While hanging out with my newest gay friend AO in Austin today, I realized something disturbing. It is the fact that we are both so similar and yet so different. We are both proponents of living life to its fullest and exploring as many activities as we can. We are both Asians (half-Asian for him) and grew up with similar Asian cultural beliefs about family and the way to do things. Both our families have rejected our sexualities and cannot accept that their sons could be gay. We both love to travel, and we both love to run. He's ran two half marathons, while I've ran a half and a full marathon. Even our running pace is the same. We both rock climb, and we've both skydived before. He's gone backpacking through Southeast Asia, while I've gone backpacking through Europe. We are both trilingual, and both of us have spent our childhoods in various different countries.
But, he's flamboyant and flaunts his sexuality openly, while I don't (according to most people). He's explored the gay culture scene wherever he has gone, while I haven't. He has loads of gay friends, while I don't. It's not the fact that he's a few years older than me, because he has already been like this since his college years, when he was the president of the gay Pride organization on his campus. It's not the upraising, because we have lived similar lives. I think it's the people that we surrounded ourselves with. He chose gay people as his support group, while my support group turned out to be mostly straight people. I thought that maybe it has something to do with the fact that I'm an engineer, but I know some other engineers who work around that. It's probably my judgmental nature showing its ugly teeth.
I realized today that there's a giant hypocritical hole in my life. I proclaim to everyone that I love to explore new things and experiences and have no qualms about it. But when confronted with the evidence, it all points to the fact that I haven't explored the gay world and lifestyle at all. Through my previous posts, I've stood on the high altar and looked down upon the lifestyle of the people like AO. I thought (for some unknown reason and rationale) that the gay lifestyle was incompatible with the type of exploratory lifestyle that I want to live. Perhaps it was the fact that I hadn't seen any gay people to act as an example role model for me in how to live this type of lifestyle, but I outright rejected it and considered my lifestyle to be superior.
That myth is shattered now. I can't believe that I didn't see this inconsistency in my rationale earlier. How did I justify exploring every aspect of the world except for the part that I belong in? The gay culture is my culture now, yet I have never explored its depths. I guess I have always been afraid of rejection, either by the unknown-as-of-yet gay culture upon my approach, or by my current friends if I do embrace the gay lifestyle. It also didn't help that I am still self-conscious about my looks, even though people have told me that I shouldn't worry too much about it.
I am actually quite excited about this discovery, and a little bit ashamed at the same time. I wish I had spent more of my undergraduate experience exploring the gay culture. But at the same time, it is exciting to see someone that is living the life which I had previously deemed impossible (or improbable at the least). He has struck a balance between the gay lifestyle, and the active outdoor athletic lifestyle. I feel like a whole new world has been opened to me. Better yet, there is really no better place to explore this new lifestyle than San Francisco, which will be so close by to me!
Even if AO and I don't work out, which is likely, I will have him to thank for having motivated me to explore a brand new side of myself.
-FCDH
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