Interview
I am the child of Chinese immigrants. My dad is from the North of China and my mother is from the South of China. Because they’re from two different parts of China their marriage was not initially blessed by their parents. They had three children; I am the only boy and the youngest. They really, really wanted a boy, I think mostly so someone could carry on the family name. I think they were very pleased when they had me, but then of course I grew up to be gay!
My family lived mostly in Flushing, Queens, New York City. We moved to the suburbs for a brief while to an area that was very, very white where I was one of the only Asian people, and that’s when I did notice my race being a big issue.
I didn’t feel like I had a lot of role models while growing up. It was hard for me to picture being an adult gay man. You didn’t see it on TV, you didn’t see it in movies. And then if you did, usually the queer person was the villain. And the same thing with Asian males: Usually it was a negative portrayal of some sort: comic relief, super nerdy, or somebody completely undateable.
When I was 16, I accidentally stumbled upon the gay pride parade. It was the first time that I’d seen so many gay people in one place. I remember following the parade to its end near Christopher Street and they had all these information booths with different flyers and booklets, although not a single one of those magazines or pamphlets had a gay Asian male in it.
I came out before I ever had sex. I remember our public school sex-ed classes weren’t very detailed. I thought they explained intercourse well, but when I came out of the closet, I thought oral sex was two people kissing and I thought anal sex was two butts together, which didn’t make sense. I got together with my first “boyfriend” when my militant lesbian friend made me kiss another guy from our BiGL youth group in front of an antigay protester in the subway.
After high school, I wanted the exact opposite of New York, and was also searching for the meaning of America and my place within it, so I moved to a few small towns over several years. I was also rebelling from the intense pressure of my Chinese parents to go to the best college and become a lawyer or a doctor. I wanted to visit Alaska so I went there and worked at a salmon cannery. I lived in Colorado and worked for a ski resort. I worked at a bunch of national parks—in Utah and West Texas, and at Yosemite and Yellowstone. Even in these small towns I would find other gay people. There was always a risk of bigoted violence, and I would often hide my gay identity but obviously couldn’t hide my Asian-ness. After several years, I moved back to New York and really embraced gay life.
Someone told me about this movie Trick; the plot is a guy meets a go-go dancer and they’re trying to find a place to have sex, but actually get to know one another. And I was like, Oh, go-go dancing sounds fun! The only place that would hire me was the Asian bar so I ended up dancing there for a while. It was a two-level place and for some reason most of the Asian guys would hang out on the lower level dance floor, and most of the white, older guys would congregate upstairs, which had a wraparound view of the lower level. It felt very predatory to me: guys looking down, almost fishing for their next Asian boyfriend.
We all get objectified, I think, and to a certain extent I think as gay men we want to be objectified. Personally, I’m not a fan of certain “rice queens” who objectify people down just to the base of race and it’s no longer about who you are as a person. Lately I do notice that a lot more guys are open to dating or sleeping with Asian men; it does seem like the younger guys are less race focused. And there are finally Asian guys who are in leading roles on TV and in movies, being portrayed as romantic leads and sexual beings. We are turning a corner.
My advice to younger adults is you’re a lot cuter than you think. I used to think that people were staring at me because I was Asian, but I think some of those people might have been looking at me because I was cute. Live your life and enjoy it, don’t be afraid to take pictures that show yourself in a sexy manner, and take care of yourself.
