Popagandhi

something finally tripped

Being gay began the day you understood, the day you were both relieved and unnerved. Childhood memories of always looking at the ‘wrong people’ now impeccably explained; but what to do now, somehow excluded. Like those annoying people who tell you a secret then change their minds midway.

It’s never glamour, despite what it seems. The glitz — Just something to cling on to, when we are clearly denied all other forms of it.

Being gay begins with the location and the expulsion of shame and fear. Not doing so requires you to be an imposter, to laugh along at a ‘gay joke’ you clearly don’t think is funny. It is about being laughed at and joked about, when what you are, distilled, is a three letter word flexibly adopted the world over to cover the range from promiscuous to effeminate to masculine to crazy to schizo to cocksucker to carpet muncher to gay militant to sodom and gomorrah to heartbreaker to anti-family to bad jokes about anal sex and idiotic men wanting threeways; so how does one go on?

It’s like saying: because you’re Chinese you must be a dog eater, a communist, have a tiny penis, you must eat your babies. Spellboundingly inane, and yet we live with this every single fucking day.

Being gay is a balancing act in three parts. With ourselves, our friends and family. With our partners. With the outside world. Imagine having to keep a mental checklist of the people who “know” and people who “don’t know”, which of your friends should be informed and which should be led to ‘hear about it from someone else’. Not being able to hold the hands of the one you’ve loved for nine months, constantly having to relegate her status to “a very good friend”. Religious and cultural inhibitions, if any. Fear and self-loathing in Las Vegas, Singapore, through to Sydney. Friends and family who love us but “hate the sin and not the sinner” � nothing which comforts you at night, really. Who you correctly suspect, believe your unions to be necessarily inferior to theirs. No matter what.

That newly minted couple there, they can’t have been together for a week. And how easily they get away with having their hands up each other’s shirts in public view. You accidentally called me “baby” today, as we always do out, but did so in an audible manner in a public place. Everyone turned to look, mouth agape. Everyone.

Being gay is understanding you can’t ask for more than what you get, like that child who was always denied treats and excursions for no apparent reason. You know, I still find it fascinating, no matter how much I think about it: the CPF-rich man downstairs can send for a Vietnamese bride anytime he wishes, and yet in order for my partner to be even recognized by the law should I suddenly die today or tomorrow — I will first need to uproot myself, leave my family, friends, my country of birth and residence?

And yet most of us wouldn’t ask for more than a decent — and sane — lover.

To be gay is to take loss and longing as the rule rather than the exception. Crushes you desired but who you just knew were out of bounds (unstraightening is too much of a burden); lovers who were only experimenting (the manifestation of that burden); partners who do all the usual things partners can do to hurt. Friends who try to change you. Families whose hurt, you could almost feel personally responsible for. Families who think your being gay is their fault.

Someone once kept asking me, and wouldn’t relent: where’s your boyfriend from? How come you never told me about him? From having seen me pick up a telephone call with that voice reserved for ’special someones’. I got mad and flustered, I couldn’t lie; it was wrong to lie about it. Saying “I’m seeing someone but it’s not my boyfriend” didn’t do the trick, she needed elaboration. When she finally got it she said, “Can I pray for you?” Yeah over my fucking dead body.

If I am angry it is only because there’s only so much pretending I can do. I can’t pretend it doesn’t hurt. I can’t pretend I don’t want to bash into the ground every single fucking man/boy who honestly thinks he can watch or have a threeway; I just can’t stand for one more moment of the insinuation that they’ll show us what we’re missing out on, when we obviously are getting on even better without. These same people who fear gay men’s designs on them when clearly, they aren’t good looking enough for that. I want them all to know that all those times a gay man looks at you is probably to check out how terrible your dressing is, and they’re not sure how your unmoisturised ass is tolerated by women.

I can’t pretend I don’t dread the day when I will see the hurt on my parents’ faces when they finally understand why only one girl ever stays over at any given period in time, then disappears from my life, and is replaced, repeat and rinse.