Category: Reflections

I’ve been commuting to work by bicycle every day for the past few months. I love it–the freedom of movement, the fresh London air (well, as fresh as city air can get…it’s infinitely fresher than the stale air pushed through the tube system anyways). It’s also free and environmentally friendly, and I get the sense that I am in control of my own path and daily destiny.

But I was late to start cycling in London. In fact I only started last August, despite my five years in London and the two-plus years in my current flat. Granted, I spent the first three years of my life in London living close enough to the office that I walked every day to work (yes, a real luxury, I know). But the real reason why I didn’t start cycling earlier was that I was terrified to do so.
 

So many times, I’ve seen close calls between cyclists and buses, taxis, cars, pedestrians, and even other cyclists. This city wasn’t built for cyclists and what few bicycle paths exist are laughable. And as a result, the very thought of cycling in London filled me with dread. So I stuck with the tube and bus system, which was safe, familiar, and convenient. But that also meant that I knew nothing of the joys that cycling would eventually afford me, and so I lived my life by the set path of the London tube system’s map, stops, and schedules.

And so of course with this upcoming wedding I have been thinking about my past and my own path through life. There was once a time that I was similarly terrified of coming out of the closet. Like many others, I thought it was just a “phase” at first. And I convinced myself that once I scratched the itch and got “it” out of my system, I would go on to do what I had been brought up thinking I was supposed to do, which was to eventually get married (to a woman) and have kids and carry on the family name. I was 18 at the time.

That first itch I scratched, while I was still in university, turned into far more than a flight of fancy. It turned into a 14-year relationship that unfortunately did not end well, but which I do not regret one second of. I’m still friendly with my ex and his family, and without their love and support throughout those 14 years (and beyond), I would certainly not be where I am today, nor the person I am today.

But back to my terror…The closet was a safe place to be, and I was not at all comfortable with the thought of stepping foot outside of it for a really long time. What would people think? How would people judge me? So survival mechanisms kick in. You learn to create all sorts of lies to your friends and family about who you are with, how you spent your weekends and holidays, and even who your friends are. And with each lie you spin to keep yourself “safe” (and yes, sometimes these lies can get quite elaborate), you slowly start to forget who you are inside because of the competition with the facade you project to the outside world. And also with each lie you tell, you start to hate yourself slightly more, knowing full well that each lie is destroying a small bit of your soul.

And eventually the duality of life that you find yourself living becomes so unbearable, that you feel like you have no choice left but to burst out of the closet. Or at least take a big step out of it. And then, if all goes well, you can start mending the relationships with friends and family that have suffered because of the fences and walls that you have put up for “safety” reasons, and allow people to know the real you. And only then can you start living a full, open, and honest life that can close the chasms you have inadvertantly created, and which involves everyone that is important to you, and who deserve to know you in your entirety.

So this was pretty much my experience, especially with my family, who I didn’t allow to share in my personal life until my relationship with my ex was already 5 years old, and who, when I finally did come out, unfortunately, weren’t fully willing to share in my joys with that relationship for close to another 5 years. (see my cat story). But that did gradually change, to the point where they learned to share in the highs of my life and the eventual sorrows when they occurred.

Although the relationship that Chris and I have with my parents now is pretty much as good as it had been when I was with my ex, I can’t help but identify with the terror they must now be facing with the threat of our wedding thrusting me well out of the closet, and therefore dragging them out as well, if their friends and relatives were to find out about it. What would people think? How would people judge them? I’m sure these issues are going through their minds even though they refuse to talk about it or even bring up the subject.

And so I feel a great sadness that their self-exclusion from our wedding, and hence from an important milestone in my life, will mean that they will not be able to experience the full joys of life outside of their individual closets. They will never experience their family as a whole both inside and outside of their home and closet. And I will never just be their son, but will continue to be the duality of the gay son they hide inside their closet and the facade of the one they portray to everyone outside of the home. And they will continue to trick themselves into thinking they are perfectly happy while portraying me as the picky and busy son who just hasn’t found the right woman yet (or whatever other lies they are spinning).

However, unlike my parents, I am now done with that phase of my life spent spinning yarns. I will instead be happily spinning along on my bike, going places, and moving on with my life.

We’re just on our way back from a great visit with my parents in Snowdonia, where my folks celebrated our engagement with a nice bottle of bubbly, and really made a fuss of Donny – making sure he knows he’s part of the family. I’m really privileged to have parents who have been on their own journeys with figuring out this whole gay thing, and who are at the point now where they are excited about having a new son-in-law.

It’s a shame things aren’t working out  the same way with Donny’s family – but it is what it is. Donny’s parents have been nothing but friendly and hospitable to me on my visits over there, but I don’t think they could ever see me as somehow ‘joining their family’. I have always been a welcome guest, but I don’t think the wedding is going to change me into anything other than that.

But it could be so much worse. Donny could have lied to his parents about being gay in order to spare their feelings, and so in my visits over there I’d have to stay with friends or in a hotel – nothing more than another white face in the crowd. We are spared that at least.

