to convince my parents to host a total stranger whom I have only chatted with online is still a mystery.)

And… we fell in love. Through subsequent years, with limited funds as cash-strapped college students, we only managed to meet in person once a year.

By the time we reached our fourth year of what I felt was the longest distance relationship in the world, we had The Talk: what to do with the nearly 10,000-mile distance between us. Should we break up, as meeting up once a year has always been difficult on us emotionally? Or should we try to be together in the same place?

Having him move to Malaysia is clearly out of the question, considering the anti-LGBT sentiments picking up steam from the government and society at large. Moving to the US sounded like a long shot — though New York state has legalized same-sex marriages, it was still not recognized on a federal level, and so, would not provide any immigration benefits.

But it all changed when we were both in San Francisco for SF Pride in the summer of 2013. We just landed in the city and heard the news from the television of our hotel room: that the Supreme Court has overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)!

What this meant to us is that we could finally bridge that 10,000-mile gap and make plans to start a life together. It felt as if the entire city of San Francisco erupted in a kind of infectious energy the next day, during Pride.

◆◆◆

Moving to NYC was the most difficult decision I’ve ever had to make. My mum passed away a few months after that trip of ours to San Francisco. The devastation I felt was so raw and new, diary dearest, that it compounded when I finally moved to New York. I felt as if I was running away from the horrific memories of seeing my mum’s body disintegrate day by day from cancer.

As a former writer and editor by trade, I had to relearn English—I learned to take out the letter U in words like colour and labour, or convert Z to S’s. Or how Z is pronounced as “Zee” and not “Zach” in America. The T in “maintenance” is soft and not hard like British English is. It’s “lining up at Starbucks”, not “queuing up”; it’s the “trunk”, not “boot.” It’s “high school”, not “secondary school.” It’s making sure that your final quotation mark also brings the full stop in.

I had to learn how to cook to save money, while I was jobless for nearly a year and struggled with the low self-esteem that surfaced and we survived only on my husband’s salary. Did potential employers not want to hire me because I only have work experience in Malaysia? Was it the color of my skin, or the fact that I’m new to this country? Or was I not as good as I thought I was?

It’s not easy to uproot myself to move to a completely different country, leaving behind my close friends whom I’ve confided in tears and laughters and hours-long Gchat conversations, and my family who has stood behind me. It’s not easy to make new friends and navigate this thunderous, rat-racing city when I’m yet again a minority; a triple minority this time—gay, Asian, and an expatriate.

Speaking of which, it’s funny how the word “expat” invokes in me a mental image of white people living in a foreign (mostly Asian) country, while the word “immigrant” seems to have negative connotations these days.

I meet both of these words’ definitions: someone who lives outside of my native country, and someone who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.

I’m still a little self-conscious about my body sometimes, but in this breathtakingly bustling city of 8 million people, it’s easy to shed that insecurity away with anonymity.

After three years of living here, I can comfortably say this with cautious affection:

This is now my home.

Clement Chan --

Dear Diary,

Where do I even begin? I grew up being pretty straight as I was attracted to one of my female teachers who had the biggest knockers. But as I grew older and found gay porn (that was the jackpot), my attraction for women faded. Don’t get me wrong--I think a woman's body is beautiful, but I am simply not attracted to it anymore.

In middle school, I was at a point where I knew I wasn’t attracted to girls like other guys were. I jokingly asked a girl out once in 8th grade and she agreed. I thought having a girlfriend would make me straight again, but nope. It just reassured me that I liked men. During these years, I was horribly ashamed of my sexuality and tried my best to suppress it. Day in and day out, my biggest fear was when people asked me “Are you gay?” or “Why does your voice sound like a girl’s voice?” I feared these questions and feared being outed.

Before high school, my sexuality didn’t really matter much to me nor did I care about it. Then all the hormones hit me. I was so horny for all these jocks and football players. These thick Asian guys turned me on so much. Here and there people would make jokes about me being gay but I never officially confirmed it.

In my senior year in high school, I came out, out of nowhere. It was a Wednesday and I traveled to one of my best friend’s high school and we hung out. I had such an amazing time with her that day that it made me so happy and gave me the confidence to come out. She said she knew it all along and accepted me with open arms.

