November 25, 2011
The best way to learn is by doing. If my mother wanted to know how two women have sex, she can find out for herself by dating a woman. I mean, she’s on break with dad anyway. Listen. Closely. Do you hear that? Within her fifty-five year old brain, each cog of the wheel moved against its neighboring cog. Click, click, clickity click. She was actually considering it, maybe. Or was it an annoyance of such Wagnerian magnitude that her brain could not conjure a repulsive enough response. Oh orgasm of wit. Small triumph. Surprised at how bold I became to venture that suggestion to her, I later realized it was not surprising at all. It took no more than two years of realizing my sexual self, a dozen female sex partners, a handful of sexual experiments with men, and one crazy girlfriend, to no longer associate familial panic with my love for women.
Ask me I dare you. As if telepathy exists, she did. There must have been just a tad bend on the outer edge of my semi-giggling eyes. It was more than the opportunity to be liberated or even to gain vengeance for the pain she made me carry. It was a chance to play it light. To ease into it for her sake and mine. Boldly yet lazily, I looked straight at her and with no hesitation, I answered her question “Yea, I’m gay.” It was the explanation for my receipt of various mailings from the “The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center.” No matter that the LGBT Center had been discrete in their return address, a multi-colored sunburst-shaped logo sans words. However, they underestimated the maternal love of the Asian mother. Clearly, if the addressee is any member of her family, the Asian mother dutifully tears open envelope and reads contents, all for the convenience of said family member.
Of course she wasn’t shocked. Why else would I hold slumber parties with the same girl for months on end in our house, my bedroom door always locked. Yes, this reeks of high school, and I considered authoring this story with a pseudonym, but it was more pseudo-adulthood. I was twenty-four years old, in between quitting my job and applying for medical school. In between moving back with the folks to save money for said higher education and trying to have a personal life at the same time.
She had wanted to know for a long time, …a long time as in for the past year or so. In this family, we move fast. Months prior, my father had already phoned my former girlfriend’s mother to confirm the nature of our relationship. My ex’s mom had had ten years to cry her eyes dry, so according to my ex, her mom was very matter-of-fact in her reply to my father. To this day, I would pay good money to hear a recording of that phone conversation.
I had expected a talk after that phone call. But nothing. So they had known I dabbled in the art of lesbian-hood, but dabbling is not like being a fully enlisted, life-long member of the club of sin, right? And so, they threw that onto the Bunsen burner and let it cook for another few months. Surely, this was just to be “cool,” because “being gay is the new thing” as she put it (wow mom, you sure keep up with the times). But no way could their daughter be truly gay, gay as in I forgot where I was or who I was when I kissed my former girlfriend, gay as in I momentarily lost my fear of death when I made love to her, gay as in I forgot my own needs when I was attending to hers until my body physiologically awakened me to its breakdown, gay as in I wrote little love notes to her when I could not otherwise shower affection upon her from a distance, gay as in I had wanted to wed her, to take care of a woman emotionally, physically, sexually, financially, spiritually till my very last breath, gay as in I wanted to bring children into this world with a woman, to raise them with her, and to build not just a family with her, but a whole world with her.
Yea, like that kind of gay, I told her. As she learned that her daughter really wasn’t all that “cool,” (I mean, seriously, I wore rainbow-rimmed glasses in junior high, don’t know how I didn’t know I was gay, but did know I was not cool) she struggled to see how, yes how, what was the process whereby her only child became gay. Her star of a daughter, a Stuyvesant graduate, a Cornell graduate, president of this, research scholar of that, a hedge fund stock analyst turned medical student, who walks around with her semblance, her long wavy black hair, her almond-shaped eyes, her absence of anything physically masculine or “dyke-like,” is yes, gay. I mean, shit, did I do drugs too she asked. Because in her words, my “disgusting" ex looked like a meth addict. “Why else was she so skinny? And she must have AIDS. Do you have AIDS?” I avoided that onslaught of questions altogether. My supposedly poor choice in women can be the focus of a later discussion. And I did not want to address sexual health, the stereotypes, or sex, period. Yet her brain could not stop. And the only thing I could think of when she kept saying I don’t “look” like a lesbian was that some stupid people don’t look stupid either.
For all that she dreaded and hated my gayness, for all that I dreaded and hated her ignorance, I subtly retaliated, thus brutally retaliated, with a self-portrayal of straight-up whoredom and Casanovian lesbianism. Listed the men off my fingers. The artists, the musicians, the bathroom stalls. Listed my trysts with women. Described the specific hue of their hair color, the emotional connection we shared, the way my brain exploded touching her. I exaggerated how much of a lady’s lady I am, oh my charm! and oh my wit!, how the women adore me, swoon under me. My heart pounding with the pound of my fists in this fight that I wanted to create with her.
Yielding is the most powerful thing one can do to pull an opponent’s rug from right out under them. She had laundered my rug and was now flailing it in the wind of our tiny new york city backyard, beating it with such love to unsettle the dust out of its fibers.
She agreed that men rush or rather forego foreplay, she said she could see how women could be more sensual, she even agreed that my ex was being a bad girlfriend. And this was not a tactic, because she’s not that cunning, but also because she became genuinely inquisitive and cerebral. We dove into a discussion about gender and sex. Not with my invitation, she started to share her own sexual experience with my father. The popular Hollywood response is to choke on my own puke, but it was actually quite interesting to listen to my middle-aged mother, who is somewhat Chinese by culture but less American and more lost in translation, talk in perfect English about what she wanted in bed and what my father wanted in bed, and how they did or did not reconcile their differences. We even agreed these are differences that not only heterosexual couples may experience, but also homosexual and transsexual couples. Furthermore, not just in bed, but in romance, and in life.
Out of the two of us, as the one coming out, I expected her to walk away shocked and me to gleefully skip along to my lesbian raves. But there I was, collecting another gem example of the unpredictability of life, the exact reason I fell in love with life.
She pulled as I pushed. Following the natural laws of the universe, I came in to her.
Originally written 2.3.12
