My father had always wanted a girl, and without consulting my mom’s nor my two aunts’ opinion, he fulfilled his wish. Two cells collided, and ten months later, in the delivery room, I was being held in the doctor’s hands high up in the air.
“It’s a boy, a boy!” my older aunt squealed and screamed.
“It is the umbilical cord, not a dick,” my younger aunt corrected her brutally.
When I was being held in my mom’s arms, she looked at me in the eyes as she was looking at the very beginning of a human being. A moment later, she corrected the answer again regarding my birth sexuality. “She just ran too fast into this new world and accidentally dropped her dick on the way!”
That’s how I questioned that I might be gay when I was only just half an hour old. But when I was 6, I proposed to a boy. A very good-looking boy, nonetheless, in a suit and bowtie, looking all geeky and dreamy!
His name was Jay; I made this up, I don’t remember his name after all these years, but Jay sounds about right to me. Jay and I hung out at the kindergarten a lot. He wasn’t like other boys, who are usually rude and stupid. He was dressed nicely, talked gently, paid a lot of attention to hygiene issues, and would use a handkerchief to wipe a tiny stain on his mouth while I was eating like a savage. He asked me a lot of personal questions like, ‘what would I do before I go to bed?’ and ‘what would I do if I can’t sleep?’
“I might call you,” I said in response, and he blushed. I thought we were kind of exclusive, and one day under a motivation that I could never understand, I proposed.
I just did.
Under a dreamy blue sky, on a kindergarten school spring trip, children put dishes down one by one on a blanket. Jay and I were resting on the bank of the river; the tree cast a long shadow on the lawn. Jay was looking back at the groups that were slightly further away from us, and I was looking at him. As I said, we were kind of exclusive.
“Will you marry me?” I suddenly asked.
“Yes, of course,” Jay answered without turning his head back.
A moment later…
“But I have to marry her first,” Jay added.
“What! Who?” I was almost furious.
From the direction in which Jay was pointing, I spotted a girl who was one of our classmates, sitting not far away on the blanket. She had this perfect beautiful ponytail tied back with a red ribbon, and she was wearing a pink dress. She looked the epitome of all that ‘princess’ shit, sitting with other kids giggling and drinking soda while turning back at Jay, smiling at him with love in her eyes.
‘What the heck! Firstly, you can’t marry two women at the same time. Secondly, you can’t marry two women at the same time! And lastly, you just can’t marry two women at the same time!’ I shouted in my head. I didn’t ask Jay to give me an explanation or keep the conversation going. Instead, I just walked away with all the anger a six-year-old could muster and made tumbling steps back to the tour bus.
Our exclusive relationship ended that day.
I know what all you guys are thinking. A gay woman was once a heartbroken little girl? Is that the reason I turned gay? Hell no. The proposal was random and never warranted a solid answer so quickly, but it was not so random that its loving intentions were not to be cherished.
When I grew up, I knew my sexuality was complicated. It is a combination of my emotion and heuristic shortcuts, plus the appreciation of lust.
It is a ball of air floating in the wind. It has no shape; it flies up, sinks down, gets bigger, and shrinks back. The wind carries it and shapes it, the air ball just going along with it, just as water goes with the flow, has no path and purpose. Other times it is a block of wood, it has to go this way, it has to be square, it just can’t be modified or changed, a solid oak wood. Stubborn as hell.
In my culture, we will often go to a temple and bow to a Guanyin sculpture, which is the Chinese God of Love and Fertility. Guanyin is a dude in a long white silk nightgown, he has this plump face, long eyes, small and rich lip, and he looks all tender and calm. He shows up on TV screens most of the time as a woman, sometimes as a man. It seems people never figured him out, or they just don’t care, as long as he sends the blessing of love to the folks, people will be content.
I guess that’s all we need, to love and to be loved. If we live a life full of love all along, who needs to find a purpose or meaning?