Slowly throughout my senior year, I came out to the friends of mine who mattered to me most. They all accepted me with open arms. No one hated me because of my sexuality. I never planned on coming out to my family but it just mother fucken happened.

I was crying to my sister because I was failing one of my classes during senior year, and it could jeopardize my chances of getting into college. While I was crying, my sister all of a sudden said something about people changing all the time and gave an example of her friend who changed her sexuality or came to terms with it.

I said to her while I was crying and sobbing up a damn storm, “What are you trying to say?”

She then chuckled and said to me, “Aha aha are you gay?”

Then I said “yeah” and continued sobbing for another hour.

Then I told her to tell our parents to come in here and tell them because I wanted to hear their response. Since I was crying through all this, I covered my head with my blanket, and I didn’t really get to see what their reactions were. They said to me they still loved me, but soon after that session was over, I could tell they were disappointed.

Till this very day, my parents act like that moment didn’t ever happen and they still ask me when I’ll have a girlfriend. It really frustrates me but what can I do.

Throughout high school, I actually met a mentor. I met her weekly discussing my problems and coming to solutions about them. One day she asked me if I was attracted to any of my girl friends, and I said no. Then she asked me if I was attracted to any of my guy friends, and I said no. (Because I didn’t have many guy friends, nor was I ready to come out to her)

However, several seconds later, it registered to me that clearly that is a lie. Obviously I’m not attracted to a potato, so I clearly had to be attracted to the opposite sex or the same sex. Several silent moments later, I came out to her.

Several weeks later, she actually told me she was a queer too, which stunned me. With her help, she connected me with several LGBTQ centers which kind of changed my life. Throughout my time after high school, I never really thought that I was different because of my sexuality. Then people started to tell me that I’m a double minority because I’m Vietnamese-American and gay. Till this very day, I somewhat understand this concept, but not really.

I’m currently a sophomore in college, finishing up my 4th semester in college. I’ve been free ever since high school. I never felt the need to have to come out to anyone. I will gladly tell people if they ask me if I’m gay now and I do not fear people asking me anymore. It amazes me how confident I’ve gotten about my sexuality. It doesn’t really even bother me that I’m gay actually because I’ve never had a boyfriend or anything in terms of that, which would make me consider that my sexuality is not the norm.

Ever since I graduated high school, I haven’t really had an urge to find a soul mate. I felt that I needed to find myself first. Along with that, I struggled with maintaining a close circle of friends. I truly don’t have many and am almost at a point where I would say I have none actually. So, I feel that before I get into a relationship, I would need a solid group of friends. I remember so vividly that in high school, I found a group of gay Asians in San Francisco, and it interested me so much. I felt like I wanted to be a part of their group and be able to act girly or gay whenever I wanted. I’ve always wanted guy friends but never really had any because it's hard for gay guys like me to make friends with straight guys.

Honestly, I don’t even know. My sexuality and ethnicity still has a long way to go. There’s so much more for me to explore about myself. But I’ll update you guys when things get more interesting.

Dear Diary,

“The Less I know the Better” by Tame Impala was playing on Apple Music as a good friend consoled me. I was in a space no larger than a handicapped single-stalled restroom. There was just one tiny single bed, a small TV and what you’d call a closet (but wasn’t really). There weren’t any windows and the only source of light I had was a mood lamp I bought at Ace Hardware™ in a mall called Grand Indonesia in Jakarta. I remembered I was trying to play it cool when, in truth, I was crumbling on the inside.

Earlier in the day, I had a Skype call with television development executives from Los Angeles who initially hired us to write a “diverse and progressive” series. But after a series of drafts, we found out that, like most people in a place of privilege, they weren’t as woke as they thought they were. After whitewashing and slashing the storylines that explored the complexities of being a person of color in America, they wanted us to reduce the women characters to serve the interests of the straight, male protagonist. “It’s a post-racial Millennial world” they explained. To make matters worse, the entire call was filled with attempts to other-ize me, from asking what it’s like to live in a rural village in Singapore to pointing out that my iPhone text-tone -- “ding!” -- was some kind of Asian praying bell.

