Queer Misgivings

This post was shared with me over e-mail by a friend (let’s call him Chatkhara!). It moved me in many ways and broke my heart a little bit. I’m going to share it here because it’s really too wonderful to be denied an audience.  

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I’ve been meaning to commit to text my hamjinsual musings for sometime, and often an unorganized rant is the best way to form a question. I’m not very well read in either queer studies, feminist theory, or gender and I apologize for the lacunae in thought, hiccups in phraseology, and those moments where my ignorance shines the brightest. I’m working hard to learn, read, and all I ask for is the ability to ask better, bolder questions.

I was trolling the Facebook the other day and happened upon a queer discovery: people celebrate their coming-out anniversaries. My friend’s ten year anniversary is fast approaching and he wondered in text, “what should I do?” He implored the help of others in his queer community and asked how they celebrated ‘the big day.’ I’m a particularly vain individual, and so it shouldn’t come as any shock that I began to cull my own memory’s archive to return to my last closeted day. Some day in the end of April 2007, my flatmate entered my room and I convinced her to go on a 2 AM stroll with me around my apartment complex. Thirty minutes elapsed and I couldn’t find the strength to summon up those words that I hadn’t had the courage to think, let alone vocalize in a declarative sentence with myself as subject. We returned to our rooms, but somehow I got a second wind and cajoled her into another walk. We went outside, sat by our sad, mildewy apartment pool, and she watched in sadness as the the volcano of emotions erupted from my firey, sad insides. Melodramatic much? I’m not so much sure if my voice worked or not, but the snot, tears, and hysteria that I was spewing did the trick. The secret was out, though it wasn’t much of one to her or to any of my close friends. I felt immediately better and that night I closed my eyes and cozily cocooned myself in some of the most absent minded sleep that I’ve ever had.

But burdens of secrecy are not so easily lifted. Coming-out of the closet is a sick game that heteronormativity rigidly reinforces. Am I never fully out, unless I make the decision to parade a statement, tie my shirt in a knot that reveals my navel, groomed belly, etc? Ok, that was unfair, but now you see how deep the cesspit of heteronormativity is. I had to have “the talk” with each close friend, where I sat them down and revealed that my erstwhile existence had been a cheap lie. It turns out, I was the real victim of the secret that everyone knew, but I was too ashamed to acknowledge. No one cared, and I consider it my good fortune that I have friends that are wonderful enough to love me for who I am when I wasn’t too sure.

I’ve started to make more strides to join the gay community, make queer friends, investigate the “scene,” if you will. I bring with me my disgusting anthropological faux-empirical gaze and now, more and more, my queer body into supposedly friendly spaces. And it initially feels good to belong to a community of people that share a similar marginalized self. But this fuzzy feeling soon dissipates and I discover that queer communities can be just as fucked up and othering as non-queer ones. On my quest to “belong,” I made the assumption that a queer community a) can exist and b) would be a place for me to belong. I didn’t realize that I essentialized a group but assumed that we would have a similar experience that united us. “Am I gay enough,” I began to wonder in self doubt. Do I have license to police the f-word, a word that I was humiliatingly subjected to everyday of my teenage life? Am I supposed to have a vitriolic opinion on Will and Grace?

It is appropriate for me to mention that I am non-white, and for most of my life I have identified and associated myself with white, straight individuals. My self-hate created a discomfort in South Asian circles, as being queer and brown carries a weight to heavy to bear. I’ll spare you the triteness of the “quest for belonging” story because that narrative is hackneyed and mainly untrue. I was quite happy on the margins, listening to Fergie and System of the Down, anyway.

I had never been attracted to South Asians before, and so when I began dating last year (four years out of the closet), I started to look for gay South Asians or “gaysis.” (As is often the story, the Shiv Sena makes a cameo on one date when I interacted with a hintutva guy. And no, it wasn’t Shiva’s phallic projection which led him down the path of ideological Indian middle class hate. The online dating world decided we’d be a match. Go figure! But I digress.)

Towards the end of last year, I met up with a guy at a café in South Delhi for lunch. We didn’t exactly hit it off, which was fine, but I was exited at the possibility of having another South Asian queer friend. As is often the case with queer meet ups, we eventually find ourselves on the topic of our out-ness. “Does your father know” always lingers on the tip of my tongue. I twitch anxiously as I hear the response. A negative response helps me feel calm. “Good, we’re both similarly fucked,” I think in shame. The fear of the outside looking in is one that I’ve overcome, but the dread of my father rejecting the shame of my phallic oriented existence is too much for my comprehension and I get swallowed into the earth.

