I am ready to speak of coming out, but how does one describe the discovery, the growing in of something, the pain of explaining feelings that you know are wrong because the propaganda of your youth tells you so?
You do it by starting with the first and most prevailing feeling that you’ve had on the matter, and that feeling is guilt.
So this is chapter one, and it is titled guilt.
Chapter One: Guilt
I knew she was pretty. I was six years old, she was my only friend at elementary school, and when she moved to a different part of town, I cried. We played games together. She would make us go in to the same bathroom stall, and she would pee, her eyes boring into mine, holding me there. I felt shame. I wanted to run away. But she was my only friend, and there was that small feeling that was something more than pure, childish curiosity. Let me take you there, to 2002 at a forgotten bathroom in Secord Elementary School: two girls, one blonde and blue eyed, confident in who she was even at six, and the other, hair and eyes both pitch black, scared and excited and confused and oh yes, ashamed, very ashamed – the blonde stands up, smaller than the tall Chinese girl, yet somehow much larger, and she says, the blonde that is, she extends a finger to the toilet and a eye to the Chinese girl, and she says, “your turn.”
Feel the roundness of the toilet around your bum, still warm from its previous occupant. Feel the challenge in those deep blue eyes. Feel the pee trickle down, hear it flow on to the toilet water, disturbing the surface and steadier than your heart will ever beat.
You can understand now why I cried when she moved away.
If you do, you are one step ahead of me.
I still do not.
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Fast forward to the summer of grade six, 2007. I am with my friend Rajavi, who is now Jade. We all go through our own journeys, and this one is not mine to tell. So out of respect, although she is still Rajavi when this happens, I will call her Jade, because that is who she is now, and perhaps it was who she was always.
We are talking about Ellen DeGeneres. Jade is a huge fan of Ellen. Everyday after school she watches the 4:30 show with her mother without fail. She loves the fervour Ellen has for life and the good deeds that she does, but she especially loves how she turns off the TV every afternoon feeling happier.
I am derisive. I don’t like Ellen, and I tell her so, “I can’t believe you actually like her.”
Jade is smart. Of our group of four friends, Jade was always the most mature. She was the first one of us to have gotten kissed. She had been in advertisements as a model. She had aspirations to be an actor at a time when the highest of the rest of our aspirations was getting the 50 cents needed to buy a corner store jumbo freezie.
Jade says, “Why not? Why do you dislike her so much?”
I remember this moment because for the first time, someone had asked me to describe the tangle of hazy feelings I felt in my conscience. I knew that Jane knew. But she didn’t know the extent of what she knew. She was challenging the prejudice that I held against gay people, one that had been nurtured carefully in my heart from growing up a church child. But why was I so uncomfortable? Why did I defend myself so vehemently, making up a blatant lie? I have traveled to that summer many times since in search of answers that have only become apparent with acceptance.
“It’s her eyes, her blue eyes. They’re so piercing. I feel like she’s looking right through me. Like Mr. Crother’s eyes, you know? She’s just scary.”
And Jade, bless her kind, knowing soul, Jade let the subject drop.
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Church.
I did not fit in at this church, because I was quiet and shy and different in too many ways for my presence to be easily swallowed.
- I came from a broken family.
- My single mother was struggling to make ends meet.
- I joined the church at 7, whereas everyone else had known each other since birth.
- I was a different kind of Chinese; they were Cantonese and I was Mandarin.
- I was hopelessly shy.
“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” Leviticus 20:13 KJV
That day, there was an energy in the air that descends so thickly only in circumstances of collective disapproval. Collective disapproval? Targeted hatred. Targeted hatred? Vehement self-righteousness. On that battleground I joined them. Finally, a common enemy that wasn’t my poverty or socio-cultural difference; finally, a target that I too could deride, scoff at, bully and tread on with permission! I hated gay people because the exclusion of them meant the acceptance of myself into a powerful club that I was desperate to be a part of. Never had I felt so guilty. The strings of hurt and confusion and sadness and fear tangled tangled tangled, hazy hazy hazy, and grew and grew and grew. I felt the mess sit in my chest, pumping guilty blood; I felt it in my wrists, bleeding guilty blood; I felt it in my head, swirling guilty thoughts. Pumping. Bleeding. Swirling. Swirling around and around, bring me back, bring me back to 2002, bring me back to the forgotten bathroom, to the toilet seat, the steady pee, the guilty flush, the flush, the water, the pee, the stare, the guilt, the swirl. The swirl. Down and down and down and gone. The surface is flat again. Ready for its next affront.
My surface is flat. When will I be ready?
Chapter two forthcoming
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