Afterwards, I really wanted to email them and write: this type of behavior is ignorant and unacceptable. But, considering that I really needed the job and I had a writing partner who told me to let it go because we didn’t want to be rude, I remained silent. The silence of course, was really painful because obviously, this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. In fact, it happens all the time. When people like me speak up about micro-aggressions or feeling left out, the people in power get angry and then I have to take care of their fragile feelings instead of validating my own. I’m always left feeling silenced, powerless and usually attacked for being “oversensitive.” The only thing I could do at the time was to call my friend and be temporarily consoled while listening to Tame Impala (Yes, I should’ve picked a better band for the occasion).

By this time, I had been alone in Indonesia (not Singapore) for 5 months. I was deep in pre-production on a short film called, Pria. During this time, I’d traveled across Java for months and interviewed countless gay Indonesians who either lived or had lived in rural areas. The film ended up being an amalgamation of their experiences told from their perspective, the perspective of the minority. So, within this context, the experience of that not-so-woke-ignorant phone call felt like such a step backwards, especially after being in Indonesia and realizing how ignorance of minority experiences can have such negative consequences. With these LA Execs, I met privileged people who wanted to promote and capitalize on the “global and diverse” world that “we live in right now,” but were so out of touch with the reality of what diversity really means that they ended up, perhaps unknowingly, becoming part of the problem.

◆◆◆

The author directs a scene on the set of Pria

Curious villagers watching the playback monitor during filming

The author and crew filming a scene in the morning

The author and producers stroll through the village “set”

◆◆◆

Out of all my intersectional identities, my “Asian-American-ness” has always been the hardest to fully embrace. I was born in Indonesia and moved to the US in elementary school. In Indonesia, I’m a minority because I don’t look Indonesian and I’m not Muslim. I’m mostly ethnically Chinese but none of my family members know any Chinese or anything about China. When I returned to Indonesia to do Pria, the locals there thought that I was from anywhere BUT Indonesia. When I came to the US for the first time, people were confused AF. They’d mock my accent and would always yell out “Ni Hau!” I’d try to correct them and tell them that I’m not Chinese, but that only confused the shit out of them. They would counter with the only two other Asian countries they’d heard of: Japan and Thailand (I mean really, if you wanna mock someone, get educated, people). There were definitely other FOB children at school, but most, if not all of them, were actually Chinese or Korean so they’d form their own communities out of their shared culture and language. Plus, the word FOB never felt like it applied to me; I came here on a plane, not a boat.

◆◆◆

(Far Right) The author with his siblings at a mall in 1996

◆◆◆

While I had such a confusing time trying to fit within the definition of Asian American, Gay was something that was always clear. That’s not to say that I didn’t have a hard time; like most queers, it was a process. But I always knew that I was gay and there was no question where I fit within that definition. So, when I started making “professional” short, queer films in 2011, I felt like I finally found a community that embraced me for me, for my work, and not the way I looked, or sounded, or how I presented myself. The LGBTQ film community has always supported me. Since I started, my shorts have been accepted to most LGBTQ film festivals domestically and internationally. But a troubling pattern began to emerge as I attended these festivals year after year. The majority of the films I saw were not diverse and mostly affirmed and celebrated the str8 white male ideal. There was always a lack of diversity, not only in the films, but also the filmmakers and organizers. I would always be one of the few (if not the only) minority filmmakers on the Q & A stage.

◆◆◆

The author attends a photocall at Frameline39: San Francisco LGBT Film Festival in 2015

The author at the Q&A for his short film, “Pipe Dream” at the Castro Theater, San Francisco (June 2015)

◆◆◆

This didn’t bother me at first, but after continually facing micro-aggressions at these LGBTQ festivals, in clubs, apps, and other Queer spaces, it started to really impact the way I saw myself and how I fit within the community. It already sucked enough having to deal with ignorant str8 people, but it’s much more hurtful when it comes from the community that you thought you were a part of. A community that promotes itself as being inclusive, a community that knows what invalidation feels like, and a community of film festivals run by, well, mostly people who identify as LGBTQ.