My date happened to be from one of those fortunate few families where queer identity was not problematic, but education and economic status was. Our similarities ended at skin hew. He was pushed into a humanities education and allowed to be creative. Hurray. Congrats. His family was unenthusiastic about his orientation but still very realistic about his happiness. Great. While his parents where encouraging him to pursue theater, my father taught me about hypotenuses and their vital importance when walking any distance. Anywhere. While my date got soothing pats on the back and a discourse of “it’s all right beta, kuchh nahii hota,” I got lectures on the ethics of a clean room, a nicely sharpened pencil, and wrinkle-less clothing. Brownness and sexual identities are not universally well suited categories for community, I discovered.

I know it seems unfair for me to be consumed by jealousy and resentment, but I can’t help it right now. And I’m not asking for any forgiveness either.

The problems began when it became my turn to share. It wasn’t so much the conversation that threw me a curve ball, but the articulation of the question. The seemingly innocent question was structured as “does your family know?” but his tone condescendingly asserted “surely your parents know!” A question with an answer already built in its premise, its phrasing. HEY, I RECOGNIZE THAT SHIT IN GRADUATE SCHOOL. This wasn’t just gay privilege wagging its nagging middle finger in my face. This was him reminding me that my parents had to be idiots to not see “fag” written all over my forehead. As I am an American, passive aggression ensued. “They probably have an idea, but they only ask about girls, and that’s only when they ask.” He was effervescent with glee, schooling me with the obvious truth. I wanted to punch that disgusting smirk off his face, but as usual, I kowtowed to social decorum. I’m a victim of North Indian tezheeb, the politese of courtly jurisprudence, which causes me to eat my rancor. I calmly replied, “I don’t think it’s realistic that I ever tell them. I can’t expect them to accept me as I am.”

Why is it that “homosexuality” restricts me only to men? “Bisexuality” suggests that I have an affiliation to both genders. Why can’t I be me and be peoplephillic? Textsexual. Textual. Take a good handjob when offered and not worry about the baggage of classifying the binomial nomenclature of the involved parties. “He’s a twink bottom,” or “he’s a faggy guy.” I feel like the biggest problem I have is that I am constantly fleeing categories only to be restricted by others. Great. I’m a fag. Wonderful. Pleased to meet you. Now, please allow me to like women too, if I so choose. I am constantly confronted with reductive assumption that I have no romantic interest in woman or that I am pulled by phallic magnetism to men. It’s exactly the same foolish logic the undergirds homophobia. I’m already forced to explain myself to heteronormative straight folks. Now, I have to fight homonormative rigidity about my my emotional and sexual pluralities. So, when my date assiduously reminded me that I can’t marry a woman in two years when my auspicious marriageable ripeness peaks, my antagonistic insides curled and I wanted to vomit. “Watch me,” I thought in spite. “No,” I calmly answered and bit my tongue like the coward I am. He continued. “Your parents HAVE to know, I mean, how could they not? And you’re going to have to tell them. How could they not know?”

Oh waiter, can I have a glass of wine to splash in this fucker’s face? His incredulous smirk enraged me even more than his ignorance. I am my parents’ son and they don’t interact with me as a sexual being. I was casually asked once a year during my late teens if I had a girlfriend, and I relied on my angry teenage venom to silence their intrusions, just as any child of the 90s would. My parents are lovely people and my closest friends, but they are not products of a socioeconomic upbringing where these questions exist. They don’t read Marx and could careless what painting exhibit came to town two weeks ago. They were concerned with good grades and scholastic performance. My realities are their irrealities. My truths aren’t even manifestations of their imaginary biryani.

My parents left India in the 65 and 80 from staunchly Indian nationalist, military, middle class and upward aspiring households. I know I don’t give them much credit, but a gay son is a tough sell. Their reality may not be black and white, but it certainly doesn’t have the space in its color palate for the bright hues of my fuchsia insides.

Two years ago, I was introduced to the “It Gets Better Project,” a collection of video journal entries from queer and queer-friendly individuals talking about the uphill battle of acceptance. The central argument is to remind a young, mobilized, and relentlessly taunted queer youth that life does improve after one’s teenage years are over. Interest in this video compendium was ignited in response to tragic suicides across the US by teens who just couldn’t handle it anymore. While I support this project in its intention and do plan on making a video myself, I do find some flaws with the narrative, viz. it doesn’t always get better. It might stagnate out of necessity and fade into the corner. It might only get better one hour a week in therapy. It could get worse. The online community’s support has generated a lot of celebrity but this is relatively insignificant in comparison to the structural and societal economies of discrimination and plain honest-to-God hate that children have to undergo everyday, and I see this as exponentially higher in non-white queer circles. “It gets better” is something my white friends can triumphantly trumpet. Others that have the specter of an arranged marriage and the burden of providing grandchildren and income to South Asian parents of a different world view have another dark battle to fight.

I creep back into my heteronormative shell in front of my parents. The return to the congestive closet after five years of open living is murder. My marriage to my filial duty is in competition with my emotional obligation to myself to be happy. The former is still not a human right in my flossy western vatan. How the fuck is that supposed to feel any better? What do I exactly celebrate this April on my fifth year anniversary?

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