Last night Donny and I watched The Wedding Banquet – a 1993 Ang Lee film about a gay couple (one white, one Asian) where the Asian guy undertakes a sham marriage in order to please his parents. Watching things in the movie spiral out of control, I was very glad that Donny and I don’t find ourselves in the position of having to pretend to be ‘housemates’ in our own home. (Having said that, I did have to pretend to be ‘the friend from London’ with Donny’s aunt and uncle in Singapore, and watch on in frustrated silence while Donny was set up with a girl – less than two weeks after we got engaged. But that’s a whole other blog article.)

Back to The Wedding Banquet. Although we are now benefitting from Donny’s early honesty with his parents, when I saw in the movie how much the marriage meant to the parents in the film, and how close the mother became with the daughter-in-law, it did make me realise how tough it must be on Donny’s folks. In Chinese culture, a wedding is not just about the bride and groom. It seems to me that it’s a social event for renewing bonds of family, friendship, business and community – where the parents have as much say in the planning, if not more so, than the couple. After all, historically a wedding ceremony would have been the symbolic culmination of a financial transaction, where the bride is transferred from one family to another. How does that work when there’s no bride?

With us they won’t be getting any of that. If they do come they will be honoured guests, but they’ll just be guests without any say in how the day happens. Donny’s parents and my parents will meet and shake hands, but they will have little in common, little to talk about and little common language to talk about it in. There will be no sense of two families becoming one family – our parents will go their separate ways and probably never see each other again.

And so I will carry on being a welcome guest in Donny’s parents’ home. And that will be fine. But although they won’t be getting another daughter-in-law added to their family,  I really hope they do eventually warm to the idea of having me as a son-in-law.

So far with my parents, I have decided to not bring up the topic of our wedding, which I will refer to in this blog as The Elephant In The Room (TEITR). It’s a shame really, as the planning stages for TEITR are almost as exciting and fun as the eventual day will be, and I have a strong desire to share our discoveries with them. But I have made a firm decision to not bring things up with them, since Dont Ask, Don’t Tell seems to be their policy. I know this will deepen the rift between us, but I need them to show some interest, and by not bringing it up, it may force them to show interest (if there is any on their part).

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is what they told me years ago when I first came out to them. They don’t deny the fact that I am gay and that I will not be changing my orientation (no matter how hard they have pleaded in the past for me to at least “experiment”). But they were so fearful of the potential shame within their small community of extended relatives and friends, that they pleaded for me to not tell anyone. They rationalized that since Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was good enough for President Clinton’s policy for the U.S. military, it was good enough for our family.

I of course disagreed. Yet I was torn between honoring my parents’ wishes, which is what a good Asian kid is trained to do from day one, and to being honest and true to myself and others, which is what being an independent adult and member of human society is all about. So eventually we reached a detente. I would live my life as I see fit as long as no one they knew found out about my “delicate situation”. This was easy when I lived 2,700 miles away from them in Boston. And even easier still when I moved to London, which is 5,400 miles away from San Francisco. And whenever I was back in San Francisco, or with any relatives, I would just be their “batchelor” son who was too busy with school or work to settle down. So I lied to others on their behalf, despite the values they taught me about honesty.

This arrangement worked, but not when my ex traveled to SF with me, which he did with every other visit. There was one time when, after we arrived at the airport, we were whisked into the house. I didn’t even notice it at first, until it dawned on me later that it was to prevent my grandfather or aunt’s family (who lived only 3 blocks away) from seeing my ex. My revelation happened the day after, when we were invited to have dinner with my aunt’s family. But it was of course the “royal” we, which did not include my ex. He was instead asked to stay home. My mom at least bought some takeout for him and brought him back a doggy bag. And the irony is not lost–he was treated the way that I am being treated now…on the one hand like a dog, and on the other hand like a dirty little family secret.

But the odd thing is that it was not the first time my ex was out in SF with me, and not the first time the he would have met my extended family. In fact he had met them just a year before, when he was “a friend” visiting with me from Boston. But my folks didn’t want my extended family meeting my ex twice in a row, which would have “raised suspicions”.

This type of arrangement of course also creates a rift between me and my extended family. They will never get to see the full extension of who I am, only whatever facade I have created for them on my parents’ behalf. And I will always be left torn with having to leave significant parts of my life out of conversation, and to have to pretend to be something I’m not to many people who are otherwise close to me. And then there are the wider number of extended relatives to whom I have not allowed myself to get too close because of this arrangement. In many ways, it has become my parents’ version of Star Trek’s prime directive.

But in this day and age of Facebook, the distances between me and my family mean nothing when everything is just a click away. And that’s why I was so surprised to receive this message from my dad on Facebook on New Year’s Day:

“Happy New Year ! Donny and Chris, We hope you’ve had a good year , and We wish you the best 2012.”

 

This is the first time they have acknowledged us as a couple…and in a forum as public as Facebook. I don’t know what security settings he has in place on his account, but most of his Facebook friends are relatives, who would be able to see his post. Are they now scratching their heads wondering who this “Chris” is? Are those Singaporean relatives who had met Chris now finally putting two-and-two together? Is my dad unsure about how public Facebook can be, or was this an active decision to start being more public about the real me and to stop hiding behind facades? I don’t have the answer to any of these questions yet.

 

But what I will do is to acknowledge this event as an important baby step towards fully accepting me and Chris into their lives. These were only a few words, perhaps written in haste on New Year’s Day, but they are meaningful and have deeply touched both me and Chris.