When I arrived at the centerpiece party for the 2017 Frameline: San Francisco LGBT Film Festival, the majority of the attendees were Gay White Men. I felt like I had just stumbled into an exclusive Mean Girls clique. It honestly felt like I was in a Gay club trying to scan for anyone with an interest in talking to an Asian. The way that everyone looked at me, just looking right through me, made me feel like I didn’t exist. When I told them about my short film from Indonesia, I was met with all sorts of assumptions. One sleazy, white producer from New York (who was trying to fuck an Australian actor all night) told me, “I’ve always wanted to go to Indonesia, it’s so exotic!” He then patted me on the back, “It must be so tough for the ladyboys there.” I guess even in a creative, inclusive, “safe” space like a Queer festival party, it’s as hierarchical as it would be in any other social Gay space, with whites taking the top spot. I wanted to think that this was an isolated incident because I’d been to this same exact party twice before and had a fantastic time. But, I slowly remembered, those other two times, I went with my white friends. There were, in fact, other incidents that occurred throughout the week including (but not limited to): being mistaken for another Asian on 3 different occasions and being grabbed in the ass by someone as I was leaving my Q & A (the latter could just be straight up sexual harassment and has nothing to do with race… but, in my experience, just looking like an “Asian Twink” in a Gay space usually gives other men the permission to violate our bodies...plus the Australians and Norwegian there didn’t get their asses grabbed).

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The author attends a photocall for the shorts program, “Worldly Affairs” at Frameline41: San Francisco LGBT Film Festival

The author during the Q&A session for “Pria” at the Castro Theater, San Francisco (June 2017)

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Of course, how can these white people understand wtf is going on with us “ethnic folk” if most of the films in these programs just affirm their str8-white privileged personhood ideal? There’s already a lack of Gaysians in the mainstream media and when we are ~lucky~ enough to make it on screen, we are only reduced to exotic stereotypical objects of desire or sexless, unattractive background players. If these are the only images shoved down everyone’s throat, it’s no wonder we’re always considered an Other…

Because these LGBTQ film festivals promote themselves as an inclusive safe space, this time, I decided to speak up. Surely, they would somehow understand. These organizers would know what it's like to grow up and not see (LGBTQ) characters like themselves on screen, or at least ones who weren’t child molesters, rapists, villains, creepy psychopathic old men or “sissies” serving as the butt of the joke that reduces their personhood to a minstrel show. They would understand what it would feel like to be erased, othered and/or misrepresented.

I sent out a mass email, Bcc-ing every LGBTQ festival that I’d been accepted to this year (and ones I was rejected from). In the email, I detailed how, when attending these Western festivals, I was always seen and treated as “other” because of my race. I told them how much their programming affects how LGBTQ POC are seen and treated within the general community. I tried to explain that by not including films like Pria, films from the other half of the world, in their LGBTQ Film Festivals, they are effectively erasing our stories and shutting us out. If there are minority films, we’re almost always grouped by race or by issue (why do white people only like us when we’re a cause to fight for? Even then, they want us to be a cause with hope). Are we not good enough to be part of the regular gay white programming? In times like these, programmers, the gatekeepers and privileged people in power have the responsibility to really examine what diversity means to them. Honest and complex representations of minorities are important (as well as minorities behind the scenes). This also means being strategic in programming these types of films. Not only do they determine how other people in the majority see and treat us, but they also shape the way we think and feel about ourselves.

The responses to the email were varied. “Seriously. Well-put,” said one LGBTQ festival. The rest refused to consider my point of view and instead resorted to belittling me and accusing me of being bitter for not having gained a spot in their program (like, honey, please. I sent the email to festivals that I DID get into too). But, to be honest, I am fucking bitter. These invalidating responses automatically reminded me of what happened in Indonesia a year before: that Skype call with the executives, and the many other times where I was either whitesplained and/or mansplained.

So yes. I’m absolutely bitter and I’m fucking angry.

How can I not be when I see these LGBTQ programmers complain about Donald Trump or say that they’re promoting diversity when their actions (or inaction) speak otherwise? Diversity isn’t just literally black and white, it’s something more complex; it occupies the gray area in the middle. Many people seem to think that just because you put a handful of Black people on screen (there are OTHER races too, you know?) and showcase minority “issue” films (on Gay refugees, Gays in the Middle-East, etc.), they can solve racism and inequality.

In truth, however, the work is far from being done. It doesn’t matter how many POCs are on screen if we are only reduced to stereotypes or, in the opposite case, neutered to the point where our complex experiences are distilled to white-people-cause-of-the-moment or worse, erased altogether. I just want to see my goddamn experiences represented accurately and truthfully.

I know that the work is hard. We have to dismantle a system of oppression that has been in place for hundreds of years that’s still an ongoing problem not just within the LGBTQ community but society at large. But, still, I expected better from our own community. How can a community that is fighting for equality perpetuate a system that promotes the invalidation of members within their own community?

It’s a system that allows for my bosses in LA to ignorantly make insensitive comments about my race via Skype.

It’s a system that enables a white, friend-of-a-friend at a Thanksgiving party to confidently assume, because of where I met the host, my appearance, and my non-English name, that it was my first Thanksgiving.

It’s a system that excuses gays when they put “No Asians” on their Grindr profiles and justify it as just “preference.”

It’s a system that allows an African American drag queen in New York to call me up on stage and mock my race and question my Americanness, while excusing such behavior as jest.

It’s a system where, when I was 17, a white, visiting professor took me to his home and raped me, assuming that I wanted it because I’m a “submissive Asian Bottom” who should’ve “relaxed more so that it would’ve felt better.”

It’s a system where, if I do speak up against the people in power who are supposedly on my side, I’d be dismissed and made to feel that I was the problem, that I was the one who was being overly sensitive and needed to check my feelings.

But, the thing is, I’ve been checking my feelings. I’ve been checking my damn feelings every day of my life. And you know what? I’m tired. I’m tired of them saying, “I can’t be racist or ignorant, I have black friends...” or “You obviously haven’t seen our program, we have an eye for colored people!” or whatever dumb-fuck excuse they use to deflect from the actual problem and validate their inaction/behavior/ignorance. It’s time for them to check their own damn feelings and realize that for real change to happen, they need to shut the hell up and listen. I’m sure they’re all well-meaning, but in the end, good intentions won’t matter much when the results are tone-deaf and continue to facilitate segregation and inequality.

I think that as we gain more acceptance within the mainstream, those who are now in a place of privilege tend to forget what it felt like to be in the minority. They forget those in the past who helped fight for our rights, they forget other members of their own communities who are still suffering, they forget what it felt like to be degraded for who they truly are, they forget what the real MO of the LGBTQ community is: Equality. There isn’t just one answer that will fix this Racism problem. The work needs to be highly personal and it starts with examining our own selves. It starts with listening to other members of the community without preconceived judgments and really examining the whys and hows of this system (of privilege) operating within our own lives. And look, I really get it. It’s hard to ask yourself why you’re not attracted to Asians, or why you’re still repulsed by femininity, or why this minority still feels left out when you went out of your way to create a safe space for them. We all want to believe that we’re fighting and living for the right things. And I think it’s now time to stop believing and start doing the real work.

As the Tame Impala song came to a close, I stared intently at my Ace Hardware™ Lamp. It was my only source of (literal and somewhat figurative) light, so after being in this dark room holding in my feelings, the warm glow of the light was oddly comforting. I started sobbing and my friend said, “Don’t worry they’re just hypocritical wannabe-liberal white execs… What else can you do?”

“But..,” I responded. “One of them is black.”

With much love, forever and always, Yudho Vanderhof Aditya

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Dear Diary,

Do you remember when you first landed in Honolulu? I was nine years old, and I saw the seasons change from the frigid Korean winter to a gentle, wet Hawaiian January. Maybe it was just a sign to show me that I, too, would be plunged into seasons of rapid change in the twenty years to come.

The nosy busybody that I am today takes root from me as a little kid who stuck his nose where it didn’t belong. I always knew that I was undocumented. To be exact, I knew that my family tried our best to adjust our immigration status through many years to no avail. And very unlike my peers for whose heartbreaks came at one moment like a giant wave that they found out that they were undocumented, my heartbreak came in pieces. Like the time we couldn’t go to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Like the time I had to leave blank the boxes on my PSAT scantron asking me what my Social Security Number was.

We came to call Bergen County, New Jersey home after realizing that the warmth of the Hawaiian sun wasn’t enough to sustain our family. By then, my father had left my mother. It was just the three of us living in a town overlooking New York City. Not understanding English, I sat gazing out into the windows wasting my days away. I’d nod off from time to time, and my teacher was fed up with me. She asked me why I kept on falling asleep in class, so I explained to her that I waited for my mom to come home from work every night - a little past 11 o’clock.

I still remember the exchange that I had with my sister when I got home. She was angry that I had told my teacher all of this. And I retorted back to her that I was proud of my mother for working six days a week to support us as a waitress. But the message was clear. We were supposed to live a life that wouldn’t raise questions.

And that much I did. Until eighth grade, when Mr. Johnson, my music teacher, pulled me aside, and asked the question in earnest, “Tony, are you gay?” It was a question that launched a thousand ships and thrust me into a spiral of questions - questions that I didn’t have the luxury to ask, and definitely questions that I couldn’t have other people asking me.

In high school, people asked me more questions. In my junior year, I was asked point blank, my back against the lockers, “Are you gay?” I remember being asked, “Tony, why don’t you drive?” on my bus rides home. And for those questions, I had to come up with answers that I wasn’t comfortable with. No, I wasn’t gay. I didn’t drive because I didn’t want to contribute to global warming and the rising gas prices. Very luckily, my high school years coincided with the spike in oil prices stemming from Katrina and the Lebanon War. (This is a sentence construction I never dreamed of writing.)

I somehow stumbled into going to college seven hundred miles away from my home, sweet home in North Jersey to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Kentucky. It was after twelve college applications and subsequent rejections to private colleges for the reason that I could not pay the tuition, being fully aware that state schools would not provide me with aid.

When the first decade of the 2000s came to a close, several things rocked my world. First, Barack Obama was elected president — and while there is no doubt it was a historic win, that came with the accelerated deportations. Every night, I woke up breaking in cold sweat with nightmares that ICE agents were knocking down my doors to take me away. Second, with the financial crisis, my school started looking at corners to cut: specifically, me. What could I do? Third, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer - I suppose the years that she gave to waiting tables in smoke-filled restaurants and breathing in the toxic fumes in nail salons finally caught up with her.

Like a match lighting up a stick of dynamite, the DREAM Act, everything that I had been pinning my hopes and dreams upon, failed. It would have provided me with a way out of living a life where I had to run away from questions. But because six Democrats decided to vote against it, my dreams came tumbling down. I still remember clutching onto my flip-phone for dear life waiting for a text telling me that my dreams came true on that drive to Michigan.

There I was, facing a future where I could only see myself taking care of my mother, never being able to come out. I didn’t want to. I told myself, I only had the right to complain only if I tried my best. So I’m still trying my best.

There’s only so many corners you can face until you start biting back because your teeth are all you have left. I started speaking out. I started sharing my story with my friends. I didn’t know it back then, but I was organizing. I went to a conference of undocumented young people in Memphis, Tennessee. They dedicated a portion of the program to the concept of intersectionality and highlighted LGBTQ undocumented folks. At the end, they asked all the people who identified as LGBTQ to step up to the front. I don’t know what came over me, but I guess I was tired of running away from questions. For the first time in my life, I started answering questions.

In the same room, I didn’t see other Asian American faces. It left me with an appetite to see my community wasn’t left out in the shadows anymore. And maybe it’s because of that, I became the first Asian American youth to come out publicly as undocumented on the East Coast. And maybe it’s because of that I’m still speaking up.

I even ended up on the cover of TIME magazine on June 14, 2012 with a group of my peers and Jose Antonio Vargas proclaiming that we were American - just without papers. The day after, it seemed like all of our tribulations came to an end: President Obama announced Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program that provided me and 800,000 of my peers with a work permit and a reprieve from deportation.

In those five years, I’ve worked to make sure that the rest of the 11 million who weren’t covered by DACA were not left out. I worked at a community-based organization where I was pressured to keep myself in the closet so that they could continue their work without antagonizing their relationships with the heavily evangelical Korean American community. I walked 11 miles from St. Patrick’s Cathedral to Staten Island to pressure a Republican member of Congress to vote yes on immigration reform. (He didn’t.)

After Election Day 2016, I saw the world around me for what it is. A sandcastle. A house of cards. That these protections were temporary, and the focus was on the word temporary. I did what I did six years ago. I bit back.

On January 21, 2017, I helped organize one of the biggest marches in Washington, D.C. as one of the national organizers for the Women’s March on Washington. The day prior, as I took rest in my hotel room, I caught a glimpse of the inauguration coverage on the television. I cried into my bed, asking “Why do you hate us so much?” It was time for me to ask questions and get my answers.

That same night, I went on an errand to Target in Columbia Heights to purchase a printer for the march. As I stood in the checkout line, they made an announcement over the loudspeakers, saying that they were out of poster boards. I broke down and cried again: the people were with me. The next day, as a crowd of 3 million started turning out at 5 a.m. on a deserted Independence Avenue, I knew that I wasn’t alone. And that I had something to fight for.

On September 5, 2017, the decision was made. The program that breathed life into me was ended because White supremacists had the loudest voices in the White House. Nobody had asked for this except them: not the business leaders, not the evangelicals, not the grassroots. But in the end, White supremacists won the White House. They were determined to rip me and 800,000 of my peers away.

That same day, I was out in front of Trump Tower. I shouted the same chant I had been shouting for nearly seven years: undocumented, unafraid. And underneath the sunglasses, I was crying. Not for myself. I had been ready for the moment that the shaky ground gave way beneath me since November 8th. I cried because this was the future that my mother had fought for. The same future that she sacrificed her legs and one of her breasts to. And it came crumbling down like a sandcastle.

On this coming January, twenty years will have passed, and it seems like an eternity will have passed. In Korean, we have this expression that the rivers and mountains change every ten years. So by next 2018, the rivers and the mountains would have changed twice.

The Korea that I remember no longer exists. The only thing that awaits me there is a two year mandatory military service where they go on regular witch hunts to out gay men. I speak Korean well enough, but I speak it like a very intelligent middle schooler and write like a third grader. I draw my line in the sand. My life is here. The family that I have is here. Everything I am is here.

Right now, the world seems like such a precarious place with hurricanes battering the most vulnerable communities, battles to defend access to healthcare raging on every two months, and possibly a nuclear war looming over our heads. But the fact of the matter is that in about 160 days, the first batch of people will lose their DACA protections. There is nothing that stops ICE agents from storming their houses to deport DACA recipients and their families at the strike of midnight. How do we make sure that we still stay in the spotlight so that people remember us?

I still go back to that stage on January 21 in my mind all the time. This is the answer. It reminds me that I’m not alone as I, one of 800,000 and 11 million, sink into a sweet uncertainty as strings from our tethers unwind.

Tony

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Dear Diary,

As summer and Pride approach in Seattle, the sun makes me feel more social and happy. At the same time, I am anxious for what else awaits me in life. When I came out in December of 2014, I wasn’t sure what I would find by downloading my first app, Jack’d. I have been out for 3 years and there is still so much out there I have to experience. During times like these, I can’t help but reflect on life.

Perhaps I was an exception, but I never felt that there was a lack of Asian male roles models in my life. I never had to look to media because my father was my male role model. While he was not the most educated man, he somehow had a confidence that didn’t come solely from his physical prowess as a Taekwondo master. He let his actions speak for themselves and his self-assurance was always something I wanted to emulate.

Growing up I was constantly told by many that I looked identical to my father. As much as I hated it, I was a timid person who was discouraged easily. I never had confidence like my parents, but in some small way I hoped that one day I could be as respectable as them. I wanted to be like my parents and wished I could be someone with some worth. Maybe I could inherit my parents’ characteristics.

It was roughly during middle school when I discovered my sexuality. I was curious why I didn’t have the same urges as my peers. Many of my classmates began ‘dating’ and expressed interests towards each other. Out of paranoia I kept myself at a distance from others. It wasn’t uncommon for me to be targeted because of my meekness. When I learned this part of myself that was ‘different’ I repressed myself further.

I was lonely at school, but I wasn’t as depressed because I had my family. Even if school life wasn’t perfect I tolerated it till my father was diagnosed with cancer on my 12th birthday. Seeing the man who was in my eyes a symbol of strength and respect reduced to vomiting his meals, I felt only insecurity and anxiety. I resorted to food to find some kind of comfort. My mother tried her best to support both my father and me. Till this day I am not sure how she managed so well.

After facing betrayal from family and church after my father’s passing, my trust in humanity disappeared. Teachers and students made fun of my Korean/Asian heritage or my weight. Some of my family tried to gain money from my widowed mother. Being ridiculed at school by students and teachers and then coming home to an emptier household, I lost interest in life.

Looking to church for guidance, I desperately searched for answers. I tried to find comfort from a place that preached about kindred love and spiritual fulfillment. Yet all I found in return was hypocrisy and backstabbing. Many didn’t practice what they preach. Students who supposedly valued Christianity skipped out on bible study. Adults used their faith as a scapegoat for their actions. People who I entrusted personal thoughts with, spread them around as common gossip. I was afraid that people would find about my sexuality and use it against my mother and me.

I lost the rest of my self-esteem after believing in the Church’s stance on homosexuality. I wanted to change my attraction, but I knew I couldn’t. I felt that my life was pointless and that I would be doomed to an afterlife of only misery. For the longest time, I was not truly existing.

◆◆◆

At some point, I decided to go into the world of ‘dating’ apps. Looking back on it I had no real reason beyond curiosity. It was a decision I made on a whim.

When I came out I was invited to come to a house party. I had just downloaded the app and I had no real exposure to the world. At first it was kind of intimidating to be surrounded by so many gay Asians. I was in a new setting that I thought didn’t exist. Despite my awkwardness, I was meeting up with them quite frequently each weekend. Yet each time I found myself slowly integrating with wonderful company. Before I had trouble making genuine connections with others. Maybe it was because I wasn’t truly honest with myself and thought people couldn’t accept the real me.

I am not sure what it was about me that they approved of, but they gradually helped me learn more about myself and the world. Before I always doubted that others would want to spend time or get to know me. Yet these new friends had something genuine about them. For the first time, I was having fun but also more open with who I was to others. Instead of merely existing, I was looking forward to new events and adventures.

I used to stay at home alone drowning all my time on the Internet for distraction. Be it my anxiety or inferiority complex, I couldn’t bring myself to be more expressive around others. Yet here I was enjoying the company of good people-each person having something about them truly admirable, be it in career success, morals, the way they carry themselves or genuineness. I was privileged to be in the company of such great people. I may not know everything that they have endured, but they couldn’t have had lives without challenges. Yet here they were as stronger individuals with not only great personalities but also an appreciation for life that was infectious.

I felt myself becoming uplifted and enjoying the moment being around them. I began taking better care of myself along with an improved mentality. I was eating healthier, exercising and more importantly sharing great moments with good people. Slowly but surely my self-esteem and wonder for life was coming back. What seemed like an impossibility before, was now gradually becoming habitual. I began making genuine friendships that I know will be lifelong and enriching. I felt a worth in myself that I hadn’t felt since my childhood. For the first time I felt attractive.

Even though my mother had a hard time accepting I was gay, she saw a change in me that she hadn’t seen before. Now she humorously asks me about my dating life occasionally. As strange as it is, I’m fortunate that I have a supportive mother, even though our relationship is like a cliché straight woman and gay male friendship. I was blinded by own cynical view and assumed I would lose my family if I came out. Yet now they see a different side to me that allowed us to reconnect with each other.

It was then I learned that people truly can surprise you. Nothing is ever absolute. I was almost at a point of abandoning humanity as a melancholy misanthrope. Yes, there are tendencies and suspicions that some people will not respect you for whatever reason. There are also good people and you never know how much a person can surprise you. There may be a lot of pain along the way, but finding those few good moments make it worth the journey.

Pride does mean accepting and loving an aspect of myself that I struggled with before. More importantly, it celebrates all the moments that led me to where I am now. I used to wish for things to be different. I wanted to be what I considered ‘normal’ and I daydreamed about an easier life.

However, I would not be the person I am today without all those moments. I wouldn’t have been able to meet the good people in my life who helped me become a different person. I cannot change what I have experienced nor can I erase the people that have hurt me. However, I can change how I let those events mold me.

I have a choice to be better because of or in spite of what life gives me. And I choose to take pride in my life. In that sense, I’m starting to build my own confidence like my parents. It might not be the same as theirs, but it is my own. I’m proud of it, just like how I’m proud of being a gay Korean.

Eric Yom

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